Decade
2010s ads
The best ads of the 2010s, from Old Spice and Oreo's blackout tweet to Red Bull Stratos and "Dumb Ways to Die": a decade of stunts, social and purpose.
Commercials
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2019We All Win
Children with limited mobility talk about what gaming gives them and show how they play with the Xbox Adaptive Controller, which Microsoft designed…
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2019Back-to-School Essentials
The most devastating bait-and-switch in PSA history.
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2018Alexa Loses Her Voice
Alexa coughs mid-forecast and falls silent, and Jeff Bezos, playing himself, is assured by his staff that replacements are standing by.
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2018The Legend of Big John
A young man named Big Mjohnana sails from his village in 1650, shrugs off a jaguar, a whale, a shark and a giant squid, and lands in Holland in…
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2018It's a Tide Ad
The cleverest media hack in Super Bowl history.
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2018Dream Crazy
The defining case of brand risk in the social-media era.
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2017Calling JohnMalkovich.com
John Malkovich, newly launched as a menswear designer, sits in his studio on the phone to another John Malkovich, the man who already owns…
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2017Daughter
A girl in a battered helmet races a soapbox cart downhill against a field of boys while her father, in voiceover, wonders what to tell her: that…
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2017The Journey
A mother and her young daughter leave Mexico and head north on foot, by truck and by train, intercut with construction workers building something we…
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2017The Talk
Across several decades, Black parents sit their children down for a conversation that most white families never have to hold: how to carry…
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2016Super Bowl Babies Choir
For its 50th Super Bowl, the NFL turned a piece of sports folklore into a choir.
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2015Justino
Justino guards a mannequin factory by night, so he never meets the colleagues who work by day, until he starts talking to them through the dummies,…
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2014It's Beautiful
"America the Beautiful" passes from voice to voice and from language to language (seven of them, by Coca-Cola's count) over a montage of American…
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2014Mistakes
Two cars are about to collide: one driven by a man in a shirt and tie, late for work and going a little too fast, the other by a father who has made…
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2014Puppy Love
A Labrador puppy has fallen for a Clydesdale, and even after it is adopted it keeps coming back home to the horse.
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2014The Big Leap
A man sits a few centimetres from the woman he loves, working up the nerve for a first kiss, and the film turns that moment into a literal plunge:…
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2014Unsung Hero
A young man with almost nothing spends his days on small kindnesses: he waters a dying plant, feeds a stray dog, brings bananas to an elderly…
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2014Monty the Penguin
The peak of the modern Christmas-ad genre John Lewis invented.
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2013Chicken
To Diana Ross's "Upside Down", handlers lift, sway and twist live chickens, and while the birds' bodies dance in every direction, their heads stay…
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2013Farmer
Essentially a two-minute slideshow that never speaks its brand name, "Farmer" lays the late broadcaster Paul Harvey's original recording of "So God…
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2013The Pony
On a windswept Shetland hillside a stocky little pony called Socks moonwalks and tosses his mane to Fleetwood Mac's “Everywhere”.
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2012Halftime in America
A lean silhouette walks down a darkened stadium tunnel and Clint Eastwood's rasp begins: "It's halftime in America, too." For two minutes,…
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2012L'Odyssée de Cartier
Cartier's emblem, the panther, comes to life and sets off across the world of the house: through a snowbound St Petersburg, along the Great Wall of…
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2012Tips From Former Smokers ("Terrie")
Terrie, a former smoker, shows viewers how she gets ready for the day now that treatment for throat cancer has cost her her teeth, her hair and her…
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2012Meet the Superhumans
The film that changed how disability is shown on screen.
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2012Best Job ("Thank You, Mom")
How a company with no sports products won the Olympics.
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2011Back to the Start
A farmer's family pig farm grows, step by step, into an industrial animal factory of cramped pens and hormone-pumped livestock, until a crisis of…
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2011Cómicos
Santiago Segura, weighed down by the day's bad news, reveals a pact among the people whose job is making Spain laugh: when gloom starts winning,…
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2011Last Dictator Standing
A Robert Mugabe lookalike sits alone at a dinner table laid for guests who will never arrive.
