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73 articles
東山堂 | TOSANDO music「披露宴」篇 | 2014
A familiar situation, a familiar song. And yet it makes you cry. There's no surprise twist, no clever trick—so why does it grip your heart so tightly? Because everything lives in the acting and the direction.
FUNERAL INSURANCE COMPANY DELA | Why Wait Until It's Too Late | 2013
A funeral insurance company stopped talking about funerals and started saying "say it today" instead. And that's what won the Media Grand Prix at Cannes. An ad that reaches this far without ever mentioning the product.
BAND-AID | MAGIC VISION | 2012
The instant a kid starts to cry from a scrape, Kermit pops up right on the Band-Aid and starts singing. Just hold up your phone, and an ordinary bandage turns into a tiny stage.
CHIPOTLE | Back to the Start | 2012
For 2 minutes and 20 seconds, it just talks about farms. No burritos, no smiling staff, not even the product name shows up. For a fast food ad, that's incredibly strange. And yet it ended up winning two Grand Prix at Cannes.
P&G | Thank You, Mom – Best Job | 2012
At the 2012 London Olympics, P&G called itself the "Proud Sponsor of Moms" — the official sponsor of mothers everywhere.
MINISTRE DE LA DEFENSE | OPERATION CHRISTMAS | 2011
In December 2010, deep in the Colombian jungle, a giant tree turned into a Christmas tree. When guerrilla soldiers walked by, motion sensors lit up 2,000 lights, and a message appeared on a banner next to it: "If Christmas can come to the jungle, you can come home. Demobilize. At Christmas, everything is possible." This is one of the most urgent campaigns ever staged by an ad agency.
ライオン | タイムスリップ家族 | 2011
A family photo taken in 1991, and the same family in 2011. Lined up across time, in the same place, from the same angle.
VOLKSWAGEN | The Force | 2011
A kid dressed as Darth Vader racked up 15 million views on YouTube and became one of the most beloved ads in Super Bowl history.
旭化成ホームズ | 考えよう。答はある。 | 2011
This copy opens with a quiet, measured voice: "I know that if I go further out, I could have a bit more land. But still, I think I'll live in the city." I find myself stopping on these words again and again.
東京ガス | 家族の絆・お弁当メール | 2010
It's only 90 seconds long, but I cried right on the spot. I happened to catch it on TV, lucky enough to see it from the very beginning, and the tears just came. "The lunch a mother makes" is already powerful material on its own, and this ad dresses it up in something very modern: "email." To a son who barely talks anymore, the lunch his mother makes every single day becomes a one-way, but very real, "message."
サントリーオールド | 娘の相手 | 2009
Jun Kunimura says, "I could've punched him, you know." That one line says everything. Before meeting his daughter's boyfriend, the father quietly leaves the room without saying much. When his daughter follows him out, he mutters that single line - and it's packed with so much deep love, resignation, and quiet approval all at once. I was completely won over.
NESTLE | KIT KAT MAIL | 2009
Putting a chocolate bar straight into a mailbox. Who would have thought that could happen? But it did — and it became the day that idea won the Grand Prix at Cannes.
複数企業協賛（ツインリンクもてぎ、20世紀FOX映画、読売新聞） | Friend-Ship Project 第4弾 家族の絆「ゆうなの夏休み」 | 2008
A five-minute family story woven together by two fine actors, Nao Omori and Sachiko Sakurai. Apparently this was one of those reversed projects where the client is decided first, and then creators make a long-form commercial around them. This was the fourth installment of that project, and the density of it—packing in all of life's bitter and sweet—was really something.
江崎グリコ | OTONA GLICO 〜25年後の磯野家〜 | 2008
In 2008, Sazae-san got a live-action adaptation nobody saw coming. And the premise was wild: it was set 25 years in the future. Tadanobu Asano as Katsuo, Rie Miyazawa as Wakame, Eita as Tara-chan, Shun Oguri as Ikura-chan. The casting alone was enough to make people go "wait, you can actually do that?"—a real testament to the strength of the idea.
OLYMPUS | RED-EYED BABY | 2005
A husband terrified by a photo of a baby with red-eye. This ad, which pitched a digital camera's red-eye correction feature with the tone of a horror movie, won Gold at Cannes in 2005.
NZ FIRE SERVICE | SPEED OF FIRE | 2003
As a timer ticks steadily forward, a living room fills with smoke. From New Zealand in 2002 comes an ad that shows the speed of fire exactly as it happens.
HORNBY HOBBIES | Beautiful Boy | 1999
London, 1999. Just hearing that John Lennon's "Beautiful Boy" was used in a commercial is enough to make my heart skip a beat. And when that commercial is for Hornby model railways, it hits even harder.
ライオン | チャーミーグリーン | 1992
I was washing dishes just now when this suddenly came back to me out of nowhere. Songs really do stick in your brain in a scary way. Along with that tune — "Using Charmy Green makes me want to hold your hand~♪" — the image of a married couple holding hands and dancing while they shop comes rushing back, and even now, more than 30 years later, I can picture it vividly. Just that alone tells you this ad was a win.
TVE | SUITCASE | 1989
In 1989, Spain's national TV station aired a commercial telling people not to watch too much TV. And it was the TV station itself that put it out.
TVE | SCOOTER | 1989
1989. Spain's state broadcaster TVE said something about itself: "Our shows are great, but watching too much isn't good for you." An advertiser telling people to consume less of its own product? That shouldn't happen. But they did it.
JOHN HANCOCK FINANCIAL SERVICES | Real Life, Real Answers | 1986
Cannes, 1986. The moment director Joe Pytka stepped onto the stage, the room erupted in a roar of boos. This ad, which had just won the Grand Prix, wasn't welcomed by the French audience. "This kind of reality doesn't belong in advertising," they seemed to say. But that was exactly the point of this campaign.
OVERSEAS TELEPHONE CALLS | YUGOSLAVIA | 1977
1977. An international phone service in Australia used the voices of immigrants from Yugoslavia, and won the Grand Prix at Cannes.
UNITED CEREBRAL PALSY FUND | Have a Cigar | 1969
A husband holds out a cigar to his newborn baby. It looks like a casual gesture, but hidden in it is a story about cerebral palsy. This is Have a Cigar, Grand Prix winner at the 1969 Cannes Lions.
VOLKSWAGEN | Funeral | 1969
In 1969, there was one thing advertising simply didn't touch: death. Everyone avoided that third rail — DDB walked right onto it.
CHEVROLET | STATION WAGON | 1959
It's 1959. This is the year Chevrolet's station wagons hit American roads with cat's-eye taillights and tailfins that looked like wings. The ad film, made by Campbell-Ewald, reportedly won a GRAND PRIX.