BRAND ACTIONS
2019
LIBRARY
PLANNING DIRTY
Planning Dirty Brand Actions Library has 200+ innovative advertising examples from 2019.
Enjoy,
Julian Cole
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OVERVIEW
CREATED BY
TABLE OF CONTENTS
QUICK SERVICE
PLANNING DIRTY
Whopper Detour
BK used geofencing to make a tasty sales offer of 1-cent Whoppers—only available to those who veer close to a McDonald's location.
It's called "Whopper Detour," and it works like this: For a limited time, when you were within 600 feet of a McDonald's restaurant, you could order a Whopper sandwich for just 1 cent on the BK app.
Upon placing the order, you are "detoured" away from the McDonald's and directed to the nearest Burger King restaurant for pickup.
BURGER KING
Chicken Town
Chicken shops seem to be taking over local high streets in some parts of the UK, filling many of the spaces left vacant by more traditional retailers and selling full meals for £1.50 a portion.
KFC makes a virtue of all this competition by showing Colonel Sanders driving around in a big old American car, casually passing by rows of KFC imitators until he gets to his destination — the only place he can enjoy the real thing.
Great delivery, and fun piece of work to showcase that KFC is the only real Kentucky Fried Chicken.
KFC UK
Innovation Lab
It's not easy to bring absurd products to life. It gets expensive.
So, KFC is shifting the burden—in a nice way—to consumers by launching the KFC Innovations Lab, an Indiegogo site that asks for crowdfunding donations to get more "innovative" (aka, ridiculous) KFC-branded products into production.
The campaign begins with five products that you can support. They include a hot tub that looks like a KFC bucket; a cardboard KFC picnic table; and a cane that doubles as a TV remote control.
KFC USA
McDelivery
A series of print and OOH ads for home delivery featuring beautiful, impressionistic shots of a city as seen through a window on a rainy day. Because of course that's the best kind of day to have food delivered.
Simple yet beautiful insight delivered in an even more beautiful ad.
Sometimes you don’t need AI, product innovation, quirky activations in order to be innovative.
McDonald’s Paris
The Day After
There are many ways to cure a hangover. Hydration, supplements and a little “hair of the dog” appear to be some proven methods—as is eating a good breakfast.
To help soften some of the rough edges the morning after, DDB New Zealand reminded people who may have gone a little past the boozy Rubicon that McDelivery with UberEats service could be their best friend.
Brave to go to a real truth that when you’re hungover you just want to smash some McDonald’s. The ad also flighted on New Year’s day which is a tactical master stroke.
McDonald’s New Zealand
Burn that Ad
With the ‘Burn That Ad’ campaign, anyone who launches the Burger King app in Brazil and points their smartphone at its main competitors’ ads may enjoy the sight of it being burned up instantly – in augmented reality – and turned into a BK ad.
When the flames burn away, the consumer is left with a screen that tells them they’ve received a free Whopper to be savored at the nearest restaurant.
Great use of AR tech to push sampling and app downloads.
Burger King Brazil
The Pizza Patio Set
The latest fun idea from Boston Pizza -- the Canadian brand that brought you a pizza box that turns into a table to eat off in bed -- will please anyone who ever had a doll's house or Sylvanian families.
Agency John St. has created miniature patio chairs to go with the pizza saver "tables" that come in the brand's takeout boxes. The chairs, designed to be precise, scaled-down replicas of actual patio chairs, were specially 3D printed using food-safe materials.
BOSTON PIZZA
Bitecoins
McDonald’s stepped into the hottest economical topic, creating a cryptocurency of their own and creating a new rewards platform for their public.
Bitecoins is McDonald's digital coin that can be converted into multiple rewards for our clients.
McDonald’s created a limited amount of Bitecoins and spread it across several places. And just like every cryptocurrency, it has to be mined. When passing by McDonald's OOH using Waze, a notification containing the Bitecoin is sent. Then all the customer has to do is access the wallet on the Bitecoin site, type in the code and store the fraction of the value.
MCDONALD’S
Real Meals
The Home of the Whopper is introducing "Real Meals" meant to match people’s moods. They acknowledge the fact that consumers aren't "happy all the time" and are targeted toward customers who won't necessarily get a lift from getting a toy with their burger and fries.
While they're a fun idea, the meals also bring light to an important cause. The campaign breaks May 1 to coincide with the beginning of Mental Health Awareness Month, and BK partnered with Mental Health America on the effort.
It’s had a divided response but created a conversation, which was the main aim of the campaign.
BURGER KING
Points for Pies
Domino's promoted a limited-time addition to its rewards program that kicked off the day before Super Bowl Sunday, one of the top five days of the year in the ever-competitive pizza industry. The leading pizza chain gave points for any brand of pizza. Someone could even heat up frozen pizza and earn points.
The offer gave anyone who signed up the chance to get free pizza without having to buy from Domino's.
DOMINO’S
Fire Squad
Burger King is riding to the rescue of redheads in Argentina. Why? They’re deemed to be bad luck, prompting men who see them to grab their (own) left testicle and women their left breast.
So Burger King, which obviously approves of flame this and that, is offering this beleaguered species a free Whopper combo for them and a friend.
Burger King Argentina
Bullying Jr.
One of the biggest problems with bullying is that people don’t stand up to it. Burger King's live social experiment shows how more people would stand up for a bullied sandwich than a bullied child.
Within days the Bullying Jr. experiment was shared over half a million times, earned over 3 billion impressions and over 100 million organic views. Today, Bullying Jr. is part of classroom curriculums worldwide.
BURGER KING
Truckload of Trolling
Did you hear about Chipotle's attempt at giving out free guac for this year's National Avocado Day? QDOBA did and decided to lend a helping hand with their free-guac expertise.
That nudge came by way of a delivery truck loaded with 1,616 lbs. of avocados and a social media activation to get the word out.
Making the rounds to Chipotle's original flagship restaurant and other Denver locations, we trolled the guac-is-extra giant on its home turf gaining over 100 million earned media impressions.
QDOBA
FESTIVALS
PLANNING DIRTY
Time Capsule Content
Tito’s Vodka created a pop-up experience at New York’s Governors Ball in 2018 to focus on charitable activities. Alongside a bar with handcrafted cocktails, the brand walked visitors through its charitable work and encouraged them to reflect on their own philanthropic actions.
A digital time capsule allows participants to create a video that makes them commit to a specific action that will better the world. The video is sent out a year later, and for each video created, Tito’s donates $1 to Musicians on Call, a non-profit that works to bring music to patients in healthcare facilitates.
TITO’S VODKA
Official Aftermovie
Tomorrowland is the most popular festival on social media in the world, according to Consequence of Sound (2018). Tomorrowland began to release official ‘after movie’ content in 2011. The movies showcase the hundreds of artists and ~150 - 200,000 visitors (from 214 countries) in attendance.
By creating an ‘after movie’, Tomorrowland captures its essence/spirit, reaches potential attendees for the following year, and gives back to festival-goers by creating a commemorative piece of content. The movies each year are typically uploaded shortly after the festivals conclusion and reach multi-million views (the 2012 after movie has 155 million!).
TOMORROWLAND
KEY IMAGE OR VIDEO
Coalchella
Think of it as all the fun of an outdoor music festival without the crowds—or the outdoors.
In late September, nearly 3,000 people logged on to their Minecraft accounts and got ready to party. The world-building video game has been often used to create larger than life sculptures, buildings, and artworks, but internet-collective Thwip Gang had bigger ideas.
After hosting a Minecraft-based "Birthday Party" for one of their members back in May, the Thwip Gang got to work organizing a full-scale concert completely within the gaming platform. With no more promotion than a few tweets on the organizers' personal Twitter pages, Coalchella drew in 27,000 listeners over its 8 hours across various streaming platforms.
Minecraft
The first A.I. marriage
They said, "A.I. do."
So, Siri and Alexa got married. Who even knew they were dating?
What, you weren't invited to the nuptials, staged to celebrate the EuroPride Festival in Vienna from June 1-16?
Well, the city's tourism board and Vangardist magazine joined with creative shops Serviceplan and Plan.Net for the grand ceremony at Vienna's Belvedere Castle. Local LGBTQ+ celebrities Pandora Nox and Laksmi Wuggenig were in attendance.
EuroPride Festival & Vienna Tourism Board
MUSIC
PLANNING DIRTY
Sound On
While Pandora’s first Sound On campaign aimed at setting the mood for holiday travel season, its spring installment focuses on inspiring people to discover their unique sound.
Unveiling the brand’s first sonic logo, the campaign made Pandora the first major streaming service to adopt an auditory logo.
The campaign also includes sound walls - murals created by street artists highlighting their interpretation of sound discovery. Murals include QR codes to playlists curated by the artists.
PANDORA
W Records
Taking artist collaboration and especially the support of emerging artists to the next level, W Hotels became the first hotel brand to start a record label.
Combining the spirit of an independent label with the capabilities of a marketing powerhouse, the label supports artists from recording to global PR and distribution.
The first artist, Amber Mark, recorded two songs at Sound Suites W Hollywood and partnered with Viceland on a documentary. W Records proceeds are donated to a charity picked by the artist.
W Hotels
Billie Eilish Experience
“WHEN WE FALL ASLEEP, WHERE DO WE GO?” To answer this question raised by her debut album, Billie Eilish created an interactive experience together with Spotify.
Mixing art and technology, the immersive activation brought the album to life and took fans on a journey through the artist’s mind - what she calls her “synesthesia”.
The 3-day pop-up experience that was located in Downtown Los Angeles dedicated one room to each song on the album - from featuring a giant foam pit to videos of tarantulas.
BILLIE EILISH X SPOTIFY
Long Live the Local
Often a springboard and starting point for artists’ careers, pubs play a vital part in the British music scene. Yet, many pubs struggle financially, with supposedly three pubs closing each day.
To support the “Long Live the Local” campaign that calls for a cut in beer taxes, Slaves teamed up with Britain’s Beer Alliance and national beer brand Carling to celebrate the Great British pubs with the music video for their single “Bugs”.
Switching scenes between a packed pub and a dystopian setting without an audience, the video ends with the campaign slogan “keeping pubs alive keeps music alive”.
SLAVES X BBA
A Voice is All You Need
Aimed at increasing streaming of Amazon Music on Alexa-enabled devices, Amazon created a campaign mixing lyrics, vocals and voice with Alexa.
The campaign features both animated videos and outdoor installations, and includes artists like Ariana Grande, Kendrick Lamar, SZA, Queen, and Kane Brown.
AMAZON MUSIC
Runaway Train 25
Soul Asylum’s 1993 music video to “Runaway Train” featured pictures of 36 teenagers that had gone missing. According to Rolling Stone, the video played a vital part in the subsequent return of 21 of these teenagers.
Following the video’s 25th anniversary and enhancing the search effort with new technology, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) collaborated with artists Jamie N Commons, Skylar Grey and Gallant for a cover version of “Runaway Train”.
Based on geo-targeting technology, the video on the campaign site displays pictures of children missing in a viewer’s particular location.
NCMEC X JAMIE N COMMONS, SKYLAR GREY, GALLANT
First on SoundCloud
SoundCloud moves into the second phase of its creator discovery campaign, highlighting emerging artists that listeners could first discover on the platform.
The campaign features fans and how they describe their relationship with songs and creators they discovered.
Each week, the campaign highlights one of twenty select artists and creators, including Flipp Dinero, OSHUN, DNMO, HappyBirthdayCalvin, Billie Eilish and IV Jay.
SOUNDCLOUD
Global Feminism
For International Women’s Day 2019, Apple Music joined artist and human rights activist Annie Lennox and her charity the Circle for a debate on injustices women around the world continue to face - from unequal pay to rape.
Celebrities like Mary J. Blige, Ed Sheeran, Eve Ensler, Gwendoline Christie, Hozier, and Eddie Izzard join the clip, holding signs that back up the statements with statistics.
The celebrities also nominated songs for a matching Apple Music playlist with feminist artists like Aretha Franklin, Nina Simone, Dolly Parton, Regina Spektor, Bikini Kill, and Lennox's former band the Eurythmics.
APPLE MUSIC X THE CIRCLE
There’s a playlist for that
After launching on the Indian market with a minute-and-a-half online film earlier this year, Spotify runs its first campaign, a combination of hyperlocal OOH and digital ads.
Referencing relatable life situations and cultural nuances, ads are geo-targeted based on cities, neighbourhoods and traffic intersections.
The campaign underlines Spotify’s positioning to offer curated music experiences based on moods and life situations, reflected in the tagline “when life changes tracks, there’s a playlist for that”.
SPOTIFY
Neighbourhood Sounds
Another example of a hyperlocal campaign, YouTube Music’s Neighbourhood Sounds highlights the sounds and vibes of particular Australian neighborhoods.
Based on the insight that Aussies are proud of their local artists and would like to see more of their music featured, campaign videos follow local creatives on a sonic journey through their neighborhood.
Besides these tributes to four distinct neighbourhoods, the campaign also includes audio enabled panels on bus sites allowing commuters to listen to local playlists.
YOUTUBE MUSIC
ALCOHOL
PLANNING DIRTY
Made of Music
Authenticity is one of Budweiser’s core values. And so, to pay tributes to one of the most authentic artists on earth, Hermeto Pascoal, the beer brand had to be just as innovative as him.
After inviting the Brazilian artist to record his first solo album in 30 years, Budweiser collabed with him to create “Made of Music”. By studying the artist’s experimental sounds and defining some parameters, a digital platform turned data into “music visualization”.
The data generated images became the art for Hermeto’s upcoming launch. Besides, the public could also create their own unique images, by experimenting with “Made of Music”, the so called “music data visualization experience”.
Budweiser (Brazil)
Tagwords
With an undeniably strong connection with music, Budweiser has already been in the hands of many legendary musicians throughout history.
To prove it, instead of purchasing super expensive image royalties, the brand tracked some keywords and encouraged people to search for them. By doing that, the user would be redirected to images that showed these iconic moments of the beer brand, featuring famous music celebrities, reinforcing the connection between Budweiser and the music universe.
Budweiser (Brazil)
The Tag Along
By purchasing AdWords based on key terms used for “Tagwords”, the Swedish beer brand intentionally hijacked Budweiser’s awarded campaign.
Norrlands Guld’s digital ads feature provoking taglines such as "Why Google beer when you can drink one?" or "IRL beer is better than Googling beer”.
This way, the brand would also be sending a friendly reminder to their public: “beer is best enjoyed offline”.
