Category
Made for the Internet
Films, sites, apps and posts built to be shared online — the work that proved earned attention could beat bought attention.
2020s
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2025Vaseline Verified
Vaseline Verified began with social listening: more than 6,000 organic posts showed people using Vaseline Jelly in unexpected ways, from make-up…
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2024Michael CeraVe
A Super Bowl ad that was really the final act of a three-week online hoax.
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2023The Everyday Tactician
To launch Football Manager 2024 on Xbox, McCann London took the series' founding fantasy, that a fan could do the manager's job better, and made it…
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2022Backup Ukraine
Backup Ukraine gave people in Ukraine a way to save their heritage on a phone.
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2022Flipvertising
To launch the Galaxy Z Flip4 in Australia in 2022, Samsung inverted the logic of targeted advertising: instead of chasing ad-wary young buyers, it…
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2022Never Done Evolving feat. Serena
For Nike's 50th anniversary, AKQA staged a tennis match that could never happen: Serena Williams at 17, when she won her first Grand Slam title at…
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2022The First Digital Nation
In November 2022 Tuvalu’s foreign minister, Simon Kofe, addressed the COP27 climate summit by video from what appeared to be a beach on Te Afualiku,…
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2022World Cup Delivery
When Argentina won the 2022 football World Cup, the delivery app PedidosYa sent about six million users a push notification that looked like any…
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Duo the Owl on TikTokDuolingo2021
Duo the Owl on TikTok
A language app that decided its TikTok should not be about languages.
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2021Long Live the Prince
On 18 May 2021, fifteen years after Kiyan Prince was stabbed at the gates of his north London school while trying to break up a fight, the former…
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2021Lu from Magalu
Lu began in 2003 as a virtual sales assistant on the website of Magazine Luiza, the Brazilian retailer now called Magalu, giving a human face to…
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2021Not Just a Cadbury Ad ("Shah Rukh Khan-My-Ad")
India's biggest film star, advertising the shop around the corner by name.
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2021Reverse Selfie
Fifteen years after 'Evolution' exposed how advertising manufactured beauty, Dove showed that the retouching had moved into teenagers' own hands.…
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2020In Love We Trust
A film of seven minutes and 23 seconds, released online on 30 October 2020 by the Taiwanese real-estate company Sinyi Realty.
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2020The Uncensored Library
A library of banned journalism, hidden inside a video game.
2010s
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2019Burn That Ad
Burger King Brazil's answer to a rival that, by its own account, outspent it four to one: turn the rival's advertising into Burger King's.
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2019Stevenage Challenge
Burger King put its logo on the shirts of Stevenage, a club at the bottom of English football's fourth tier, knowing the kit would be reproduced in…
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2019Swipe Night
An interactive, end-of-the-world series built into the Tinder app.
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2018adDRESS the Future (Neo-Ex)
Neo-Ex was a 19-piece clothing collection that existed only as 3D files.
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2018Keeping Fortnite Fresh
During Thanksgiving week 2018, Fortnite ran a 'Food Fight' event that split players into Team Burger and Team Pizza.
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2018Nothing Beats a Londoner
A three-minute film in which 258 young Londoners try to outdo one another's sporting feats across Dalston, Peckham and Brixton, with Mo Farah, Harry…
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2018Tenemos que vernos más ("We Have to See More of Each Other")
An obscure Spanish herbal liqueur made one of the most shared Christmas films of 2018 by doing some unsettling arithmetic.
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2018Welcome Home
FKA twigs plays a woman who drags herself home after a draining day, asks Siri on her HomePod for some music, and dances as her cramped apartment…
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Order a Whopper for a penny — at McDonald's.Burger King2018
Whopper Detour
The best use of a competitor's real estate in marketing history.
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#NuggsForCarterWendy's2017
#NuggsForCarter
A teenager's tweet that became the most retweeted ever, with a fast-food brand as his co-conspirator.
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2017Did You Mean MailChimp?
Mailchimp's first campaign with Droga5 barely said "Mailchimp" at all.
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2017The Most Eligible Bachelor in the World
In April 2017 Sudan, the last male northern white rhino, joined Tinder.
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20166 Pack Band
Launched on 6 January 2016 with 'Hum Hain Happy', a cover of Pharrell Williams's 'Happy', the 6 Pack Band was presented as India's first transgender…
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2016Dads #ShareTheLoad
Released by Ariel India in February 2016, this two-minute film watches a father visit his married daughter and see her handle cooking, her child and…
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2016Hungerithm
Snickers' long-running idea that you're not yourself when you're hungry, turned into a live price.