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2011Legend ("Ghost Chips")
At a house party, a young man silently agonises over whether to stop his drunk mate George from driving, and imagines what staying quiet might cost,…
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2011The Bear (L'Ours)
For most of the film, Paul Bearman is a tantrum-prone Hollywood director shooting a gothic epic; the twist is that he is a bearskin rug shaped by…
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2011Born of Fire ("Imported from Detroit")
A bankrupt car company from a written-off city bought the longest Super Bowl ad to that point — two full minutes during Super Bowl XLV, February 6,…
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2011The Force
A pint-sized Darth Vader tries to use the Force on the laundry machine, the dog, a sandwich — and finally, apparently, on the family Passat,…
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2010Selinah
Selinah, a woman with AIDS, gets into bed looking healthy, and over a series of shots taken across 90 days she seems to waste away until she is skin…
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2010Parisian Love
Google's first-ever TV commercial told a love story using nothing but a search box: "study abroad paris france" leads to "impress a french girl,"…
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2010Game ("Betty White")
The spot that launched one of the most durable creative platforms in modern advertising.
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2010Write the Future
The biggest canvas sports advertising has attempted: a three-minute epic in which a single touch — Rooney's loose pass, Ronaldo's free kick —…
Made for the Internet
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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.
Print & Outdoor
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2018Follow the Arches
The golden arches, cropped so tightly they turn into road signs.
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2018FCK ("We're Sorry")
The best corporate apology ever printed.
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2017Pass the Heinz
Half a century late, Heinz finally bought Don Draper's pitch.
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2016Thanks 2016, It's Been Weird
The campaign that turned a database into a copywriter.
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2015McWhopper (an open letter to McDonald's)
Burger King's peace offering to its oldest enemy, made in public.
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2015Shot on iPhone ("World Gallery")
The largest photography exhibition ever mounted — as an ad campaign.
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2014GAYTMs
For the 2014 Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras, its principal partner ANZ turned ten of its cash machines on Sydney's busiest streets into GAYTMs,…
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2013Magic of Flying (#lookup)
A billboard that looked up.
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2013Only for Children
A street poster with a second, hidden audience.
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2013People for Smarter Cities
Posters that do a job.
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2013The Autocomplete Truth
Close-up portraits of women whose mouths are covered by a Google search box, filled with the search engine's own suggestions for phrases such as…
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A billboard that turns air into clean drinking water is ingenuity in action.UTEC (University of Engineering and Technology)2013
The Billboard That Makes Water
A university recruitment ad that proves its claim by working.
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Coke HandsCoca-Cola2012
Coke Hands
The poster is Coca-Cola's signature white ribbon, redrawn on a field of red as two arms meeting in the middle, one hand passing a bottle of Coke to…
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Don't buy this jacket.Patagonia2011
Don't Buy This Jacket
On Black Friday 2011, the biggest shopping day in the American calendar, Patagonia bought a full page in The New York Times to tell readers not to…
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Heaven and HellSamsonite2011
Heaven and Hell
One long frieze, rendered like a classical stone relief, tells two stories at once.
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2011Unhate
World leaders kissing their adversaries: Barack Obama and Hugo Chávez, Mahmoud Abbas and Benjamin Netanyahu, Angela Merkel and Nicolas Sarkozy,…
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Be stupid.Diesel2010
Be Stupid
A fashion brand that told its customers to stop being sensible.
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2010Music. See What It's Made Of.
From a distance the ads are portraits of Bono, Eminem, Amy Winehouse, Britney Spears and Marilyn Manson.
Stunts & Experiences
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2019The Tampon Book
A tax loophole turned into a manifesto.
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2019ThisAbles
Accessibility shipped as a download.
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2019True Name
A product change that did the work of a campaign.
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2018Paving for Pizza
A pizza chain that went into road repair.
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2018Save Our Species
For the first time in its 85 years, the Lacoste crocodile left the shirt.
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2018The Ticket Shoe
A pair of trainers that doubled as a season ticket.
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2017Black Supermarket (Le Marché Interdit)
A supermarket chain that staged its own black market.
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2017The Palau Pledge
An ad that every visitor has to sign.
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2017Trash Isles
A garbage patch that applied to become a country.
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Know the power of women in leadership. SHE makes a difference.State Street Global Advisors2017
Fearless Girl
A piece of advertising with no media buy that became a permanent landmark.
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2016Meet Graham
A road-safety message you can walk around.