Norrlands Guld (Sweden)
Green Program
Heineken (Brazil)
Carnival is one of the most important moments for the alcoholic beverage industry in Brazil. Besides, during these 4 days, many Brazilians end up drinking the cheapest and worst quality drinks to celebrate.
Going against competitors’ usual practices, Heineken decides to get in touch with consumers only after the Carnival’s end. The idea was to position the beer as a Carnival “detox”. Wrapped by the so called “Heineken Green Program” initiative, Heineken promised to recover people’s good taste for beer.
The campaign, that featured a TVC and content for online channels, allowed the brand to reinforce the product’s attributes (100% pure, no additives, etc.).
Bridges on Bridges
Amstel (UK)
With hundreds of kilometers of canals, it’s no surprise that Amsterdam may also be known as the City of Bridges. Knowing about this, the Dutch brewery launched a new TVC, featuring Jeff Bridges.
With a very humorous tone, the actor is literally portrayed as giant human bridge. The whole bridge theme helps conceiving the idea of "connection" - how important it is for people to come together and to embrace differences, accepting others as they are.
Reposter
Skol (Brazil)
Known in the past for its sexist ads, the Brazilian beer brand began to redeem itself in the beginning of 2017. From then on, its communication started to look more diverse and inclusive.
On 2017’s Women’s Day, Skol announced “Reposter”, an initiative led by female illustrators with the objective of remaking old posters that objectified women’s body.
The Green Drivers
Heineken (Brazil)
As part of a responsible consumption campaign surrounding the Brazilian F1 GP 2017, Heineken showed how responsible people can actually get to experience incredible situations.
After resisting the temptations of drinking a Heineken just before driving, two participants got the chance to take a ride on Interlagos motorsport circuit with the former Formula 1 pilot, Jackie Stewart.
Shuffled Letters
AB InBev (Brazil)
In April 2019, AB InBev decided to shuffle the letters of its brands’ logos. Among the participating brands were Budweiser, Stella Artois and Corona.
The action was part of a campaign in favor of the responsible consumption of alcoholic beverages. The idea was that, through the mixed letters, people could understand that, even though sometimes things can look “ok”, they might actually not be. In other words, one must know when to stop drinking, even when at first glance it looks alright to keep going.
Isabella Artois
Stella Artois (Brazil)
To celebrate the International Women’s Day, Stella Artois changed its name temporarily to “Isabella Artois”.
Isabella assumed the Belgian brewery in 1726, after the death of her husband, Sebastian Artois. She'd have represented "a fundamental pillar in the construction of the company's history."
The idea behind the campaign was to encourage people to start properly recognizing actions of inspiring women from all over the world.
A Toast to What Really Matters
Brahma (Brazil)
In order to celebrate the 130th Brahma’s anniversary, the brand compared pictures of real old consumers with these of the present day.
Strongly built over the brand’s tradition, the film suggests that time selects what is fated to keep on going - the good things in life, just like Brahma.
Brahma would be “the beer that follows generations and celebrates their best memories”.
“Consumo Inteligente” Campaign
Brewers on Tap
AB InBev invests and supports their beer brands like no other– allowing them to scale, produce with great consistency and expand their product lines. However, using numbers and stats to battle an emotional negative perception felt like exactly what a soulless corporation would do. We had to show our passion. And what better way to do that than to introduce skeptics to the heart and soul of the AB InBev community around the globe— our brewers.
We put a face to the AB InBev family that's real, raw, and passionate as hell about beer — plus we got them responsibly sauced along the way. We dubbed the series Brewers On Tap– launching on Instagram TV and followed up with over 40 unique pieces of content rolling out on all major social channels.
AB INBEV
Content for Cocktails
New Amsterdam Vodka has tapped into the podcast space in collaboration with Spotify.
As part of its Pour Out Your Soul campaign, New Amsterdam Vodka announced its first branded podcast, The Ebb & Flow. Hosted by brand ambassador Jasmine Solano the podcast centres on conversations with popular hip-hop artists.
The end of each podcast features drink recipes that can be made with New Amsterdam Vodka.
NEW AMSTERDAM VODKA
Alexa Open “The Bar”
Diageo added a new skill to Alexa, an at home voice mixologist to talk (and walk) you through every drink.
The voice assistant can help users choose among a list of recipes with the ingredients they have on hand, select a cocktail based on their preferences or mood and can teach them mixology techniques. When users are missing ingredients they can add them to a shopping list that is then sent to an Alexa shopping app to order.
The skill also gives users the option to purchase 12 of Diageo’s brands by directing them through to Amazon.
DIAGEO
Bring Your Bottle to Life
19 Crimes has turned their labels into a canvas to tell true crime stories.
Through the use of AR and a custom built app consumers can learn more about the real life 17th century convicts featured on the bottles and dive into a darker history lesson.
With the app helping share the story behind every bottle it definitely gives people something to talk about.
19 CRIMES
World’s First Flat Wine Bottle
Online shopping + wine = a match made in heaven. The safe and reliable delivery of wine however remained a problem. Enter Garcon Wines and their flat bottles, wine designed with shipping in mind.
The bottles are designed to lay flat inside a cardboard shipping box, are made of 100% recycled PET, weigh 87% less than a typical wine bottle (saving on shipping costs) and fit inside most letterbox slots.
Garcon created this distinct segment by focusing at the very end of the supply chain, not the start. The purpose is simple; cost-savings + convenience + eco-friendly + elegance.
GARCON WINE
Confessing Labels
Australias’ Treasury Wine States youngest label was branded 19 Crimes is based on the strange, but true story of the country’s infamous origins.
To help overcome the cluttered retail space and capture the attention of new customers, the brand created the wine category’s first-ever AR app, an augmented reality experience that transforms each bottle into a virtual brand ambassador and brings each of the 19 Crimes to life by letting the convicts on the bottles tell their side of the story a compelling reason to engage with each bottle of 19 Crimes
Treasury Wine States
Heartful Brandy
Over the centuries a toast was an expression of eternal values such as love, friendship, family, prosperity, and triumph.
Now ARARAT has found the right way to glorify and reveal the feelings that we all experience throughout our lives when sharing a toast with our close ones: with an an AI module which recognizes emotions during a conversation
Just turn on the ARARAT application on your tablet, choose one of the available options, place two ARARAT glasses in the indicated squares and just start talking, the emotions expressed during this conversation will be reflected as a 3D-image directly inside your glasses.
ARARAT
Civil Love
In Lebanon, a Muslim and Christian cannot marry each other. In order to celebrate creativity for progressive change, Absolut brought inter-religious civil marriage the closest it has ever been to Lebanon. Only 12 miles off Lebanese shores in international waters where Lebanese marital law no longer applies.
As a world-first the Civil Love boat set sail to marry couples and celebrate unity & love in a country torn by Civil War, and Absolut celebrated this powerful moment in history with a platform of support that included 'The Civil Love Exhibit,' featuring renowned local photojournalists & contemporary artists, and kept celebrating the rise of love at the 'Cotton Candy X Beirut Design X Absolut Closing Party', all shown on Instagram.
Absolut Vodka
1800 Seconds
1800 Tequila and hip-hop legend Pusha-T partnered to launch 1800 Seconds, a new recording and artist discovery platform that gives unsigned artists a chance to write and release one new three-minute track with the full production and marketing support of a record label.
In its inaugural year, hip-hop legend Pusha-T has curated 10 artists for their individuality and unique sound, recording and releasing a 30-minute compilation album featuring 10 new tracks available for download on 1800seconds.com, as well as Spotify, Apple Music, SoundCloud and more streaming sites.
1800 Tequila
Adopt A Puffin
Project Puffin was founded in 1973 by the National Audubon Society to protect puffins, charming little birds endangered in Europe due to overhunting and climate change
Knowing that Icelanders love puffins, Reyka decided to join forces with them, and put their marketing budget at their disposal, encouraging the audience to adopt and spread the word by wearing the fashionable puffin gear they have created.
Reyka Vodka
Whine Pairings
Harpersfield Vineyards took the traditional pun on whine and wine (traditionally served with cheese) popularised by the American TV psychologist. Dr. Phil and made it the core of their campaign to reach a different audience making wine relatable, and no longer exclusive to "preppy people" or elegant situations.
With #whinepairings, they launched a microsite that will pair user generated “whines” daily with the perfect wine from their cellars to get you through it. And further extended the action to print and social.
Harpersfield Vineyards
Rosévelt Island
To celebrate the arrival of sunny weather and the world-wide obsession with rosé, the makers of the best-selling rosé vodka, Three Olives, announced the rebranding of Roosevelt Island (a 150-acre island in New York City's East River) as Rosévelt Island: the first-ever permanent destination for the popular pink drink.
And they painted everything from the ground, the tramway, and even the subway station pink, before hosting a public ribbon-cutting ceremony with city officials at the pink-tinted Rosévelt Island tourist center to celebrate the occasion
Sadly it all ended up being an April’s Fools prank.
Three Olives Vodka
Seville’s Special Color
The gin sector is one of the most collapsed spirits markets in Spain, where in addition there are a lot of national produced brands.
In order to achieve an emotional connection with the consumers, and become culturally relevant with a new flavored product, Tanqueray went back to an iconic song from the Expo 92, “Sevilla tiene un color especial” (Sevilla has a special colour) by local group Los del Rio (of global fame with “La Macarena”), and set a big data study with Google Street View to pin down which is Seville’s exact shade, and got it ratified by Pantone, ensuring that their new bottle encapsulates the city sunny vibrancy and flamboyance.
Tanqueray Gin
Smart Beats
There are few things that go together better than music, friends, and beer. Beer brand SKOL Beats brought those things together in an innovative way by creating a useful nightlife assistant.
Smart Beats brought together artificial intelligence, voice recognition and integrated speakers in a SKOL Beats bottle-shaped personalized party helper. The device could be used to plan a night out—serving up event recommendations, weather info to guide clothing choices, and ride-sharing help—or assist with the perfect house party by inviting friends, teeing up the right playlist and drink recipes, and, of course, ordering more beer.
SKOL Beats
SOFT DRINKS
PLANNING DIRTY
Try not to hear this
Building on its iconic sound effects, Coca-Cola introduced “the first print ads you can hear”.
The print series proves that even a still image can conjure a sound in your mind. We all hear the pshhhh and the crack of the pull tabs, don’t we?
The campaign runs across Europe in print and social media, activating the sensorial memory from all of us.
Coca-Cola Europe
I love you. Hater
Sprite hopped on the bandwagon of brands addressing online haters and social media trolls with its campaign, neutralizing them by words of love.
Portraying athletes, artists, LGBT activists simply answering hateful comments (they receive in social media) with “I love you”.
The online heavy campaign includes Instagram stories, a long-form documentary, interviews with the protagonists, print and OOH.
Sprite
Expand Your Tongue’s Mind
Insert is printed on (LSD-less) LSD blotter paper, 7.5” x 7.5” and perforated into 900 tabs, just like the old days. It runs in San Francisco regional issues of Rolling Stone magazine and is the brand’s advertising launch in that market.
The blotter paper inserts are printed in rural Oregon and the ink is vegetable-based, so the sheets are edible, though probably not very tasty. If they get you high, it will be through a placebo effect only.
Kombucha
The Mountain of Love
In its Valentine’s day activation, SodaStream partnered with The Mountain from Game of Thrones, who shows us his softer side for the special occasion, lounging in front of a fireplace with a rose and a glass of sparkling water in his hands.
The Mountain reads out “the bubbliest love poems” of fans, submitted via the brand’s social channels on Valentine’s Day. Melting the hearts of the fans and their loved ones - instead of tearing them apart, this time.
SodaStream Valentine’s Day activation
The Real Ice Cold
Coca-Cola
A bottle made entirely of ice to serve Coca-Cola in it. The idea was to use this unexpected bottle to surprise people gathering in summer locations. A Coca-Cola stand was built to attend the excited customers that wanted to live the experience of drinking Coca-Cola of an ice bottle.
The campaign received over a billion impressions and had an earned media value of $6.5 million.
COCA-COLA
SodaStreamMe
The SodaStream system is a nice way to make your own carbonated drinks rather than buying disposable bottles. but haven’t you always wished you could create fizzy drinks on the go while also putting your belches to good use? No? Well too bad, because the brand has brainstormed a solution anyway.
This April Fools day SodaStream partnered with astronaut Scott Kelly to promote a portable device that promises to turn your excess gas into sparkling water with the message: “If life gives you gas, make sparkling water”
April Fools prank from SodaStream
Spread the positive energy
As a total beverage company, TCCC introduced the first energy drink under the Coca-Cola brand, debuting in Spain and Hungary.
Coke Energy features caffeine from naturally-derived sources, guarana extracts, B vitamins and no taurine – all with a great Coca-Cola taste and feeling that people know and love.
The new product aims at young adults, offering them “the only energy drink with the great Coca-Cola taste”.
Coke Energy launch Europe
Bublé vs Bubly
Bubly, PepsiCo’s sparkling water brand aired a 30 sec Super Bowl spot, featuring four-time Grammy award-winning singer Michael Bublé.
The spot expands on the teaser released earlier that showed Bublé on a convenience store floor with a pen, ‘correcting’ the spelling of the drink on the cans.
The Canadian-born singer is starring in his first-ever American football ad because of his apparent conviction that Bubly is in fact, Bublé – specifically named after him. In the spot, Bublé thinks it’s a Bublé world and we’re all just living in it.
Bubly’s Super Bowl campaign
Sweat happens
Maximus’s positioning speaks directly to the category insight that 70 per cent of sports drinks are consumed in non-sporting occasions.
This integrated campaign aims to solidify Maximus as the drink for those other sweat occasions caused by awkwardness or effort.
The campaign calls out insightful and humorous sweat-worthy moments, from watching a sex scene with the oldies, to the accidental reply-all, and a girlfriend who’s “late”.
Maximus Australia
Avengers pin tabs
Creating an extra twist for the Coca-Cola x Avengers: Endgame collaboration, the brazilian team came up with an idea to transform can pull tabs into pins.
So besides collecting the limited edition coke zero cans, these pins could be used on backpacks, clothings - anywhere you like to radiate: there is a hero inside of you.
Coca-Cola Brazil
More than OK
Pepsi has developed a TV commercial starring Steve Carrell, Cardi B, and Lil Jon addressing the question many people often get asked by restaurant wait staff when ordering a Coke: Is Pepsi OK?
