Year
30 articles
カロリーメイト | 光も影も | 2024
The tenth installment in the series, and the first time an art school exam candidate took the lead role. Boys had taken the lead four years running, from '19 to '22, so longtime fans who'd been thinking "maybe it's a girl's turn soon" couldn't help but grin.
RUH FIGHTING CHAMPIONSHIP | The National Sport of Kazakhstan | 2024
A ring where men and women fight each other? Unthinkable, the men raged. But inside their own homes, they said nothing. RUH Fighting Championship exposed that silence.
日本マクドナルド | スマイルあげない | 2024
McDonald's broke its own 50-year-old promise of a "0 Yen Smile," all by itself. "I Won't Give You a Smile," sung by ano, was a recruitment campaign on the surface, but underneath it was a declaration of resolve.
朝日放送テレビ | M-1グランプリ2023×日食なつこ「ログマロープ」 | 2024
There are manzai comedians who stake their whole lives on four minutes. Playing over the promotional video for M-1 Grand Prix 2023 is Natsuko Nisshoku's "Logma Rope." She couldn't write a song for six months, and this track was born at the end of what felt like hell.
マクドナルド | 家族といっしょに。「約束のハッピーセット」篇 | 2023
All I cared about was "what's in the Happy Meal right now," but the opening shot already had me hooked. A 60-second ad where the setting, the cast, and the direction all click together perfectly.
B3 STOCK EXCHANGE & UNITED NATIONS GLOBAL COMPACT | EART4 | 2023
Earth became a company. And one on the verge of bankruptcy, no less. At first I had no idea what that even meant. But it turns out this was the perfect "translation" for business leaders.
EUROFARMA | SCROLLING THERAPY | 2023
Parkinson's disease slowly erases facial expressions. People lose the ability to smile, to look surprised. But this app turns the scrolling time everyone already wastes every day into a tool for getting those muscles back.
東京ガス | 母の推し活 | 2023
There are a few ad series I look forward to every year, wondering "what will they do this time" — and Tokyo Gas's brand ads are one of them. Their "Family Bonds" series, running since 2008, has delivered one gut-punch after another straight to the Japanese heart, starting with the famous "Lunchbox Email" spot. I admire their work. The 2023 entry, "Mom's Fan Life," tells in 90 seconds the story of a mother who falls for a K-pop idol thirty years younger than her and watches her life open up as a result. It became a huge hit, racking up over 5 million views on Twitter within three days. This time, though, I found myself thinking "it's good, but..."
Coors Light | Coors Lights Out | 2023
In August 2023, a foul ball from Shohei Ohtani smashed an LED module on a Coors Light sign at Citi Field. A black dot of missing pixels appeared right above the can. Normally this would end with a quiet "sorry, we'll fix it," but Rethink turned it into a commemorative can recreating that black square — released just 48 hours later. It's reaction marketing at its finest.
富士フイルム アスタリフト | 列車のふたり ナノテクノロジー | 2023
What happens when you bring a story into a cosmetics commercial? This ad feels like an experiment in just that. Aoi Miyazaki, disguised in a trench coat, sunglasses, and a blonde wig, jumps onto a train. Masaki Okada, claiming he's "come from the future," launches into an endless explanation of nanotechnology. Seiko Matsuda's "Red Sweet Pea" plays in the background, and in an atmosphere that can't quite decide if it's serious or comic, the two set off on a strange journey together.
NIKE | Footballverse | 2023
This is the answer NIKE gave to "who is the greatest player of all time." In a secret research lab in Switzerland, Ronaldinho, CR7, and Mbappé clash across time and space over four and a half minutes. The conclusion: "the best is yet to come." Simple, but powerful.
クラシエホームプロダクツ | 日本の四季 | 2023
A camera slowly circles a cherry tree as the seasons pass by. There's a commercial that took over 80 days to shoot, all for this one tree. The moment I heard about the plan, I thought, "This is going to be tough" — and I found myself admiring the trust it took to actually pull it off.
RENAULT | PLUG-INN | 2023
Is it an ad, or is it a business? Renault's "PLUG-INN" came to smash that whole line apart. It took the Grand Prix in the Creative Strategy category at Cannes Lions 2023.
PGLANG | WE CRY TOGETHER | 2023
A six-minute film that won the Grand Prix in Film Craft at Cannes in 2023. Kendrick Lamar and Taylour Paige play a couple in a brutal argument. It was shot in a single take, with live vocals, in March 2020. The intensity makes you forget to breathe the whole time you're watching. This is less an "ad" than a "work" — but at the same time, it's also the piece that showed the world the overwhelming filmmaking craft of pgLang, the creative company Kendrick and his partner Dave Free launched in 2020.