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2016Kenzo World (My Mutant Brain)
Posted online at the end of August 2016 to launch the Kenzo World fragrance, Spike Jonze's four-minute film follows Margaret Qualley as a guest at a…
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2016Like My Addiction ("Louise Delage")
For about two months in 2016, Louise Delage looked like any rising Parisian Instagrammer: 25, stylish and always out, at after-work drinks, on…
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2016Marriage Market Takeover
A four-minute film in which unmarried Chinese women in their late twenties, branded sheng nu or ‘leftover women’, talk with their parents about the…
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2016Sheep View 360
In July 2016, tired of waiting for Google's cars, the Faroe Islands' tourist board fitted five sheep with 360-degree cameras and let them map the…
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2016Spotify Wrapped
The year-end ad that users make for you.
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2016The DNA Journey
A five-minute online film for the Danish travel search site momondo, made with AncestryDNA.
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2016The Next Rembrandt
Unveiled in Amsterdam on 5 April 2016, The Next Rembrandt is a portrait the Dutch master never painted: a man in his thirties in a black hat and…
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2015#heimkommen ("Coming Home")
An old man, left alone at Christmas year after year, sends out notice of his own death so that his scattered children finally come home, then greets…
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2015Emoji Ordering
On 20 May 2015 Domino's let American customers order dinner with a single character.
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2015High School Girl?
The camera drifts around a classroom of Japanese schoolgirls until a line in one student’s book asks whether the viewer has noticed any boys in the…
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2015Shoplifters
An online film made entirely from real CCTV footage of shoplifters at Harvey Nichols' Knightsbridge store.
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2015The Greatest Interception Ever
Volvo bought no airtime in the 2015 Super Bowl, so it borrowed its rivals’.
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2015Unskippable
A run of YouTube pre-roll ads that deliver the whole sales message in the five seconds before the skip button appears, then keep rolling.
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2015Love Has No Labels
A technology demo that became the first PSA ever to win the commercial Emmy.
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2014Experience the Power of a Bookbook
A furniture catalogue, launched like a gadget.
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2014I Will What I Want (Gisele Bündchen)
When Under Armour signed supermodel Gisele Bündchen, plenty of people online said she was no athlete, and Droga5 made those comments the ad.
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2014Most Shocking Second a Day
A 90-second film assembled from one-second clips, borrowing the “second a day” video-diary format then popular online.
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2014The Other Side
One film, two stories, one key to flip between them.
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2014#LikeAGirl
A casting session as social experiment.
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2013Christmas Miracle: Real-time Giving
Passengers waiting for Calgary-bound flights in Toronto and Hamilton scanned their boarding passes at a kiosk and found a live 'virtual Santa'…
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2013Melbourne Remote Control Tourist
For five days in October 2013, anyone online could steer real tourists around Melbourne.
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2013Reunion
An old man in Delhi tells his granddaughter about the best friend he lost at Partition in 1947: kite-flying in Lahore, sweets pinched from the boy's…
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2013Sound of Honda / Ayrton Senna 1989
In qualifying for the 1989 Japanese Grand Prix, Ayrton Senna set the fastest lap yet seen at Suzuka, and his McLaren Honda MP4/5 recorded it as…
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2013Telekinetic Coffee Shop Surprise
A hidden-camera stunt promoting Sony’s 2013 remake of Carrie.
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2013The Scarecrow
An animated short and an iPhone and iPad game launched together in September 2013.
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2013Real Beauty Sketches
A social experiment as advertising: a forensic sketch artist draws women twice, sight unseen — once from their own self-description, once from a…
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2013The Epic Split
A B2B truck feature — dynamic steering — demonstrated by Jean-Claude Van Damme doing the splits between two reversing trucks at golden hour, in one…
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Power out? No problem. You can still dunk in the dark.Oreo (Mondelēz)2013
Dunk in the Dark
The most famous tweet in marketing.
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2012Daily Twist
To mark Oreo’s 100th birthday, Kraft Foods and its agencies published one new image a day for 100 days from late June 2012, each recasting the…
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2012Project Re: Brief — 'Hilltop' Re-imagined for Coca-Cola
The Coca-Cola strand of Project Re: Brief, a Google experiment unveiled at SXSW in March 2012 in which the creators of four classic 1960s and 70s…
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2012Radi-Aid: Africa for Norway
A spoof charity single in the style of USA for Africa and Band Aid, in which a choir of young South Africans sings about the plight of freezing…
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2012Smoking Kid
A hidden-camera film in which small children, cigarettes in hand, walk up to adult smokers outside office buildings and ask for a light.
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2012The Beauty Inside
A romance whose leading man was partly played by the audience.
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2012Our Blades Are F***ing Great
The $4,500 video that built a billion-dollar company.