The brand wanted to address this question head-on, by celebrating its fans and the valued restaurant partners by unapologetically letting everyone know that Pepsi is way more than OK.
The campaign narrative entails an array of social media executions, bold OOH ads which painted the town blue in Atlanta. On the packaging front, Pepsi launched limited-edition, football-shaped cans, awarded to fans via social media.
Pepsi Super Bowl campaign
PACKAGED GOODS
PLANNING DIRTY
#SHOWUS
To mark International Women's Day 2019 Dove partnered with Getty Images and Girlgaze to create the world’s largest photographic stock library created by women and non-binary individuals.
Dove found that 70% of women say they don’t feel represented in the images they see. The library of images is available to media and creatives to help redefine how women are represented and smash beauty stereotypes.
The project includes 5,000 images featuring 179 women from 39 countries which were shot by 116 women and non-binary photographers.
Dove, UK&I
Shower & Shave Tutorial
A new campaign stars Matthew, a soft-spoken man who offers advice on how best to shave different male body parts—in a bathroom comically set up with microphones everywhere.
The campaign, which both employs ASMR while also poking fun at it, was made by 72andSunny Amsterdam and promotes Shower & Shave Foam range of 2-in-1 products.
"Axe wants to inspire 'shave curious' guys with our shower and shave foam, to have fun, explore and ultimately push boundaries when it comes to liberating guys to be themselves," Caroline Gregory, global brand director at Unilever
Lynx
RECYCLABLE TWEET
To highlight that deodorant cans are in fact recyclable Sure launched the world’s first recyclable tweet,
People are invited to retweet the post to see what the aerosol could be turned into if recycled - from wheels to water bottles, a fishing rod to a baseball bat. The retweets will unleash a chain of tweets that show the infinite objects Sure can be once recycled.
On writing, the video had been viewed almost 14M times and the tweet had received over 1.5k engagements.
Sure, UK
RANG-TAN
UK retailer Iceland wanted to highlight that none of its own label products used unsustainable palm oil. UK Christmas ads are usually known for high production values and their sentimental nature. Iceland took a short animated film originally created by Greenpeace - rebranded it and pushed it out as their Christmas ad. It was banned as it breached UK political advertising rules. It then became the most talked about and public’s favourite Christmas ad of 2018.
ICELAND
KEY IMAGE OR VIDEO
NO B.S.
RXBars’ tagline ‘No B.S.’ was used to inspire this OOH campaign, humanising the brand and positioning the product as different from their competitors.
The headlines describe either the ingredients or the canvas e..g. “Peanut butter has twelve letters in it”, “Coconut, chocolate and some other words”, “Product shot”, “Some words on a wall”.
The campaign idea ran online where they partnered with rapper Ice-T on a series of videos including “Buy It”, “Words In A Commercial”, and “The Rapper You Can’t Remember” - the latter of which has had over 3.5m views.
RXBar, US
#ENDPERIODPOVERTY
To help raise awareness of and end period poverty Always launched a campaign to help make sure every girl in the UK has access to sanitary products.
Their shocking research found that not only were girls missing school as they did not have access to sanitary products but that 6 in 10 who experience period poverty were bullied at school. Always pledged to end period poverty by donating a pad for every pack
So far, Always have donated over 20M pads.
Always, UK
VEGAN SHRIMP
2018 was the year veganism went mainstream in the UK and brands were clamouring to feed demand for this new lifestyle choice.
It was Sainsbury’s that made the headlines when they gave us vegan shrimp! Together with Sophie’s Kitchen they launched a plant-based alternative to seafood by using konjac and pea protein.
Some people were excited, some didn’t get it and some couldn’t quite believe it was possible, but it certainly got people talking with 2.5M watching the Facebook launch video and over 4k comments.
Sainsbury’s, UK
LADIES LET’S LUBE
Veering away from the category generic adverts showing couples experiencing intense joint orgasms with complete ease, Durex wanted to get real about lubrication.
The condom brand highlighted that a woman's natural lubrication can change based on her cycle, which is why no one should ever feel embarrassed about using a little help to ease discomfort.
Thinking about the changes in a woman's cervical mucus might not be the biggest turn on, but if educating people on it helps remove the stigma that’s a good conversation to start.
Durex, UK
BATHSCULINITY
Axe has introduced a new word to the English language: ‘bathsculinity’ – the concept of being confident in yourself inside and outside of the bathroom.
The purpose of the short videos is to start a new conversation about what it really means to be a man, to break stereotypes and encourage men to express themselves more freely.
The Axe team have had ‘bathsculinity’ added to Wikipedia and the Urban Dictionary to spread the message further.
Axe, US
BODYBUILDER
In this amusing and unexpected ad for Pond’s a slicked up body builder crashes a date to remind us that oily skin is not a good look.
The advert won an APAC EFFIE award and was came 9th in WARC’s 2019 world best FMCG campaigns.
Pond’s, Singapore
Martin’s Story
For Martin, learning to live as his authentic self didn’t have an age limit.
An 86-year-old photographer, he opens up about his decision to come out as gay as part of 5 Gum’s “No Regrets” online short film series. He said concealing his true identity for 85 years left him riddled with insecurities and self-doubt.
Later in the clip, Martin beams as he watches video footage of young LGBTQ people saying how his personal journey affected them, then he steps out into a crowd of dancers at his very first LGBTQ pride parade.
5Gum USA
PET CARE
PLANNING DIRTY
Adopt a Pack
Possible Moscow have teamed up with Hill's Pet Nutrition and ‘Adopt a Pet,’ to challenge perceptions and find new homes for rescue animals.
To do this they have created, ‘Adopt A Pack,’ a specially designed Telegram sticker pack and bot.
The Telegram sticker pack consists of images of pets currently waiting for adoption. By sending a sticker with an animal that you like to a Telegram bot, you can get its biography, photos and advice on how to feed it. Whenever the ‘Adopt a Pet’ fund gets a new homeless pet, a new sticker is added to the pack and when the pet is adopted, its sticker disappears from the set.
Hills Pet Nutrition
More face-to-face
Cat owners love their cats unreservedly. It’s a deep and special bond that let’s face it, can often be a little one sided.
To help desperate cat owners spend some quality face-to-face time with their snobby cats Colenso BBDO launched DINE Creamy Treats; individual, hand-fed portions of cat food. The campaign launched with film airing online and on TV and was also supported by OOH, print, digital and with an innovative sampling approach – Cat Scanner.
This mobile web app uses cutting-edge in-camera object-detection to detect snobby cats, before sending a voucher for DINE Creamy Treats, reconnecting cats and owners across the country.
Dine Creamy Treats
#Twinning
To get you into the festive spirit the CESAR brand launched their largest ever global campaign to get you #twinning with a matching sweater collection 'Designed by Dogs' for both canines and their owners to enjoy.
To create these customised sweaters, the CESAR brand partnered with MediaMonks and dog behavioural experts to create a 'Doggy Design Studio'. Dogs literally ran, jumped, barked and wagged their way through an agility course that helped them design every element of the sweater, from their bark’s sound wave being stitched onto the sleeves to various icons being picked by the wag of their tail.
Cesar
Cat Rapper
Influencers are like catnip to brands, and this one even more so.
Arm & Hammer celebrated National Cat Day by unveiling a music video in which iAmMoshow, a popular internet musician who describes himself as "The Cat Rapper," delivers a freestyle rap about the brand's cat litter.
Litter box odour is one of the downsides to owning a cat, but iAmMoshow's new song, "Slide," gives Arm & Hammer major props for eliminating odor. Indeed, the rapper says he has five cats and still maintains an odour-free house.
Arm & Hammer
Up to Mischief
For two days, Felix had a dominant media buy-out of the motion screen at Waterloo Station, plus a specially built black-and-white stand on the concourse. A 3D augmented reality Felix the cat was seen on the screen to be walking around the stand and the station, ‘interacting’ with commuters and families. Using the latest digital technology, Felix could react in real time, uniquely, to each individual, meaning no interaction was ever the same.
With over 600,000 people passing through Waterloo in those two days, not only did the experience create personalised Felix content for users to share via hashtag, but it also enabled the team to film it and create online content for social channels.
Felix
Every Dog an Ad
Mars Petcare brand, Puppo has created a bespoke ad for every registered dog in New York City – coming in at over 100,000 – as part of a new campaign developed by Colenso BBDO Auckland.
The personalised nature of the service sparked the campaign from Colenso BBDO, which saw the agency create an algorithm that extracted data from publicly available NYC Dog Licensing Data.
Along with a modular copy and art direction system, it was able to generate a unique ad for every dog in New York City. All dogs are individually addressed by their name and breed and spoke to the health benefits a Puppo diet could address for each breed.
Mars Puppo
Kat Institute of Technology
The Kat Institute of Technology (KIT) is now open for business to answer cat owners' burning questions about their pets.
Whiskas’ digital campaign uses Google search data to answer the most frequently asked questions about cats – in the cutest and most entertaining way.
KIT includes six live action films and 13 animations covering topics from nutrition and care to behaviour. It also spoofs the tech and media industries and the hipsters (or kitsters) who work in them.
Whiskas UK
Donate with a mate
Pedigree is calling on Australian dogs, and their human owners, to donate blood together, helping to meet a shortage of canine blood.
The Donate with a Mate campaign, which was created by Clemenger BBDO, aims to raise awareness of the fact that dogs can give blood and help ease the critical shortage of canine blood in Australia.
Pedigree spread the powerful message that for every dog that donates blood, the lives of three more dogs can be saved.
Pedigree
Season of good dog
Christmas must be a bewildering time for dogs. The humans are celebrating something. But what? In a global holiday campaign from Pedigree, created by Colenso BBDO New Zealand and BBDO New York, a family dog with a healthy ego has no such confusion. He flatly assumes Christmas is all about him.
The campaign also includes an album of holiday carols for dogs on Spotify, as well as limited-edition Season of Good Dog products. This includes paw shaped stockings, park- and slipper-scented wrapping paper, tug-of-war poppers, tennis baubles, singing greeting cards, and "MistleSTIX," a version of mistletoe where owners have to treat any dog that sits under it.
Pedigree
HEALTHCARE
PLANNING DIRTY
Save Lives Pizza Boxes
NJ may not be at the top of the list for registered organ and tissue donors, but it ranks 1st in pizzerias per square mile and love for neighborhood pizza.
To get the word out about organ and tissue donation, NJ Sharing Network created custom pizza boxes that displayed the number of people waiting for donations in the local area with a call-to-action to see the number of people waiting in their town on the #saveNJlives website.
NEW JERSEY SHARING NETWORK
Share the Orange
Breaking Bad star Bryan Cranston calls on the nation to #ShareTheOrange to get people thinking differently about the condition Alzheimer’s.
Bryan's own mother died of Alzheimer's, and getting him to talk about that, as himself, rather than as a character, is a unique skill.
At the centre of the two-minute film which uses a blend of film, stop-motion and CGI animation, is an orange that gradually strips away to demonstrate how the diseases that cause dementia, most commonly Alzheimer’s, physically attack the brain.
Alzheimer's Research U.K.
Know Your Baby Poo
Is it normal for baby poo to look like Dijon mustard? What should you do if your baby's diaper resembles an oil spill? Why is your baby's bottom going off like Crack-atoa?
Obsessed with these questions and more, Anomaly London creative director Matt Roach created Know Your Baby Poo: A Parent's Guide—a Pantone-style swatch wheel illustrating all the deepest, darkest secrets of infant feces.
Penguin Random House
For Your Consideration
"For Your Consideration" billboards are a fixture of the out-of-home ad scene in Los Angeles during Hollywood award season. But if it's medical care that you're considering, rather than movies, Providence Saint Joseph Medical Center would like a word.
The Burbank hospital unveiled a fun city-wide OOH campaign spoofing typical FYC advertising. The billboards pitch Providence Saint Joseph's staff and services with headlines including "Best Ensemble Cast," "Best New Urgent Care," "Best Supporting Role" and "Best New ER".
Providence Saint Joseph Medical Center
Prescribed to Death
A massive wall of pills pays tribute to those who lost their lives to opioid addiction in this unsettling effort from Energy BBDO Chicago, for the National Safety Council.
The "Stop Everyday Killers" public education campaign debuted in Chicago with "Prescribed to Death," a memorial featuring thousands of pills carved with human faces. The pills represent the 22,000 people who died from opioid addiction last year, as well as the lives we continue to lose. Every 24 minutes, the memorial carves yet another face onto another pill, to represent how often a person succumbs to addiction.
National Safety Council
Viva La Vulva
Libresse the taboo breaking brand that dared to normalise periods in 2017 with the #bloodnormal movement released Viva La Vulva in Sweden and Denmark, a bold new campaign that celebrates the vulva in all its beautiful forms and fights against the myths, insecurities and stereotypes that women are subjected to when it comes to their genitals.
With this campaign, Libresse wants to contribute to a more open culture where women can feel proud of what they have, can feel ok about talking about their genitals and can care for them without feeling ashamed.
Libresse (Essity)
The Gut Stuff
Guts have never been more important. But while new research has revealed more about the link between gut health and general wellbeing, the facts are being lost amidst the fads. This campaign seeks to make gut health digestible, simplifying the science by cleverly using balloons.
The Gut Stuff
Blind Interviews
As a way to fight bias or prejudice about physical appearance, McCann Colombia and the integral Eye Rehabilitation Center launched the initiative “Blind Interviews”. A campaign that’s a win for everyone involved as it let’s people with visual disabilities reintegrate the workforce, while helping others to find a job.
This campaign aims to positively transform the recruitment processes of headhunters with a virtuous process incorporating people with visual disabilities into formal jobs and to promote transparent processes free of stereotypes.
Integral visual rehabilitation center
Mike Rowe’s Prostate Exam
According to some studies and internet gurus, the lapse to grab viewer attention has decreased to a mere 5 seconds.
Well, according to Mike Rowe, that’s all the time you need to get a prostate checked. So take your index finger, extended, put it over the mouse and click on this funny psa video, so you can watch Mike Rowe speak to men about the importance of routine exams, whilst getting an exam of his own.
ZERO - The end of prostate cancer
McCann Health created a series of dark and creepy short films, aimed to warn teenagers about the addictive nature and negative consequences of e-cigarettes. In the TV commercials, "vape creatures" that look like human-sized, horror film parasites, ride on the backs of teenagers and ruin their lives.
The number of youths smoking e-cigarettes in the US doubled last year to 3.6 million (2018 National Youth Tobacco Survey) so for this anti-vaping campaign they needed something bold, that resonated with a younger audience.