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2016The Field Trip to Mars
A school bus that drove to Mars.
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2016The Swedish Number
A country that picked up the phone.
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2016Unlimited Stadium
A running track where the opponent was your own last lap.
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2015Brewtroleum
A beer that came with its own petrol.
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2015Holograms for Freedom
The first protest made of holograms.
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2015LifePaint
A car maker that built something for the people outside its cars.
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2015The Safety Truck
A truck you can see through.
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On Black Friday, we're closing. Opt outside.REI2015
#OptOutside
The anti-promotion: on Black Friday 2015, the biggest shopping day of the year, outdoor retailer REI closed all 143 stores, paid its 12,000…
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2014Eyes on the Road
A text message that crashed the car.
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2014Inglorious Fruits & Vegetables
A supermarket that put the rejects on the shelf.
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2014Nazis Against Nazis ("Rechts gegen Rechts")
The march that paid for its own undoing.
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2013Immortal Fans
A football club that asked its supporters to keep cheering after death.
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2013Kan Khajura Tesan
In the 'media dark' villages of Bihar, Jharkhand and Uttar Pradesh, power cuts meant traditional media reached no more than a fifth of people, yet…
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2013Roti Reminder
At the 2013 Maha Kumbh Mela in Allahabad, billed as the largest gathering of people on the planet, Lifebuoy made the bread itself the reminder to…
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2013Small World Machines
In March 2013 Coca-Cola put two custom vending machines in shopping malls in Lahore and New Delhi and joined them with a live video link.
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2013Sorry, I Spent It On Myself
For Christmas 2013 the luxury department store Harvey Nichols put a real range of deliberately cheap presents on sale: the Sorry, I Spent It On…
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2012A Dramatic Surprise on a Quiet Square ("Push to Add Drama")
The big red button that started a genre.
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2012Bridge of Life
In September 2012 Seoul's city government and Samsung Life Insurance relaunched Mapo Bridge, a Han River crossing notorious for suicides, as the…
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2012The Invisible Drive
A car that seemed to vanish in traffic.
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2012Red Bull Stratos
The logical endpoint of "Red Bull gives you wings": the brand funded an actual edge-of-space program.
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2011Be the Coach
Carling Black Label created a new pre-season derby between Soweto rivals Kaizer Chiefs and Orlando Pirates, then handed the fans the coach's job.
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2011Break Up
Australians tend to see their four big banks as one cosy club, so when National Australia Bank cut fees and paid rivals' exit fees for switching…
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2011Subway Virtual Store
The supermarket that came to the commuters.
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Share a Coke with...Coca-Cola2011
Share a Coke
The campaign where the medium was the can.
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2010Dutch Dress
Dutch brewer Bavaria was not a World Cup sponsor; Budweiser was the official beer in 2010.
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2010Operation Christmas
Advertising deployed behind the lines of a civil war.
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Shop Small.American Express2010
Small Business Saturday
A brand that added a day to the calendar.
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2010The American Takeover
In October 2010 Rom, a chocolate bar sold in Romania since 1964 and always wrapped in the national flag, appeared on shelves in a Stars and Stripes…
Advertising in the 2010s
In the 2010s, work made for the internet and stunts in the real world take over from the television commercial. Brands learned to act and respond rather than only broadcast.
The decade opened with Old Spice's The Man Your Man Could Smell Like, whose follow-up of personalised video replies to fans made it an early landmark of real-time response. Oreo's Dunk in the Dark tweet during the 2013 Super Bowl blackout made real-time marketing an industry obsession overnight. Red Bull Stratos went further, funding a jump from the edge of space in which the logo on the suit was the only copy.
Purpose defines the decade. Patagonia told Black Friday shoppers Don't Buy This Jacket, REI shut its stores on Black Friday, and Always asked what "like a girl" really means. Fearless Girl became a permanent landmark with no media buy, and its complications sharpened every later debate about whether purpose marketing is sincere.
Some of the best work hid a hard message inside entertainment or an experiment. Dumb Ways to Die delivered rail safety as a catchy song about cartoon beans, and Dove's Real Beauty Sketches made its case through a forensic artist's paired drawings of each woman. Even a truck maker could own internet culture, as Volvo Trucks proved with Jean-Claude Van Damme doing the splits between reversing lorries.