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2012Dumb Ways to Die
A rail-safety message delivered as an earworm about adorable beans dying horribly.
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Curators of Sweden (@sweden)VisitSweden and the Swedish Institute2011
Curators of Sweden (@sweden)
A country handed its official Twitter account to a different citizen every week.
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2011The Museum of Me
Connect your Facebook account and The Museum of Me built a gallery of your own life.
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2010A Hunter Shoots a Bear
A hunter faces a bear, refuses to pull the trigger, reaches out of the YouTube player into the banner beside it, grabs a Tipp-Ex Pocket Mouse…
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2010Embrace Life
A father sits in his living room pretending to drive while his wife and daughter watch.
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2010Happiness Machine
A Coca-Cola vending machine was slipped into a student cafeteria at St.
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2010The Wilderness Downtown
A music video that could only exist in a browser.
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2010The Man Your Man Could Smell Like
A single unbroken-looking take that rebuilt a dated brand in 30 seconds.
2000s
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2009Carousel
A cops-and-robbers shootout frozen in a single instant, explored in one continuous tracking shot that runs two minutes and 19 seconds and loops back…
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2009Chalkbot
Fans at the Tour de France have long painted messages on the road for the riders.
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2009COW ("Only Stwpd Cowz Txt N Drive")
Cassie, a 17-year-old driver, sends a text at the wheel, drifts into oncoming traffic and causes a three-car crash on the outskirts of Tredegar that…
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Fiesta MovementFord2009
Fiesta Movement
Before the new Fiesta had even been unveiled in America, Ford handed 100 European-spec cars to 100 social-media-savvy 'agents' for six months, set…
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2009Roller Babies
Special-effects babies perform old-school roller-skating tricks to a remix of 'Rapper's Delight', bringing back the babies Evian had last used more…
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2009The Fun Theory ("Piano Stairs")
Volkswagen Sweden turned the stairs at Stockholm's Odenplan subway station into working piano keys, filmed commuters abandoning the escalator, and…
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Whopper SacrificeBurger King2009
Whopper Sacrifice
A Facebook app that put a price on friendship: delete ten friends and get a coupon for a free Whopper.
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2008eco:Drive
Rather than advertise fuel economy, Fiat and AKQA built a tool that taught people to use less fuel.
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2008Hotel 626
To bring two discontinued flavours back for Halloween 2008, Doritos and Goodby Silverstein & Partners built a haunted hotel that existed only online…
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2008The Great Schlep
In 2008 some polls showed Barack Obama lagging with older Jewish voters, many of them in the swing state of Florida.
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UniqlockUniqlo2007
Uniqlock
A clock that doubled as a fashion show.
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2007Why So Serious? (The Dark Knight alternate reality game)
Fifteen months before The Dark Knight reached cinemas, Warner Bros. and 42 Entertainment started letting fans dig the film out for themselves.
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2006Elf Yourself
Upload a photo of your face, and watch yourself, your boss or your grandmother dance as a holiday elf.
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2006Still Free (Air Force One)
A grainy two-minute video that surfaced online in April 2006 appeared to show hooded figures climbing the fence at Andrews Air Force Base at night,…
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2006Will It Blend?
Fifty dollars, a lab coat, and a CEO who already destroyed things for quality control.
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2006Evolution
The film that made the ad industry take the internet seriously.
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2005Crossbar ("Ronaldinho: Touch of Gold")
Ronaldinho laces up a pair of white-and-gold Nike Tiempo boots, juggles a ball towards the box and strikes the crossbar four times in a row without…
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I Love BeesMicrosoft / Bungie (Halo 2)2004
I Love Bees
A game disguised as a honey company's website.
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Get chicken just the way you like it.Burger King2004
Subservient Chicken
The weirdest literal brand idea ever to work: "Have It Your Way" became a man in a chicken suit who obeys typed commands.
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2003ecotonoha
A website on which a single virtual tree grew one leaf at a time.
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2001BMW Films: The Hire
The campaign that invented branded entertainment as a discipline.
About Made for the Internet
These are the best online ads and viral campaigns: films, websites, apps, games and social posts made to be shared rather than broadcast, from early interactive sites to TikTok channels.
What they have in common is that people chose to watch, play, share or reply. The strongest examples earned attention instead of buying it: a hidden-camera film that people forwarded to friends, a brand account that answered back in real time, a website that turned a product into a game.
What to look for
- Participation: the audience completes the idea.
- Platform-native craft: the work only makes sense on the platform it was made for.
- Earned reach: views, shares and press coverage the brand did not pay for.
Many of these also won Cannes Lions in digital and social categories. See Cannes Grand Prix Winners.