The Evelyn Lilly Lutz Foundation
Get The Vape Off Your Back
Savor Saver
Chemotherapy is hard, the treatment is strong, invasive, and one of the main secondary effects is that people lose their appetite because food becomes bland, metallic and boring since there’s an impact on the taste buds.
The solution to help patients get stronger in order to fight their battle, comes in a small can, filled with a very special, sugar free candy made of a wild berry that grows in Ecuador that regenerates taste buds, letting patients taste food for up to 60 minutes.
Ministerio de salud pública del Ecuador
This PSA from Prostate Cancer Uk and BBH London, found just the right balance to talk respectfully about a horrible disease that takes a man’s life every 45 minutes whilst highlighting the brilliant, silly, caring, things they do, that we miss when men are lost too early to prostate cancer.
The spot features Hamlet's famous "What a Piece of Work Is Man" soliloquy, recited by stage and screen actor Zoe Wanamaker.
Prostatic Cancer UK
Men, We Are With You
Hope Stems
A giant floral brain art installation made from 9000 carnations was the way that Mccann chooses to portrait opioid addiction, showing that it's a disease and not moral weakness. The campaign looks to shine a light on the topic to reduce the stigma around the disease and encouraging people to seek help.
Over the course of three days, the floral brain, made from 9000 carnations, got slowly “infested” by 200 handmade black paper poppies representing the way opioids attack the brain. After this, people were asked to help remove the stigma by remove one poppy at a time, proving that treatment works and representing the brain’s ability to recover.
Shatterproof
Impossible Operation
Area 23 and Change the Ref have created a board game to draw attention to the medical side of gun violence. An ironic game that you can’t win. Impossible Operation is modeled after real reports of mass shootings.
The physical game has been sent to key members of the Senate and the House of Representatives. Change the Ref asks the general public to visit the site, where they can tweet the game directly to their respective senators and demand a change, restricting access to military-style assault weapons.
Change the ref
#TakeTheTime
Canadians fathers can share up 18 months of parental leave with their partner. Yet only 12% of fathers in English Canada use any of their benefit at all. Some people cannot afford to take leave, but for many others the barrier is social stigma.
On March 17th, new legislation took effect that provided an additional 5 weeks of use-it-or-lose it paternity leave in Canada. The same day, Dove launched the new Dove Men+Care campaign to dispel the stigma and encourage men to #TakeTheTime.
Dove
Maps With Memory
Maps with memory facilitates the search of patients by sending all their personal information together with their Map of the memory photographs, specific physical descriptions and place and time of their loss directly to the Chilean Police, avoiding non-virtuous processes and complying with all the protocols required by them.
In addition, after the confirmation of the police, users are allowed to share all this information through Social Media to expand the search network.
Bupa
Journey to certainty
Three new films from the academic medical institution, known for its high-end, holistic care, strip away the cliches of hospital marketing, like patient testimonials and doctors in lab coats to recognize the emotional journey patients take as they prepare to get a diagnosis. They highlight how answers and hope are to be found at the Mayo Clinic.
The ads aim to underscore Mayo Clinic’s reputation for providing definitive answers and comprehensive care for its patients.
Mayo Clinic
TV SHOWS
PLANNING DIRTY
Desus and Mero
Showtime faced a new challenge this year when they brought hosts Desus Nice and The Kid Mero on as their first ever weekly late night series. For a network known for prestige dramas and quirky comedies how would two dudes from the Bronx fit in? Well, if you focus on catering to D&M’s existing base things should go well - so that’s exactly what they did.
While Showtime did feature them in their Super Bowl spot, any New Yorker will tell you, it's even cooler to be featured on a Subway card. So in order to get that rabid NYC based Bodega-Hive fanbase to follow their faves to their new network Showtime partnered with the MTA for exclusive subway cards featuring their stars to gain some serious clout with the audience they were hoping to bring on board.
SHOWTIME
Big Little Lies
HBO’s hit series “Big Little Lies” returns for its second season on June 9, and to help get the word out, the network partnered with Bloomingdales on an unusual promotion. The retailer has rebranded its iconic shopping bag to feature the name of the show.
It’s an elegant, subtle nod that depicts “Big Little Lies” in Bloomingdales’ minimalist, circular font. The side of the bag touts the partnership: “Bloomingdales x HBO.” It works nicely because of the store and show names' shared "B" and vocabulary: the bags themselves are typically marked by their sizes, featuring copy like "big brown bag" and "little brown bag."
HBO
Real Priests React
The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina isn’t the same Sabrina the Teenage Witch that a lot of people grew up with - it’s way darker and more adult. In order to get that message across and attract the older audience that might be avoiding the title because of it’s kid friendly heritage, Netflix asked real priests to sit down and react to episodes of the show.
Netflix did an excellent job in their selection of the priests as none of them fell into the standard faith based close-minded stereotypes and ultimately delivered a lot of enjoyable commentary on the series.
Netflix
Super Married
Netflix and The Umbrella Academy have played cupid for a New York couple and gave them their dream, Umbrella Academy themed wedding. Nick ‘Ducky’ Vojtek and Katharine Nitschke work together in a comic book store, with Kat falling in love with The Umbrella Academy when it was first released.
The wedding, which was held in New York City’s Bryant Park, was decked out with a sea of black umbrellas, including a 60-foot black umbrella, a parade, and a violin player to help set the mood. Black umbrellas are a recurring motif in the superhero show, and Ellen Page’s character, Vanya Hargreeves, plays the violin.
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Netflix
Saving Lucifer
The internet has tried to save many shows that get cancelled, for the most part unsuccessfully, but one show that bucked that trend was Lucifer. After getting cancelled on Fox #SaveLucifer was created by fans and generated millions of tweets which was more than enough to get Netflix’s attention.
After months of speculation whether or not their show would be saved and how it would come to life on the streaming giant’s platform, Netflix released a lovely meta video with the cast reassuring fans that not only were they happy with the change but that viewers would also love what was to come.
Netflix
Streaming in Space
In what was thankfully a treat rather than ominous foreshadowing, Netflix beamed up the premiere episode of its upcoming Lost in Space reboot to astronauts aboard the International Space Station. While it’s not quite a Tesla roaring through low orbit, it’s a welcome surprise considering the astronauts were the first members of the public to see any footage of the reboot of Erwin Allen’s classic sci-fi series from the 1960s.
According to Netflix, the streaming service handed the goods over to NASA, and managed to get a decent stream up to the International Space Station through technology far more advanced than my apartment’s spotty Wi-Fi. There are currently six men stationed on the research platform, three from the United States.
Netflix
Television
ITV just released an anthemic "More than TV" film that is very pro-television indeed—and not just pro-ITV, though clearly that's the focus. "This is television," Sir Trevor McDonald, the ITV newsman, intones at the outset, in footage from 1971. "But look closer. Past the pixels."
The piece goes on to show Brits watching ITV through the decades, going back to the '60s—and seeing compelling, culture-shifting content in both its entertainment shows and its news and documentaries. And then the piece goes further and suggests television generally is a force for social good—that a commitment to diversity and inclusion on the screen helps foster those same values off the screen, too.
ITV
Heated Debate
British television personality Piers Morgan spews plenty of hot air. Now, his network employer, ITV, has captured his essence in an apt new product—a hairdryer called the Morgan 3000.
The hair dryer was made by London agency Uncommon and debuted Monday on Good Morning Britain, where Morgan immediately used it to blow hot air in co-host Susanna Reid's face.
ITV
Great Characters
Politics aside, this isn't a bad time to be living in. To start, the TV is great; we're spoiled with epic storytelling.
But that also raises the stakes for stories we're willing to spend time on. Why settle for a mediocre rerun of Friends when Sex Education's just come out, all shiny and ready to binge-watch? We can afford to discriminate in ways that would've been unimaginable 10 years ago.
With this in mind, British network ITV has released "Great Characters Make Great Drama," a campaign that reinforces its "More Than TV" brand positioning. Conceived by Uncommon Creative Studio, the work features two ads, "The Patriarch" and "The Guvnor." Each underlines the same idea, all stories are too short for bad characters through the prism of familiar archetypes.
ITV
Happy Mother’s Day
Whether you've raised dragons, utter psychopaths or something in between, Mother's Day is your day, moms of HBO!
The network, with help from Wieden + Kennedy New York, has unveiled a delightful series of Mother's Day cards featuring famous moms, nurturing and not so nurturing from five of its popular shows (and one of them isn't even a mom.)
The six cards were designed by five different illustrators, Ignasi Monreal did two for Game of Thrones. All of them feature witty greetings inside that riff off the character's history.
Game of Thrones
Mob Nicknames
There's been a lot of adoring media attention around the 20th anniversary of The Sopranos. On the actual anniversary of the first episodes premiere HBO joined the celebrations with an irresistible Twitter game where they handed out Sopranos nicknames to celebrities, journalists, brands and other high-profile figures who asked for them.
With help from agency Engine Content, the network asked for people's first names, then put together mobster-sounding monikers for them. It quickly caught fire, with lots of actors and brands requesting their own throughout the day and into the evening.
HBO
Bleed For The Throne
HBO and the American Red Cross forged an alliance, challenging fans and donors to show their bravery and valor by bleeding #ForTheThrone during SXSW 2019.
The first three days of the blood drive included a theatrical setting with over 80 actors and musicians dressed in Game of Throne costumes recreating a Westeros world in Austin.
Many answered the call with devotion, joining the army of the living. Since the launch of the campaign, the number of new donors has increased by over 40% and the American Red Cross is on track to collect over 15,000 pints of blood on the first day of nationwide drives.
AMERICAN RED CROSS & GAME OF THRONES
Our Planet Soundtrack
Marketing and product materials created around a hugely anticipated environmental film are themselves likely to be scrutinized for how good they are for the planet.
With Netflix's documentary Our Planet, the Decca Records soundtrack more than addresses this issue. The CD version of the album (yes, CDs are still a thing) use eco-friendly packaging made from algae and FSC fibers, a sustainable paper product.
Netflix
Great Shows Stay With You
Binge-watching TV shows on Amazon Prime Video could inspire you to take action in real life. Swelling-soundtrack, slow-motion, cinematic action. You might even start to behave like your favorite series characters.
Droga5 London is back with the latest instalment of its ‘great shows stay with you’ campaign, positing that binge-watching Amazon offerings can affect your mundane daily life.
Amazon Prime Video
Sounds of Future Ocean
For World Water Day National Geographic Latin America has created "Sounds of Future Ocean," an album of ocean sounds made entirely with plastic materials taken from the sea.
The four-track album is available on Spotify and other streaming platforms.
"Each track represents an ecosystem affected by plastic—beaches, open sea, glaciers and deep ocean," NatGeo says. "A final message at the end of every song explains which plastic material was used to create the songs and invites people to commit to the planet, reduce single-use plastic and take the pledge with National Geographic's 'Planet or Plastic?' campaign."
National Geographic Latin America
Claustrophobic Cinema
To entice people away from living room TV viewing experiences and promote the Nordic premiere of the sci-fi adaption Aniara, in which humanity is forced to escape from the Earth via spaceship, Sweden's Gothenburg Film Festival created the "world's most claustrophobic" cinema where viewers could watch the film trapped alone in a sarcophagus and isolated from the outside world.
People could sign up online for the chance to be encased in the tombs, which measured 210 cm long and 60 cm wide. They had air vents in their bases and were equipped with built-in screens and speakers. Each casket was constantly monitored and equipped with panic buttons, just in case the extreme viewing conditions were too much for the viewer.
Goteborg Film Festival
Westworld: The Maze
To promote their hit series, Westworld, HBO created ‘The Maze’ - an Amazon Alexa powered voice game in which players take on the role of a park host who, like Maeve, Akecheta, and Dolores, need to power through their programming to arrive at the center of the titular Maze and achieve consciousness.
Users are guided through three levels of gameplay with over 60 storylines and 400 unique choices riddled with questions about the Westworld universe for more than two potential hours of unique gameplay. In true Westworld fashion, the journey to the center of the Maze is difficult where the right right choices end in enlightenment but the wrong choices result in death. Clues are scattered throughout the experience for superfans to discover.
HBO
BANKING
PLANNING DIRTY
The M-Word
The campaign follows YouGov research that found money is a more sensitive subject for families than politics, religion or sex, yet one in three people have reported money-related stress and anxiety within the past month.
In the ad, various families awkwardly talk about an unnamed subject, with caveats such as "we prefer to keep it private". It ends on the line: "It isn’t easy talking about money, but it is important."
Lloyds Bank
The Story of Zohra
Zohra’s musicians are the first women in their families, communities and country to study music in over 30 years. They come from provinces all across Afghanistan to live in Kabul and study at the Afghanistan National Institute of Music.
Deeply inspired by Zohra’s story, the World Economic Forum offered to be a platform for the ensemble to write the next chapter in its incredible story, and so it invited Zohra to perform at the Annual Meeting in Davos.
Across the journey, Zohra’s musicians played in several stages across Europe and inspired the world through music and leadership.
WORLD ECONOMIC FORUM
Audition for a Career
Citadel wanted to develop a "talent audition" for the best and brightest students who are interested in data science.
While the Data Open event strategy focused on cultivating exciting and meaningful competition, the social media strategy focused on giving the students more of an opportunity to connect to one another.
The team also built a Facebook Chatbot, an innovative platform that garnered significant engagement with potential recruits, through a engaging and challenging way.
CITADEL
XOOMLOL
Filipino immigrants in the US are the lifelines of their families, and so, it is important that money is sent with no delays.
We wanted them to realize the hassles of delay caused by other money transfer services and the relief to it that is Xoom.
Xoom LOL caused laughter and singing from start to finish. Banking on Filipinos' unwavering love for humor and music, Xoom LOL made fun of the hassle they go through when sending money through YouTuber Mikey Bustos's unbranded parodies.
XOOM
Inconvenience Stores
Swann Insurance needed to re-frame and reposition the role of its brand in the hearts and minds of Aussie motorcyclists by creating a deep, emotional connection.
The subculture that exists around the motorcycle community across the world is iconic. Identity mattered; and for any brand to gain respect and be welcomed into this community, it had to demonstrate it. This became our strategic starting point.
They created inconvenience stores in the middle of nowhere, but at the end of some of Australia's most epic rides, giving riders a reason to ride and demonstrating to motorcyclists that it understands their need to feel free on the open road.