MICHELOB ULTRA | DREAMCASTER | 2023
Cameron Black was born blind, but he had one dream: to call an NBA game. Michelob Ultra spent a year making that dream actually come true.
大塚製薬 | スカフィンのうた | 2023
A returnable bottle's journey, told in paper-cut animation and song. Kaho Nakamura's voice is gentle, Moji Tsuchiya's paper cuts, pieced together one second a day, are so lovable that by the end you kind of want to return a bottle yourself.
NOBLEX/ PARAMOUNT+ | THE CEO (El Gerente) | 2023
A promotion from 2017 turned into a 105-minute movie six years later, got a theatrical release, and won Gold at Cannes. It's the kind of thing that gives you goosebumps just thinking that it actually happened.
MAKRO | LIFE EXTENDING STICKERS | 2023
Those tiny stickers on fruit? They turned them into a medium. That alone cut Colombia's food waste by 70 tons a week. This might be the ultimate example of how small an ad can be and still work.
APPLE | RELAX, IT'S IPHONE: R.I.P. LEON | 2023
The lizard you're watching isn't moving. Worst case scenario, it's dead... wait, it's alive! That thirty-second swing from despair to joy lines up perfectly with iOS 16's "undo send" message feature.
SOTETSU | A TRAIN OF MEMORIES | 2023
Two minutes, one continuous shot. A story that unfolds entirely inside a train. A father and daughter drift apart and grow close again across 12 years, all while the train car sways around them. That's all it takes to bring you to tears.
SKINNY | Phone It In | 2023
No ad budget? Then let amateurs make the ad. Even better, let your competitor's customers make it. The fact that this kind of shameless move can win the Cannes Lions Grand Prix just goes to show how interesting the world is.
GORILLAZ | Gorillaz Presents | 2023
In December 2022, something impossible appeared over Times Square and Piccadilly Circus. A four-person band dozens of meters tall, playing music on top of the buildings. Only visible if you held up your phone. A band that doesn't exist was, unmistakably, right there.
INTEL | CERTIFIED HUMAN | 2023
A technology that can expose a deepfake in an instant, just by looking at the blood flow in someone's face. Intel turned this into a real ad campaign.
日清食品 | カップヌードル 担担 ザクザクコリコリ | 2023
Kinnikun comes bursting out of a swamp shouting "Tantaaan!" In his hands, a giant "Cup Noodle Tantan" — and as he charges forward he thrusts his hips while yelling "Zakuzaku! Korikori!" It's a spot-on parody of a legendary commercial from the 1990s, and people in their forties reacted to it all at once.
MEMORIAL SLOAN KETTERING CANCER CENTER | Working with Cancer | 2023
We're living in an age where one in two people will be diagnosed with cancer in their lifetime. But what's truly frightening might not be the disease itself—it's being found out at work. The fear of losing your job gets tangled up with the fear of losing your life.
APPLE | THE GREATEST | 2023
Seven people with disabilities drive a car, check the color of their clothes, and just go about their day, all using iPhone. That's it, that's the whole film. And it swept the Emmys, the Cannes Grand Prix, D&AD, and One Club Best in Show. The amazing part isn't the advertising. It's the people in it.
DOORDASH | Self-Love Bouquet | 2023
Eleven roses arrive for Valentine's Day, and the 12th is "Rose™" — the rose-shaped sex toy that went viral on TikTok. DoorDash slipped it into bouquets and sold them. They sold out in three days and won the Grand Prix in PR at Cannes Lions.
MIXI | 生徒指導篇／闇の神殿篇／保冷剤篇／公園篇／友達の兄篇／起床篇／父篇／年越し篇 | 2023
Just lining up the titles already makes you curious about what this ad could be. What on earth is the "Temple of Darkness" episode? And the "Ice Pack" episode has me curious too.
KOREAN NATIONAL POLICE AGENCY | Knock Knock | 2023
Inspired by Morse code, this emergency reporting system lets people ask for help without saying a word. Just tap the screen, and the police know where you are. It's the first change to Korea's emergency reporting system in 65 years — the sound of a knock.
一般社団法人ABJ | STOP! 海賊版「ありがとう、君の漫画愛。」 | 2022
I cried so hard it hurt. That was my first reaction, and it still is.