SWANN INSURANCE
Between the Balance Sheets
Capital One and Upworthy wanted to create a dynamic, informative and realistic campaign. The 4-part series was created to tell authentic stories, told across generations about the importance of four key topics – credit, debt, savings and big purchases.
The campaign did not want to educate or provide financial advice, but rather to create dialogue that would encourage families to be more open and expressive about conversations around money and financial literacy.
CAPITAL ONE & UPWORTHY
Smartdogs
GEICO's 'Smartdogs' are 100 percent on task to teach drivers about distracted driving. See for yourself.
If they could speak, these Smartdogs would tell people: turn on the 'Do Not Disturb While Driving' feature on your phone while you're on the road.
The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) says only one in five drivers set the 'Do Not Disturb While Driving' mode on their smartphones. And because 25 percent of vehicle crashes have to do with cell phones, the National Safety Council indicates there's an urgent need for drivers to keep their hands on the wheel and not on their phones.
GEICO Insurance
Art Gap
On International Women’s Day and with March being the Women’s History Month, Standard Chartered Bank UAE pledged that it would raise awareness about gender pay inequality and one example of this is in the world of art.
Held during the World Art Dubai at the Dubai World Trade Centre from 3rd to 6th April 2019, the ‘Art Gap’ exhibition aims to add local voices to the global conversation. According to the 2017 Gender Bias in Art study, titled "Is gender in the eye of the beholder?" and published by University of Oxford: art work by women sells for 47.6% less than work by men.
Standard Chartered Bank
Reusable Billboard
Alpha Inversiones, a brokerage firm that understands that investments can change the future of a person or a country, decided to apply its philosophy by converting its outdoor advertising into more than 1,000 reusable bags. The bags display the message, "This Bag was Once a Billboard" and now circulate in some retail outlets.
At the same time, it requested by means of its social networks that its followers tag other brands prompting them to donate their billboards and thus continue to make bags to establish a new culture with habits of recycling and reuse.
Alpha Inversiones
Abusive Teller Machine
As part of AIB’s Group Advocacy initiative, which seeks to support customers experiencing a range of issues, they discovered that over 198,000 Irish women (1 in 10 over 15) are financially abused by their partners at any given time.
Abuse is a traumatic experience, so we wanted to put people in the shoes of a financial abuse victim (in a safe and controlled way) to give them a sense of the realities faced by these women on a daily basis. To achieve that, we took the most convenient interaction people have with money – withdrawing it from an ATM – and completely subverted that experience.
Allied Irish Bank
The Rembrandt Tutorials
At Amsterdam’s most famous museum, the Rijksmuseum, the voice of Rembrandt was unveiled. A group of experts, working together with ING Bank, has used voice technology, research and data to recreate the painting techniques, personality, language and voice of the Dutch master.
The results are featured in ‘The Rembrandt Tutorials’, as narrated by the famous painter ‘himself’: spoken in his own words, using his original 17th century language, manner of speech and the reconstructed sound his own voice. On the 350th anniversary of his death Rembrandt is teaching people to paint again.
ING
Banker Robbers
Axos Bank imagines bankers committing the crimes with their own hands, rather than legal loopholes. Tellers don ski masks and demand customers hand over the valuables they were about to deposit. The inept thieves make a plodding getaway with their ill-gotten goods, before circling back around the branch to stick the money in the bank’s coffers.
Axos Bank
The Check Out Suite
As part of their commitment to increase digital health among youths and families, insurance company Länsförsäkringar has launched The Check Out Suite – the world’s first hotel room where the price is determined by how much time you spend online. The hotel room, located at Hotel Bellora in Gothenburg, Sweden, rewards visitors for staying away from their screens, allowing families to spend time with each other instead of their screens.
Länsförsäkringar
That New Home Feel
Halifax is relaunching its brand with an updated logo and visual identity, as well as a new marketing campaign, as it looks to make the brand more contemporary and relevant amid growing competition from fintech companies.
The TV spot, created by adam&eveDDB, dramatises and celebrates the feeling of excitement that comes with owning a new home. It shows a slinky moving into a new house with its owner and its experience of exploring new rooms.
Halifax
Partner with Investec
The world as we know it has changed, and continues to change - the world of business, banking and investment is no exception. There is no denying that the competition in traditional banking channels has turned up a notch, led primarily through innovation. But there is also no denying that many of the challenges facing clients are unique to this day and age and the rulebook has yet to be written on how to solve them.
Investec Bank’s understanding of the zeitgeist and its implications has played a pivotal role in the launch of its new brand campaign.
Investec
B2B
PLANNING DIRTY
Partners Elevator
Well known for its well-oiled partner engagement programmes consisting of multi-channel communication pieces, Google promoted their Google Partners Elevator through a direct mail piece landing on one's desk, not their inbox.
The packet featured a rocket to build and a 3D printed sculpture – proving that engaging B2B mailings with personalised and innovative content still have a place in today’s digital world.
Supersmart Security
Rather than investing in blog posts and infographics, Cisco created the SuperSmart Security graphic novel.
Through the graphic novel, Cisco was able to tell their audience the fact that security is rapidly changing and that there’s a need for better security without appearing to be alarmist.
Available in multiple languages, the graphic novel is able to explain more complex tech concepts to those who are outside of the tech industry, creating an easily digested document that is very likely to be shared.
CISCO
Women-Owned
To celebrate women’s history month, US-based search service and review forum Yelp partnered with designer and creator of the Female Founder Collective, Rebecca Minkoff, to launch a ‘women-owned business’ attribute on its site.
The feature works to let users know which local businesses are owned by women as part of the company’s efforts to support women entrepreneurs. The Female Founder Collective is a network of women-led businesses.
YELP
#WhyDontYou
On the occasion of World Donor Day, BOLD, a transgender modeling agency launched a campaign titled, #whydontyou where in Rudrani Chettri, transgender model and Founder of BOLD asked India a question – why don't you?
The brief was to highlight the plight of LGBT community versus the need and demand of Blood in the country.
As a part of the campaign, a microsite www.whydontyou.in was created wherein a donor can register and donate blood with a Mumbai based blood donation bank, Triumph Blood Donation.
BOLD
Rising
The Ad Council created a short film about a Muslim family and their diverse neighbors. Proving the power of storytelling, the film has been picked up by Showtime and Amazon Prime Video as well as The EW Network as part of their content programming.
The 11-minute film has been watched over 11 million times in its first month.
THE AD COUNCIL
Understand Me
Listening service for the under 20 crowd, Childline, wanted to spread the word among children from black, asian and minority backgrounds (BAME) that the service was for them, as the UK experienced a spike in faith-based and racist bullying.
They teamed up with grime publishing house SBTV, where 4 artists created videos on the bullying they faced, and recommended childline. SBTV advertised the videos on its own channels, to the audience Childline wanted to reach, in a format accessible to them.
Following the campaign, Childline experienced a 22% increase in contact from BAME young people.
CHILDLINE
Good News Happening Right Now
People are less likely to donate to charity if they perceive the problem to be unsolvable: Cancer Research UK decided to flip the narrative surrounding cancer, and created a month-long editorial partnership across national and regional titles in the UK focusing on survival stories and groundbreaking treatments.
Overall, the campaign reached 11 million people, and 85% of readers surveyed felt more positively towards the CRUK brand.
CANCER RESEARCH UK
Hey World
Freelancing platform Upwork placed public call outs to show how entrepreneurs, small businesses and large enterprises can get more work done with a freelancer.
Upwork targeted high profile business people, politicians and pop culture; Dwayne Johnson was offered help with his 2020 Presidential campaign. President Trump was offered help with his social media strategy.
Humourous and visually striking campaign, the campaign was the first multi-city execution for Upwork.
Upwork
Live Page Fights
Unbounce proved that conversion rate optimisation could be entertaining with its Live Page Fights video campaign.
Leading content marketers went head to head to de-construct ten landing pages in each of the live video eps.
More than 200 marketers submitted their landing pages for the smack down. Viewers selected the ultimate winner who received free consultation and services from UnBounce.
UNBOUNCE
Yield Mystery
A provider of phosphate products to the agricultural sector dramatised the challenge facing it’s customers via an audio play.
The Great Yield Mystery podcast told the story of a Minnesota farmer who was experiencing poor yield. The series explored a number of potential issues faced by the farmer and invited listeners to discover clues to solve the mystery.
The campaign helped to demystify key challenges for the farming community and drove engagement by making listeners part of the solution.
THE MOSAIC COMPANY
Ask The Cio-Cloud
It can be lonely at the top. Google built the world’s smartest applications for IT professionals who were too afraid to ask simple questions about the cloud.
Google created personalised versions of their virtual assistant and sent them to more than 3,500 IT decision makers as a prospecting tool.
The campaign achieved a response rate of 16% and returned a sales figure of 4:1.
NOT-FOR-PROFIT
PLANNING DIRTY
Thisables
Two disability charities, Milbat and Access Israel, have teamed up with IKEA Israel to create a series of add-ons to make its products more user-friendly for disabled people.
Together they developed 12 different hacks for some of its most popular products, such as a ‘mega switch’ which slides over the base of a Ranarp Lamp, making it easier to turn on and off for people with disabilities.
Customers can download and 3D print any of the add-ons from the ThisAbles site, as shown in the campaign’s demo video.
MILBAT, ACCESS ISRAEL & IKEA ISRAEL
Flower Of Life
How can you fight cervical cancer in the Amazon forest, where the incidence of the disease is three times the average of the rest of Brazil?
�The answer: a flower that blossoms once a year to remind Amazonian women to have their annual gynecological exams. The Flower of Life is a message that works in a region of low literacy rate, deep in the forest, with no roads and no cell signal, where leaflets and other media solutions are never enough to impact the audience.
1 Million women were reached by the campaign, which involved 3,000 public health agents distributing 5,000 flowers. It transformed prevention into a local culture.
HERMES PARDINI LABORATORIES & PARA STATE DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH
Fonts For Freedom
Worldwide, 140 media organisations were censored or closed in 2018 alone. Reporters Without Borders reconstructed the house fonts of nine newspapers banned by governments with a track record of suppressing freedom of press from all over the world.
The fonts were then given to major German newspapers. They used the Fonts for Freedom (FFF) instead of their house typeface - in print and online. This way, every single paper became a symbol of press freedom and brought banned newspapers back into public focus. OOH ads with FFF boosted awareness and confronted the enemies of free press with the newspapers they had banned.
REPORTERS WITHOUT BORDERS GERMANY
Insta Novels
The New York Public Library turned its Stories feature into a place to host actual stories; Insta Novels.
This feature included classic works like Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland, formatted for the mobile space with illustrations and subtle interactions throughout to enhance the reading experience.
The Insta Novels turned the NYPL’s instagram account in a digital bookshelf and gave millions access to great literature. The campaign generated 13,000 new followers in the first 24hrs and more importantly books were in the hands of young readers.
NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY
Rang-Tan
The film tells the story of Rang-tan, an endearingly rendered orangutan who loses his home due to palm oil’s impact on the rainforest and now lives in a girl’s bedroom.
The film was originally produced for Greenpeace, but the film was later acquired by the supermarket chain Iceland Foods, who was keen to align with its social messaging. However, the Iceland ad was taken off the air for being ‘too political’. The ban has turned “Rang-tan” into a phenomenal online hit, being viewed more than 35 million times online and covered extensively in international news outlets. Making the unusual collaboration of Greenpeace and the supermarket a tremendous success.
GREENPEACE & ICELAND FOODS
Perspectives
This unique digital storytelling tool sheds a different light on cyberbullying.
The Argentina-based telecommunications company Movistar developed software capable of switching between two parallel timelines through an interactive mobile video that allows viewers to experience the two sides of cyberbullying simultaneously, just by rotating their phones.
Movistar worked together with the National Institute against Discrimination, Xenophobia and Racism (INADI) to help teens who are being cyberbullied.
INADI & MOVISTAR
Behind The Numbers
This thought-provoking campaign uses real-time data to create a unique series of radio ads you would rather not want to hear.
Parents of Road Victims wanted to highlight that every death is one too many, and every person is someone's child.
The year-long campaign, was triggered by real-time national police data, so that every time someone was reported killed in traffic, a pre-recorded radio spot with an updated number of victims aired instantly across five different radio channels simultaneously. Each spot was recorded by real-life parents of road victims.
PARENTS OF ROAD VICTIMS
Get The Flow
5% of all Dutch children stutter, and as a result, many of them become victims of bullying. This causes low self-esteem. Therefore, they choose to communicate via their mobile phone, rather than practise their speech in public.
Vodafone and the Dutch Stutter association were keen to prove that mobile technology really can make a difference by giving children who stutter a chance to practise their speech in a fun but effective way – through rap. The app allows users to connect with other children who stutter, practise together and share their tracks, boosting their confidence in the process.
⅔ children in The Netherlands who stutter have used and loved the app, and it is now used as an official stutter therapy.
THE DUTCH STUTTER ASSOCIATION & VODAFONE
My Line
My Line used existing technology in a simple and meaningful way for those without internet in rural areas.
It gives people in Colombia the ability to call a local number to access Google Assistant and get the information they need read back to them in a matter of moments
MINISTRY OF COMMUNICATIONS AND INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY COLOMBIA
A Moment of Dyslexia
In an awareness-raising campaign to encourage dyslexic-friendly workplaces, ‘A Moment of Dyslexia’ saw dynamic long-form text appear on displays in two key locations.
Facial-detection technology measured when people stopped to read the text so that the longer people looked, the more jumbled the words and letters became, to reflect what it’s like living with dyslexia. Providing an experience of visual distraction, which affects many dyslexic people, can transform people’s appreciation of what it means to be dyslexic.
BRITISH DYSLEXIA ASSOCIATION
Coral Crafters
The Minecraft ‘Update Aquatic’ offers players new characters and underwater elements, such as treasures, shipwrecks and colourful coral reefs. But while the virtual environment of Minecraft will soon be filled with exciting sea creatures, our real-life oceans are under threat.
To promote the launch of Update Aquatic and make a positive difference in the real world, Minecraft partnered with NGO The Nature Conservancy to help preserve the coral reefs. The Coral Crafters project recreated six designs from the game as sculptures that were anchored to the sea floor off the coast of Cozumel, Mexico. Minecraft has also launched a Skin Pack for the game, with proceeds going to The Nature Conservancy.
THE NATURE CONSERVANCY & MINECRAFT
Sound of Sea
French freediver Guillaume Néry tweeted a weird sound from one of his dives and asked people to help him identify it. It sounded like a cross between whalesong and too many ghosts in the same haunted house.
Turns out it was part of a campaign by Sea Shepherd, the marine conservation organization—something Néry revealed 24 hours later.
Created by TBWA\Paris, "Sound of Sea" is composed of 30 different creatures in the throes of human-imposed death. A whale crying out as it's harpooned. Dolphins caught in nets. Panicked fish trapped in a trawler's net. In other words, it's an audible scrapbook of trauma, amplified and juxtaposed to produce an SOS.
Sea Shepherd
BeeSexual
Created by BETC Paris—which keeps bees, and whose logo once sported a bee—the campaign rallies the power of porn stars to save our buzzing buddies … sort of like Captain Planet and the Planeteers, except you've seen them all naked.
"Beesexual" consists of a bunch of bee pollination videos, revisited with the voices of Abella Danger, Will Pounder, Kira Noir, Domino Presley and more, the better to illustrate nature's kinky boots-knocking.
The videos will be hosted on a dedicated Pornhub channel from today onward. For each view, Pornhub will donate funds to organizations like Operation Honey Bee and The Center for Honeybee Research.
Porn Hub
RETAIL
PLANNING DIRTY
Fresh Prints
Aldi ‘Fresh Prints’, one of Spain’s three Gold Lion-winning campaigns at Cannes Lions 2018, is a brilliant demonstration of how creativity and media can work in harmony.
The brief emerged from the insight that many consumers didn’t know that Aldi supermarkets stocked fresh produce. To challenge this misconception, McCann Spain came up with a very modern idea for a traditional print campaign. To highlight the freshness of Aldi’s products, they made sure the print executions were fresh too - the ads on the right-hand page of the newspaper would feature the news from that same edition that appeared on the left-hand page.
ALDI
Built-in Pins
Pinworthy rooms often intimidate instead of inspire. Pinners often think, “there’s no way I’m going to be able to pull of something like that”.
So, The Home Depot sought to give people confidence to build their own pinworthy rooms, by creating Built-In Pins; the first ever rooms built inside of a Pinterest pin.
With dedication to the craft, The Home Depot built everything start to finish, to the exact specs of a single Pinterest pin.
For the first time, people could see a room worthy of a pin built from scratch without leaving the inspiration they started with.
THE HOME DEPOT
After Hours
CB2 (a furniture brand) launched After Hours, a late night live music in-store series, to get millennial shoppers to linger and spend time within their a select handful of store locations across the U.S.
Combining interiors with music meant further positioning the CB2 as a lifestyle brand, not just a furniture store.
To scale up the effort, CB2 released video and podcast content featuring interviews with the music artists while lounging on CB2 product.
CB2
Appie Today
Albert Heijn is the leading and loved supermarket chain in The Netherlands that is built on a decade of iconic mass advertising. But how do you reach a new under-40 “Netflix generation” that skips TV and ads? They did it with a radically different concept, Appie Today. The world's first social broadcast channel by a supermarket chain that delivers fresh daily content our audience wants to see and be a part of.
Albert Heijn
Pee on This Ad
IKEA reinvented the old, humble print ad by transforming it into none other than an at-home pregnancy test.
Users were invited to pee on the ad, and if you’re expecting, a discounted price for an IKEA crib would appear under the original price.
Reinforces IKEA’s positioning as a brand that celebrates ‘Where Life Happens’ by shining a light on a major life milestone.
IKEA
Prices That Take You Back
To mark their centenary year Tesco launched a campaign to show customers, who may be feeling the post-Christmas pinch, that they’ve offered good value for 100 years
The nostalgic ads featured throwback talent like Mr Blobby and Challenge Anneka to share the nostalgic food items Brits love, all set to to the iconic 1978 hit ‘Remember’, by Earth, Wind and Fire.
Tesco saw an uplift in sales - selling 19.8M grams of Cathedral City Cheese, and 3 weeks’ worth of fish fingers in a day.
Tesco, UK
Guerilla Posters
Lidl has embarked on a guerilla poster campaign to take a swipe at rival retailers and position itself as a cheaper alternative to Waitrose and M&S.
TBWA created a series of OOH ads that showed the familiar creative from the likes of M&S and Waitrose overlaid with an 'ad' from Lidl promoting its cheaper prices near the rivals' stores. The retailer spotlighted the price differences between popular Christmas products..
Another brilliant execution from Lidl, which seems to exist just to take the piss out of its competitors.
Lidl
It’s a Lidl Bit Funny
John Lewis's much-anticipated Christmas 2018 ad told the story of Sir Elton John’s first piano – telling us that to him, it was ‘more than just a gift’.
Brands were quick to parody, undermine or hijack the campaign on social media but Lidl’s response was from another planet - “Just because you don’t have £872 to spend on a piano, doesn’t mean you can’t be the next Elton.”
Knockout punch from Lidl. Sorry John Lewis.
Lidl
Eat Them To Defeat Them
This campaign aims to get kids eating healthily but without getting all po-faced about it. Instead, we see kids go to war with vegetables, in order to ‘eat them to defeat them’.
The ad is funded by a coalition of supermarkets, including Aldi, Asda, Co-op, Iceland, Lidl, M&S, Morrison, Ocado, Sainsbury’s, Tesco and Waitrose.
VegPower Fund x UK Supermarkets
Food In The Nude
People are more likely to buy fruit and vegetables that aren't wrapped in plastic. Since New Zealand supermarket chain New World stopped wrapping fruit and veggies in plastic as part of its 'food in the nude' campaign, sales of some vegetables have increased by 300%.
New World owner Foodstuffs has committed to making packaging 100% reusable, recyclable or compostable by 2025. It has already switched to recyclable food trays and is trailing a BYO container scheme for meat and seafood purchases. These initiatives have boosted vegetable sales and helped reduce plastic pollution.
New World
Old Milk
Swedish grocery chain Coop have decided their brand-new perfume should smell like off-milk. This unique fragrance is the product of Coop's larger environmental push to reduce food waste. By producing an off-milk fragrance, Coop are urging consumers to rely on their sense of taste and smell rather than expiration dates.
The brand is very open about their commitment to the planet and sustainable living. This new fragrance marks their efforts to bring their values directly to their customers. And all this via a quite funny spot.
Coop
Costupper
The “Costupper” store in London has been opened by remain campaigner’s People’s Vote, who claim on average households will be paying an additional £546 per year for goods due to a fall in sterling.
The stores shelves were stacked high with parody items such as ‘Green Giant Prices’ sweetcorn and ‘I Can’t Believe the Price of this Butter’ margarine.
The agenda of People's Vote is to push a second referendum on Brexit and that’s a great way to make people smile but at the same time cut through the noise and pass a serious message.
People’s Vote
The Big Night
The 'The Big Night' campaign brought together 59 children from across the UK to perform a real show for their parents. The sweet film tells the story of a little girl dressed as the North Star who overcomes her nerves to deliver an uplifting performance as the stage explodes into action around her.
However, it was 'plug boy' that truly stole the show, with some fans saying his 2-second stunt was better than John Lewis' £7m Elton John-fronted seasonal effort.
Sainsbury's capitalised on the buzz, affectionately terming the Rocketman rival 'Socketman', 'plug kid' and 'plug boy'.
Sainsbury’s
#HowBoldAreYou
The Chico's #HowBoldAreYou campaign sought to bury the tired stereotype that women should be ashamed of their age. To do so, Chico's enlisted best-selling author, advocate and entrepreneur Lee Woodruff, who encouraged women to proudly and publicly embrace their years though an age-positive video activation and social media campaign.
Chico’s then extended their message with an innovative social media campaign that utilized a Chatbot to enable women to proudly show off their age themselves by adding Bold frames to their profile pictures on Facebook, spreading the campaign message to millions more.
Chico’s
AUTOMOTIVE
PLANNING DIRTY
The Sand Ad
This Volkswagen brand activation was created to take part during the 60 busiest days of summer in the cities of Pinamar and Carilo on the coast of Argentina.
These are the two most popular and crowded beaches in Argentina, where Amarok’s target market gathers there to spent their summer holidays. These are two cities with very high standards and have the peculiarity of having sand built streets.
This is the best terrain to launch a new brand building action for a 4x4 Pickup.
Volkswagen
Let There be Xenon
This advertisement from Mini should easily spark ideas for festival creators — Mini Cooper’s “Let There Be Xenon” makes brilliant use of lights in its billboard to push the boundaries of innovation/communication.
This particular project won a Gold at the Obies and Outdoor Lion at Cannes.
MINI
Bertha Benz
Mercedes-Benz’ global brand film celebrates the confidence and vision of Bertha Benz - Carl Benz’ business partner and wife - who was instrumental in the company’s founding.
Released in honour of International Women’s Day (8 March), the film tells the story of the world’s first long distance drive in a car from Mannheim to Pforzheim, Germany in 1888. Early one morning, Bertha took her two sons out for the twelve hour, 106 km / 65 mile trip. She understood the potential of her husband’s invention, and was determined to prove it worked at a time when people were skeptical of this new technology.
Mercedes
My First INFINITI Ad
In Dubai, 83% of the population is composed of expats. Since social recognition is an important factor when deciding to buy a luxury item, that can be a problem for selling a car like INFINITI.
One solution is to do a simple intervention at the showroom and offer a deal to possible customers. If they bought the cars, a press ad was published in their hometowns, sharing the good news with family and friends.
An old-fashioned press campaign was used to convince someone to buy a car thousands of miles away from where it was published.
Infiniti
World’s Longest Banner
Recognizing that electric vehicle range anxiety is still very much an issue in consumers’ minds, Chevrolet created the first-ever 520 km - long banner. The brand used innovative Android-based technologies to demonstrate the Bolt EV’s long-range capabilities.
Converting kilometers into pixels – 1,965,379,091 pixels to be exact – Chevrolet designed a mobile experience that challenged Android users to swipe and drive their virtual Bolt EV down a 520 km - long scrolling banner until they reached the finish line.
Chevrolet Bolt EV
The Elevator
Acting as a bellhop in a magical elevator, Jason Bateman transports a car-shopping couple down through a whole host of unpleasant activities.
With more than 36 million views on YouTube alone, Hyundai’s Super Bowl ad is currently one of the most watched Super Bowl commercials on the platform.
In addition, “The Elevator” was one of the most talked about car commercials in the Super Bowl with over 18,690 social media mentions.
Hyundai
The E.V.A. Initiative
Women are more likely to get injured in a car crash. Partly because male crash test dummies are the standard.
But at Volvo Cars, they have collected crash data for more than 40 years to protect all people — regardless of size, gender, or body shape. This has taught them a lot and has made their cars safer every year.
To improve gender equality in all cars, Volvo are now sharing their research with the rest of the car industry. They hope this will lead to safer cars for everyone.
Volvo
The Score
Classical composer Riopy swaps pianos for cars, and gets in the driving seat to play the longest musical score in the world, with his 'precision instrument' - the new Peugeot 508.
Keeping the pleasure of driving at the heart of Peugeot's strategy, the campaign, created by BETC Paris, sees the car brand valorize the technical fineness of its cars through an artistic performance.
Peugeot
Takumi Craftsmen 60,000
In the West it’s often considered that it takes 10,000 hours of study for the average person to become an expert in their subject. But in Japan you’re not considered a master of your craft until you’ve spent 60,000 hours refining your skills. That’s the equivalent of working 8 hours a day, 250 -days a year for 30 years.
A fascinating documentary unveils the world of the Takumi – the highest level of artisan in Japan. The visually-stunning character-driven portrait of Clay Jeter has been reinvented for luxury automotive brand Lexus.
Lexus
Project Free
In a motorcycle industry that's strapped for bike sales, Harley-Davidson has turned to neuroscience to better understand riders.
Motorcyclists have always said there’s no better prescription for stress than riding a bike, even for a short time, as you lean your body into the wind and forget about everything else.
Now, a study from the Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior, at the University of California, Los Angeles, seems to confirm that.
LINK
Harley-Davidson
Synchronised Swim
Audi has swapped asphalt for water in its latest TV campaign, which sees a fleet of vehicles getting their wheels wet in a swimming pool to demonstrate their performance capabilities.
Devised by BBH London, the ambitious creative saw a dedicated pool custom built for the shoot which sees the Audi A1 and Audi A7 traverse the water in a ballet of timing, skill and control.
Audi
Feel The View
Ford developed an innovative technology called “Feel The View” that uses vibrations in a vehicle’s side glass to give the visually impaired a ‘view’ of what’s outside.
The novel device uses a built-in external-facing camera which takes a photograph of the view and converts the image into a grayscale image. Those various shades of gray are then translated into vibrations of varying intensity that can be felt by a person's finger on the window itself, affording an almost Braille-like view of the surrounding topography. At the same time, a vocal assistant connected to the Ford car's audio system helps contextualize the image with a description.
Ford
FASHION
PLANNING DIRTY
Gucci Art Walls
Gucci continues to stretch their comfort zone by stepping out of the pages of magazines and onto the walls of iconic buildings globally.
The Gucci Art Walls feature gigantic murals of the latest campaign collections and serve as beautiful and iconic billboards routinely updated with each collection.
The sites are located in New York, Milan, Hong Kong and London and bring the life of the brand into the cities.
Gucci
#EarthDayPetition
To celebrate Earth Day and help it gain recognition as a national holiday, North Face closed over 100 retail locations as well as its corporate office on Monday, April 22.
The goal of this campaign was to encourage people to honor the Earth, engage with one another in real life, and move online activities into the analog world. Social media content drove people to donate to a global Change.org campaign and join various events around the world.
The campaign ran parallel to a recent product launch of the Bottle Source Collection, made of 384,000 pounds of recycled plastic bottles from national park waste streams.
NORTH FACE
#ShowUs
Dove partnered with Getty Images and Girlgaze to call on the media and advertising industries to get “real” in the way they depict women.
The centerpiece of the campaign is a stock photo collection of women that are unretouched and unfiltered. More than that, the women in the photos created their own search descriptions and tafs.
DAVE
Art of The Lip
Chinese women tend to use only an average of 3 to 4 shades of lipstick, and M.A.C. wanted them to expand their color pallette.
Thus, the brand recreated their mall shopping experience online by partnering with Alibaba to develop an ecommerce experiential interface that enabled women to preview swatches.
They also created a socially-driven color inspiration campaign.
M.A.C.
Ad For Men
During International Women’s Month, the brand tapped into the issue of gender equality in the workplace.
To get their message across, they directed the ads to men using charts and graphs, but all made out of cosmetics.
L’OREAL PARIS
Dry Shampoo
Russia has a centralized supply of heat and hot water, and every summer water is cut off for two weeks for an annual overhaul.
Thus, Dove found an opportunity to increase awareness and sales for their dry shampoo. They divided Moscow into 500 clusters in the period of maintenance work to launch the campaign with high precision targeting. Consumers were served digital banners only when they didn’t have hot water in their homes, and the ads showed the nearest retailers.
DOVE
Beauty For All
L'Oréal was set to launch their new lipstick collection at the Cannes Film Festival, with Deepika Padukon as their global ambassador. However, even with a local endorser, the brand could not physically connect with Indian consumers as the launch was a continent away.
To involve the audience and let them experience Deepika’s red carpet look, the brand did a mobile-executed ad experience, leveraging facial recognition that mapped lipstick shades on them. They were also encouraged to share their experiences and shop the products.
L’OREAL PARIS
Chat Your Way
to Beauty
Dove found that Indonesian women are always looking for the perfect hair solution, but are shy to openly search for them, and prefer one-on-one communication.
The brand then launched a digital hair assistant. They took a simple rich media banner ad and integrated it with a chatbot, providing women answers to their hair problems.
DOVE
#BeYourOwnFilter
To launch the brand’s Dream Velvet foundation in Singapore, Maybelline tapped into the audience’s obsession with Snapchat selfies.
The target audience loved using filters that gave them a fakeley flawless complexion.
Maybelline teamed up with local beauty vloggers Youtiao666 in a social-led campaign encouraging consumers to be “Be your own filter.”
MAYBELLINE
Social Media Castings
By happenstance, Benefits Cosmetics discovered Kate Grant’s Facebook video about her journey to becoming a model. The brand was attracted to her energy and zest for life, and after one of Kate’s Instagram videos with Benefit’s eyeliner racked up thousands of likes, they asked her to be a brand ambassador.
Kate, who is Benefit’s first brand ambassador with down syndrome, is paving the way for more inclusivity for people with disabilities in roles previously reserved for models and celebrities. And Benefit is paving the way for more affordable, more inclusive casting for brands.
MAYBELLINE
Use Your Vote
Levi’s got political back in 2018.
Leading into National Voter Registration Day on September 25, the iconic 165 year old fashion label showcased a new TVC encouraging Americans to vote.
“Levi's is all about authentic self-expression, and there is no purer form of self-expression than voting" said Jen Sey, Senior VP and Chief Marketing Officer of Levi Strauss & Co.
The campaign extended in-stores with voter registration booths whilst also selling limited edition ‘Vote’ branded pieces.
Levi’s
Stepping Out with GOT
Fashion collaborations are nothing new, but Adidas found an unlikely partner in Game of Thrones for a limited edition collab. The collection saw six unique designs based on the key families within the show, and released it just before the airing of the final season.
Sneakerheads were teased across social for months in the lead up before they were able to get their hands on, and feet into a pair.
By joining shoe-lovers with GOT fans, the pairing popularised both brands and let them tap into each other’s unique, and passionate audiences.
Adidas
Reactland
To highlight the shoemaker’s new “Epic React” model - which contains technology described as bouncy, soft, light and durable - Nike set up a rig that let consumers test drive the shoes with a special video game called “Reactland”.
Players were invited to strap on a pair of Nike React shoes and run on a treadmill so they were moving through the game world as an actual character that looked just like them. This gaming event was then filmed and combined with a digital marketing campaign rich in content across a host of channels and touchpoints, including website, mobile, social media and video.
Nike
Loud Silence
Fashion powerhouse Marie Claire took an unusual and creative stance as part of their Loud Silence campaign in order to bring attention to The International Day of Violence Against Women.
The 30” silent ad on Spotify pushed users to pull their phones out of their pockets and engage with the campaign, with the text prompting them to engage.
Silence turned to noise. Marie Claire broke the rules on best creative use for an audio ad, by using silence to spread the message.
Marie Claire
Sweat Resistant Makeup
In a collaboration designed to make sure that ladies and gents around the world could remain fierce through a workout, Puma and Maybelline have paired up as unlikely partners.
Announced via Instagram, the new Maybelline x PUMA collection features 12 “high performance street style-inspired” makeup products, promising to resist water, sweat and fading.
Puma + Maybelline
The Runaway
New Balance are a sponsor of the Virgin Money London Marathon. Acknowledging the time and effort that goes into training, they teamed up with Strava to reward participants’ positive behaviours.
New Balance designed a pub known as ‘The Runaway’ where the only currency accepted is miles. These miles could then be exchanged for beer. Runners could also join workout sessions, train and check out the latest running gear.
The two brands united to connect particpants even more closely and foster a community, albeit with somewhat counter intuitive rewards.
Strava + New Balance
Gorillaz Levi’s Collection
Two icons of culture converge.
The digital powerhouse Gorillaz teamed up with Levi’s to create a collection. Focusing on the famous Levi’s logo which has been reworked by band member Hewlett, the collection also features items like denim jackets, hoodies, t-shirts and tote bags which can all be customised from a collection of Hewlett’s paint style graphics.
Levi’s got some new brand ambassadors, while Gorillaz earned some very public exposure with one of the fashion world's iconic denim brands.
Gorillaz + Levi’s
Clothing Collection Service
The rise of fast fashion means people are shopping more than ever. For some, however, having warm and clean clothes isn’t a guarantee.
Annually, the Australian Red Cross has a donation drive where Aussies are asked to donate clothes to those in need.
This year in a partnership with Uber, if you selected the Red Cross Clothing Drive card through the app, and tapped ‘request’, a driver would come to your house, collect the clothes and take them to the nearest Red Cross for donating. Thanks to Uber, donating was a door-to-door, hassle free service.
Uber + The Red Cross
Virtual Wedding Dress Fitting
The two brands have paired up, enabling brides-to-be to try on wedding dresses from the comfort of their own homes.
The app takes precise measurements, allowing brides to look at suitable dresses. The aim is to minimise the need for adjustments by crafting the dress perfectly to the body shape before purchase.
In the app, dresses can be filtered by price and the user is able to share an option with family and friends for feedback. Once a style is chosen, the bride can go directly to Amazon or the retailer shopping page to make the purchase.
Amazon + Zeekit
Proving print is still in fashion
The power and brand recognition of this partnership was cover-worthy news.
Supreme released a video early in the morning to unveil the partnership, with fans rushing to newstands to buy one of the limited edition print copies. They also included a digital rollout of the full FW18 lookbook, sending Reddit, Twitter, and the rest of the Internet into a frenzy.
The combination of social hype any Supreme collab generates, plus the power of TNYP print/digital circulation meant that this collab made headlines for all the right reasons.
Supreme + The New York Post
Palessi Pop Up
Discount shoe store Payless recently took over a former Armani store in LA, stocking the store with its products then inviting influencers to the launch event of high-end label, Palessi.
Those in attendance happily spent up to $600 on the shoes, saying they were beautiful and high-quality.
Shortly after they revealed the truth, customers’ reactions were captured for a series of TVC ads.
The campaign served as a reminder that the store offers affordable, stylish fashion, you don’t need to pay hundreds for.
Payless Shoes
The 100% recyclable shoe
Adidas has unveiled the world's first 100% recyclable sneakers, made entirely from plastic in the ocean.
Before the shoes are publicly available in 2021, they’ll be trialled by 200 leading creators from around the world. The shoes are designed as part of brands new innovation, Futurecraft.Loop Sneaker. Once your pair of sneakers become worn, instead of throwing them away, all you’ll have to do is return them to Adidas. They will wash and dismantle the shoes, then melt the plastic, and create an entirely new pair - with absolutely no waste.
Adidas
Topshop Fashion Week on Facebook
To welcome fashion lovers into the exclusive world of London Fashion Week, Topshop partnered with Facebook to launch an interactive app.
The “shoot the show” app let consumers have exclusive access to the London Fashion Week catwalk. Fans could take photos from within the live stream, as though they were in the front row. They could then purchase products ranging from clothing to beauty and even the music from the show soundtrack.
Topshop
Suede Gully
Puma promoted a street culture movement via a music video to market its ‘Suedes’ shoes in India.
Suedes had a global heritage of street and underground culture, but this was invisible in India. Puma decided to showcase the artists, dancers and musicians of India's 'gullies' (streets) via a suedes-related song.
It was made available on all music-streaming apps, backed by a music video that culminated in a talent contest, concert and in-store experience.
Puma
Floatride
Reebok looked to launch its new sports shoes Floatride by creating an interactive mobile banner ad that got people to get physical in order to reveal features of the shoes.
To dial up the ‘seriousness’ of the shoe for runners, it was served on premium sites, giving consumers the option to engage with the ad through an integration of the pedometer motion sensor where users could physically walk ahead to reveal features of the shoes.
The shoes walked out the door.
Reebok
TELECOMMUNICATIONS
PLANNING DIRTY
Evert_45
Dutch telecom brand KPN is reimagining stories from the Second World War for the digital age, to connect the generations in a campaign for Dutch Remembrance and Liberation day. KPN imagined the story of a boy called Evert, and put it onto YouTube vlogs and Instagram posts to make his story seem real for the younger generation. His experience includes an account of his journey to find his brother in hiding after escaping a German labor camp.
Kpn - dutch telecom company
Welcome Home
It’s one of the most visually complex ads ever created, a perfectly choreographed adventure that’s half Alice in Wonderland, half Wrinkle in Time. But Apple’s “Welcome Home” spot for the HomePod began, as all great ads do, with a simple, concise thought.
“We started talking about how great music makes a space feel bigger,” says Robbin Ingvarsson, one of the two TBWA\Media Arts Lab creatives who developed the concept. “And then we said, ‘What if it would actually expand a place as a person dances throughout a home?'”
Apple
Pet-Fluencer
Vodafone wanted to create positive conversation, engagement and brand awareness online with a campaign centred around the V-Pet - an innovative tracker which monitors the location and activity of your pet.
Instead of pet owners, they worked with three real pet influencers to communicate a positive message around the technology and show us what they got up to when their owners were nowhere to be found. #Busted
They kept viewers engaged and following the narrative through with the content series on Instagram. With positivity being the key driver, the campaign was a success in generating conversation - let’s face it, who can be mad at Marcel?
VODAFONE UK
Welcome to @Apple
When Apple launched its Instagram account, rather than posting shots of products, it dedicated the account to the creativity of iPhone photographers around the world. The world’s biggest brand made its branded account about iPhone photography, not ads. From established photographers, to people with no more than a hundred followers, @apple elevates the voices of its users through the lens of iPhone. With Spotlights, Creative Briefs and Showcases, @apple actively inspires people to take more photos and participate in a larger community—expanding the definition of photography and creativity for its 4 million followers worldwide.
Apple
Evelyn
In 2018, Sprint introduced the world to “Evelyn,” a highly intelligent robot and star of its Big Game commercial. The 60-second commercial, which ran in the first quarter, is titled “Evelyn” and captures her making smart, rational decisions and questioning her human creator’s choice of wireless carrier. He just happens to be on Verizon.
SPRINT
Screen Record Texts
All massive campaigns start with a single idea, and sometimes low budget ideas can fuel an ambitious media spend.
T-Mobile caught on to the viral nature of screen recorded texts that make their way to the internet and leveraged that as a vehicle for entertaining videos tied to different membership benefits. These aired at every commercial break of the Super Bowl, and continue to run on TV, OTT, and social media.
Given T-Mobile’s customers spend more time texting than calling, this creative format will continue to be used for ongoing T-Mobile campaigns.
T-MOBILE
What you missed
To promote Verizon as the best streaming network in America, we turned to the most streamed sporting event—March Madness basketball.
With hundreds of thousands of fans watching the games on their phones, enormous strain is placed on cell networks, causing annoying interruptions.
During the games, Verizon searched Twitter for users complaining about streaming problems and responded in real-time with recaps highlighting what they missed. They enlisted Hall-of-Fame basketball legend Kareem Abdul-Jabbar to respond. Fans were thrilled, and Verizon found the perfect moment to highlight its network superiority.
Verizon
Today@Apple
Apple’s massive effort to reimagine the retail experience shows that the brand has grown beyond being a master of product design, and has taken the idea of user experience to new horizons. “Apple for decades was known as somebody who makes magical products,” Reilly said. “Now I feel they’re making magical experiences, and important experiences.”
Apple
Say it Tika
Partnering with Google, Vodafone has launched a platform that would help preserve a native language. Google Maps is where most Māori place names are commonly heard. Launched for Te Wiki O Te Māori, “Say it tika” encouraged Kiwis to identify Māori place names being mispronounced on Google Maps.
The campaign kicked off on Facebook with a video of Temuera Morrison decked out in gumboots and a swandry, riding a cow. Why? Good question. Almost 2 million Kiwis stopped scrolling through their newsfeed to find out.
Vodafone
First respondents
The spot, called “Answering the Call,” is a heartfelt salute to first responders—after a year in which they were needed more than ever, given the rash number of natural disasters across the U.S.
The ad shows scenes of house fires, floods and medical emergencies. The audio features the people who were helped, surprising the first responders by calling them and thanking them, often years after the fact. Onscreen copy says, “They answer the call. Our job is to make sure they can get it.”
Verizon
Barbers
Apple's latest spot in the "Practically Magic" series shows off the iPhone 7's Potrait Mode with the story of a barbershop whose business is transformed by some photos of a few funky haircuts.
The ad takes place in a small New Orleans barbershop. It's quiet, until one employee uses his iPhone to take a portrait of a customer's new hairstyle and puts it in the window. The shot attracts new customers, and further hair transformations, which then turn into more ad portraits for the storefront window.
Apple
Smart Suit
Samsung has carved out a reputation for being one of the most experimental tech giants, and now its innovative wares are spreading to Olympians.
The Korean giant has created Samsung SmartSuit, a piece of smart clothing that's able to provide Olympic short track speed skaters with insights into their training. Each SmartSuit has five sensors that deliver a real-time look at the wearer's body position back to the coach's smartphone, with metrics in the millimetres helping teams use the data to alter training.
Samsung
Unlock with a look
Designed to promote the model’s FaceID feature, which lets users unlock the iPhone X just by looking at it thanks to facial recognition, the spot starts with the phone itself. She points her face at the screen, and its padlock symbol slides open.
Apple
TOURISM
PLANNING DIRTY
DALI LIVES
Ever wonder what it would be like to meet Salvador Dalí? You may get your wish.
On the 30th anniversary of Dalí's death, the Dalí Museum in St. Petersburg, Florida, announced "Dalí Lives.”
Using machine learning and old video footage, agency Goodby Silverstein & Partners will bring the quirky, charismatic Surrealist master back to life—on screens, anyway—all over the museum.
Dalí Museum
Visit Xbox
As technology has improved, video games have become as renowned for their visual beauty as their gameplay. And we're not talking live-action trailers. The vistas within the games themselves have become visually gorgeous—as breathtaking, perhaps, as some landscapes in the real world (seen in 2-D, at least).
McCann London and Xbox are saluting the beauty of Xbox One X Enhanced games in a clever way—by rolling out a tourism campaign encouraging you to visit a number of virtual locations in the games for their beauty alone, regardless of gameplay mechanics or storylines.
Xbox
Glass of Thrones
Tourism Ireland launched an experiential campaign around the latest and final season of Game of Thrones with a stained glass "fan trail" in Belfast, where much of the series was filmed.
Publicis London created a "Glass of Thrones" series of 6 installations.
Creatively inspired by fan search data, the windows depicted key moments from the show, including battles, dragons, white walkers and matrimonial massacres. The installations appeared in locations around the city along a path for fans to follow.
Tourism Ireland
Night at the Museum
Airbnb partnered with the Musée du Louvre to offer a unique experience for one lucky winner to sleep underneath the museum’s iconic Pyramid for one night.
On April 30th, the winner took up residence within I.M Pei’s famous 1989 addition to the Parisian complex, part of an elaborate “night at the museum” experience.
AirBnB
Tag Responsibly
Jackson Hole, Wyoming is a stunning location with lots of opportunities for Instagram-worthy shots of the great outdoors.
�But visitors geo-tagging their locations on Instagram had an unexpected side effect: environmental damage from excess foot traffic.
To combat overtourism, the Jackson Hole Travel & Tourism Board launched a campaign encouraging visitors to stop geotagging, and instead use the location “Tag Responsibly, Keep Jackson Hole Wild.” Through responsible tagging, the campaign turns something people already do into an awareness drive for both the destination and the need to protect it.
Jackson Hole Travel & Tourism Board
Closed for Maintenance
Ironically, to encourage tourism, The Faroe Islands publicly declared it would be closed to tourists for a weekend in April ‘for maintenance’.
Instead, Faroe Islands invited international volunteers or ‘voluntourists’ to apply to visit and work with the locals to help build/rebuild signage, walking paths, and viewpoints for the the 18-island archipelago’s most popular sights.
The idea provided a clever solution for over-tourism-a growing trend in the age of social media-while spreading awareness for the Faroe Islands as a unique travel destination.
Visit Faroe Islands
Fill Your Heart
Traveling stimulates. Tourism Ireland took this literally and in an industry first, used a heart rate monitor to prove the heart-filling effects the island has on its visitors.
Working with Publicis London, Tourism Ireland invited a real married couple to tour the island for the first time while wearing custom-made technology, fitted with both a camera and a heart rate monitor.
Using the data provided by the heart rate monitor, the ad was a compilation of the couple’s most heart-filling moments during their trip.
Tourism Ireland
Unexpected Tour Guides
Most tourism ads feature either iconic landmarks or famous celebrities. New Orleans Tourism took a different approach.
In their most recent campaign, New Orleans Tourism created an IGTV travel show featuring an all-female biker gang as tour guides. All content was filmed specifically for IGTV, creating a unique viewing experience.
By showing a different side to the city, the show also encouraged tourists to look beyond Mardi Gras and the French Quarter to discover the hidden treasures the city uniquely offers.
New Orleans Tourism
Trivial Pursuit Hotel
Brands are venturing into the hotel and travel game. This summer, Trivial Pursuit will open a hotel that accepts knowledge instead of money for payment.
The entire experience from booking to arrival is a game- where the accuracy of your answers determine what room, or even bed, you get.
Similarly, Taco Bell just announced its opening a boutique hotel or ‘Tacoasis in the desert’ in Palm Springs. As more brands enter the tourism space, traditional tourism brands will need to remain distinct for share of voice.
Hasbro
Work From Hawaii
Among workaholics in New York, Hawaii’s developed a reputation for being just an island resort.
To correct this misconception and encourage more visitors from the east coast, Hawaii Tourism created a 1-week residency program competition for New Yorkers to WFH: Work from Hawaii.
By inviting participants to work remotely in Hawaii, the idea provided a solution for New York’s workaholic culture while still showcasing the benefits of a exploring the ‘Real Hawaii’.
Hawaii Tourism
The Colorblind Viewer
How do you encourage visitors from states known for their fall colors to seek out Tennessee's autumn hues instead?
In this campaign, the Tennessee, tourism bureau placed colorblind viewfinders throughout the state and invited colorblind tourists to experience the changing leaves.
The video went viral resulting in a significant increase in tourism in the fall.
Tennessee Department of Tourism Development
Brutal Honesty
After 4 consecutive years at dead-last on a list of states tourists are interested in visiting, Nebraska turned this negative into something positive through a self-deprecating tourism campaign: “Nebraska. Honestly, it’s not for everyone.”
By championing realism, the campaign stood out from other tourism campaigns, instantly becoming a viral hit.
When tourism marketing is all about lifestyle, unique experiences, ‘Instagram shots’, and luxury, sometimes brutal honesty is the best way to be disruptive.
Nebraska
TRANSPORTATION & DELIVERY
PLANNING DIRTY
Pride flight
Virgin Atlantic and Virgin Holidays are marking the World Pride 2019 by flying an inaugural ‘pride flight’ between London and New York this June. staffed entirely by LGBT+ pilots and cabin crew.
In the preview ad, Broadway star Tituss Burgess takes the lead as the pilot, flanked by a drag queen cabin crew as they make a dramatic entrance at Gatwick Airport.
It’s another great example of Virgin's commitment to celebrating diversity.
Virgin Atlantic x Virgin Holidays
Flying icons
Virgin Atlantic replaced its famous flying lady with a range of five new ‘flying icons’ to represent ‘modern Britain’. The new high flyers represent a gay man in rainbow lycra, an Asian woman, and a black man and woman.
Virgin said the new icons represent its desire for gender and diversity balance in the workplace, and support for people of all sexualities.
Spot on. Inviting and relevant in a non D&I-wash way.
Virgin Atlantic
Take-off tips
KLM Airlines have built a hologram bar where travellers can ‘meet’ to exchange local tips at airports.
‘Take-off Tips’ is driven by 3D facial scanning and hologram technology. Rather than waiting for a flight, the idea is that passengers share local tips and cultural insights with locals.
Travellers spend hours in airports doing nothing, so getting in touch with locals is better than any guidebook. Plus its a nice way for KLM to reinforce its customer service message. It’s a great example of customer insight, innovation and brand purpose, all in sync.
KLM
Respect the ride
Lime is investing in education for safe scooter practices, distributing helmets, and better maintaining its bikes and scooters. The announcement came just days after the company recalled some of its scooters in LA, San Diego, and Lake Tahoe due to manufacturing defects that could result in battery explosions.
It’s asking its riders to take the Respect the Ride pledge, and it will be distributing helmets to the first 25,000 people who sign it.
This shows good intention from Lime - “we’ve listened, we’ve screwed up, we’ll fix it”. A simple but well executed effort.
Lime
Career mentorship
Britain’s youngest licensed pilot, sixteen-year-old Ellie Carter, has been offered a mentorship to help her fulfil her career aspirations by easyJet.
This is part of easyJet's efforts to attract more women into the profession, while fighting gender stereotypes in workspace.
Globally, women account for just 1 in 20 of the world’s pilots. easyJet is leading the industry with its recruitment drive, offering opportunities for all from cadet pilots starting their career to experienced co-pilots and captains.
easyJet
Belted survivor series
How can you make the undesirable become something people want to buy?
The NZTA created a collection of portraits of real crash survivors, that aims to turn the distinctive wounds left behind by seat belts into badges of honour.
The idea is to raise awareness about how a seatbelt can be the difference between ending up injured or dead, while addressing the misconception that seatbelts are an unnecessary accessory.
New Zealand Transport Agency
DNA discounts
Traveling throughout the Southwest U.S., AeroMexico and Ogilvy Mexico found people who insisted they’d never want to go to Mexico. Then they gave them DNA tests to reveal any Mexican ancestry and offered flights with discounts based on the results. The more Mexican DNA, the higher the discount.
Guess what…. 54% of the people tested showed some Mexican heritage and all of them were people who said they’d never want to visit.
It was a best practice of science and creativity coming together.
AeroMexico
Uber toys
Uber ran a Christmas campaign in Europe that invited people to order free rides in "Uber Toys." In Paris, six different oversized toy autos were on offer: a farm truck, a clay car, a rover with a spring, a Lego-like building brick vehicle, a remote-control automobile and a doll van.
What a better way to enjoy Christmas than through a child’s eyes? Festive, original, light-hearted - this is a good effort from Uber to communicate its human side.
Uber
SameDay bot
FedEx is experimenting with robots for short-range deliveries. The company announced its new FedEx SameDay Bot, which it says could help make “last mile” deliveries more efficient.
FedEx is going the extra mile as it tries to change the rules of local delivery and help retailers address their customers' expectations. Precisely what we would expect from a brand like FedEx. Nice one!
FedEx
Sleeper seats
Thomas Cook Airlines now offers ‘Sleeper Seats’ for anyone who struggles to sleep on long haul flights.
The new seats allow customers to lie across an entire row of seats and will be available on selected flights to long haul destinations.
“We always look for ways to innovate for our customers and Sleeper Seat is a UK first that we are really proud of. It is a fantastic way to transform your flying experience and enjoy some extra comfort when flying in Economy.”
Thomas Cook
MULTICULTURAL
PLANNING DIRTY
Impact
To celebrate Jackie Robinson’s 100th birthday, and honour the slugger’s historic contributions to the sport, Budweiser released limited-edition beer bottles featuring his iconic jersey number–“42”–in bold black and silver coloring.
The launch spot, titled “Impact,” combines documentary footage of Jackie Robinson with a dramatized scene of patrons enjoying Budweiser and celebrating Robinson’s monumental accomplishment.
Budweiser will donate 42¢ from each bottle’s purchase to the Jackie Robinson Foundation, which works to help minority students achieve higher education.
Budweiser
Kupu
Spark, New Zealand’s only internet service provider—launched Kupu, an interactive mobile app that allows users to see Te Reo Māori (the official language of the country’s indigenous people) translations for pictures they take on their phone.
According to New Zealand government data, the proportion of the Māori population able to have a conversation dropped four points to 21% between 1996 and 2013.
Powered by Google technology and knowledge from the Te Aka Māori Dictionary, Kupu provides a new way to experience the language.
Spark
Pride Jersey
AIG Japan partnered with the New Zealand All Blacks to send a message of support, as allies to the LGBTQ community.
Symbolizing the fight against discrimination, the PRIDE JERSEY was born. Made of an entirely new kind of fabric, the jersey is black on the surface, but when stretched, reveals the colors of the rainbow underneath.
AIG
Queen Collective
At Cannes 2018, P&G’s Chief Brand Officer Marc Pritchard announced the company’s commitment to hiring female directors for half of its commercials by 2023.
The company has made moves over the last year with an initiative called The Queen Collective, a program providing resources and opportunities to young, unknown and diverse female filmmakers.
A year after the program’s initial introduction, the first two short films of The Queen Collective premiered last weekend at the Tribeca Film Festival, followed by a wider distribution on Hulu, where they’re currently available to stream.��LINK
P&G
Project #ShowUS
Project #ShowUs, is a new collection of 5,000 photos that, creators say, “shows women as they are, not as others believe they should be.” In other words, there’s “no digital distortion, just an unapologetically inclusive vision of beauty.”
Originating in 39 countries, the photos come from 116 female, non-binary and female-identifying photographers.
A first for Getty, the 179 subjects have created their own search descriptions and tags for their images like “blackgirlmagic,” “bosslady” and “enlightened”. ��LINK
Dove X Getty
Q - Genderless Voice Assistant
Virtue created a genderless voice that’s more relatable for people who don’t identify as a binary gender.
Q is made up of dozens of voices of people who identify as non-binary. To create the voice, Virtue and partners including Pride Copenhagen, linguists and technologists, recorded the voices before creating a composite of all of them.
The goal is to get the biggest makers of voice assistants—namely Google, Apple, Microsoft and Amazon—to add a gender-neutral option to their platforms.
Virtue (Vice)
The Pleasure is Mine
K-Y lubricants created a documentary series called “The Pleasure Is Mine,” which features a diverse group of women talking about the very real roadblocks to sexual fulfillment��Shot in Los Angeles, the content series gathers women from different backgrounds, ethnicities, ages and life stages. Guided by sex therapist Dr. Holly Richmond, the participants open up about a wide range of issues, from challenges after childbirth through menopause, to societal expectations and body image, giving equal weight to the emotional and physical aspects of sex.
K-Y
Signs of Love
84% of LGBTQ community members believe that there are parts of Australia where it is unsafe to be themselves.
To help spread the spirit of the festival and draw attention to the brand’s commitment to inclusion, ANZ Bank changed seven (of the 123) Oxford Street signs around the country into representations of LGBTQ culture. Signs transformed into colorful hearts, cupcakes, rainbows, flamingos and unicorns on streets as far as Western Australia and the Northern Territory.
ANZ
#SeeHerHearHer
Citi wanted to inject some female empowerment into the beleaguered music business so the financial services giant debuted #SeeHerHearHer as a way “to create a groundswell” of support for women in music.
The company, during an hour-long takeover of the Today show, said it will include female musicians, artists and technicians in its talent search for its ad campaigns, with special attention to TV. It also handed out $5,000 grants to 10 emerging female artists and announced a mentor program with Grammy winner Maren Morris that will expand to include other industry mavens.��LINK
Citi
The non-issue
In response to a youth obsessed culture, where women over 50 still feel increasingly invisible, L’Oreal Paris and British Vogue partnered to launch “The Non-Issue” issue – to ensure that age should no longer be an issue.
“The Non-Issue” issue, which was included within the May edition of British Vogue, is in direct response to women over 50 remaining conspicuous by their absence in the beauty and fashion industries, and the wider media landscape.��LINK
L’Oreal x Vogue
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