Technique
Storytelling
Ads that tell a story with characters and a narrative arc, rather than simply stating a message.
2020s
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2023Forever
A puppy and a girl grow up together in one minute, from her childhood to her having a child of her own.
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2023The Everyday Tactician
An unscripted three-part documentary follows a stadium tour guide through a season that ends in promotion via a play-off shoot-out he helped prepare for.
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2022Never Done Evolving feat. Serena
Machine learning stages an impossible match between two eras of one player, so the technology serves a story about growth rather than replacing one.
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2022Bring Home the Bud
Turns the promise into a running saga, dropping crates in winning teams' cities overnight until the winners' crates are opened at parties in Buenos Aires.
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2021The Breakaway
Follows the prison team through a podcast documenting how riding changed them, building to a live race against judges, guards and the justice minister.
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2020In Love We Trust
A seven-minute film follows a registry clerk who loses faith in commitment until a devoted widower persuades her that love can last.
2010s
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2019Swipe Night
A first-person end-of-the-world drama, told in four weekly episodes inside the app, gives strangers a shared story to talk about.
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2018The Legend of Big John
Follows Big John from his village across a perilous ocean voyage to a payoff in which he lands in Holland and decides to call it Europe.
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2018Welcome Home
A worn-out woman comes home after a draining day and, once the music starts, her cramped apartment stretches and blooms in colour around her.
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2017The Journey
A mother and daughter's journey north unfolds as a cliffhanger, with the ending at a door in a border wall held back.
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2017The Talk
Moves across several decades of parents sitting their children down, building to a present-day scene between a mother and her teenage daughter.
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2016Dads #ShareTheLoad
The film follows a father who watches his daughter juggle everything, writes to her, then goes home and starts doing the laundry himself.
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2015Justino
Follows a night watchman who befriends the unseen day shift through mannequin scenes, with a payoff in which the colleagues he cares for remember him.
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2015#heimkommen ("Coming Home")
A father announces his own death so his scattered children finally come home, then greets the mourners at a laid table in a final twist.
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2014Mistakes
Time stops, both drivers step out to own their errors and the father pleads for his son, before they get back in and the crash happens.
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2014Puppy Love
A wordless story follows a puppy that, even after being adopted, keeps coming back to the Clydesdale it loves.
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2014Unsung Hero
Tracks a poor young man's daily kindnesses, which seem to earn him nothing, until the payoff reveals the girl in school and the plant thriving.
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2014Monty the Penguin
Builds an arc around Monty's growing loneliness, then turns on Christmas morning when the gift arrives and he is revealed as a toy brought alive by imagination.
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2014The Other Side
Mirror-image storylines follow one father on a daytime school run and, in a matching night world, as an undercover officer in a police sting.
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2013Christmas Miracle: Real-time Giving
Hidden cameras follow passengers from telling a virtual Santa their wishes before boarding to finding the presents waiting when they land.
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2013Reunion
A granddaughter turns her grandfather's memories of a friend lost at Partition into searches, tracks the friend down and reunites them on his birthday.
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2013The Scarecrow
In a dystopian city run by a fictional food giant, a scarecrow forced into factory work sets out to bring wholesome food back.
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2012L'Odyssée de Cartier
Sends a living panther on an epic journey through snowbound St Petersburg, along the Great Wall and into an imagined Indian palace before returning to the Place Vendôme.
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2012Best Job ("Thank You, Mom")
Follows mothers in four cities from pre-dawn wake-ups through driving and worrying, until the stands erupt and the camera finds each mother.
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2012The Beauty Inside
A romance about a man who wakes in a different body each day carries the brand truth that what is inside counts.
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2011Back to the Start
Tells a fable of a farmer whose family pig farm grows into an industrial factory until a crisis of conscience sends him back to the start.
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2011The Bear (L'Ours)
Follows a tantrum-prone director shooting a gothic epic, then reveals he is a bearskin rug whose love of film comes from years of watching Canal+.
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2011The Force
Tells a wordless story through a child's eyes behind a mask, with failure after failure building to one apparent triumph any culture can read.
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Heaven and HellSamsonite2011
Heaven and Hell
A single frieze, sculpted like a classical stone relief, tells two parallel stories of passengers in heaven and luggage in hell.
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2011Break Up
Dramatises a fee cut as a public break-up, from a seemingly mistaken tweet and staged split-ups to a farewell letter to the other banks.
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2010Selinah
Running the footage backwards creates a twist: what seems to be a decline is revealed at the end to have been a recovery.
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2010Parisian Love
Tells a love story entirely through typed searches, from studying abroad in Paris to impressing a French girl and finally assembling a cot.
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2010Write the Future
Branches a single touch of the ball into alternate futures of national glory or disgrace, making consequence itself the drama.
2000s
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2009COW ("Only Stwpd Cowz Txt N Drive")
A drama follows one teenage driver whose single text causes a crash that kills four people, letting the consequences unfold as a story.
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2006Happiness Factory
Follows a coin into a vending machine and the bottle's journey through an animated kingdom of creatures that ferry, cap, kiss and chill it.
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2005Love Story
Unfolds a four-episode soap opera in which a tomboy's love, rejection and skincare makeover end with the twist that her best friend loved her all along.
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2005Not Even Once ("Just Once")
A girl's repeated promise of doing things just once escalates scene by scene until her little sister makes the same vow.
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2005noitulovE
Reverses time as three drinkers de-evolve through ice ages and dinosaurs to primordial ooze, making the brand's patience line literal on an epic scale.
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I Love BeesMicrosoft / Bungie (Halo 2)2004
I Love Bees
Answering the phones unlocks instalments of a radio-style drama about an alien army threatening Earth, scattered across websites and the physical world.
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2003What Happens Here, Stays Here
Its vignettes hint at the secrets visitors carry home without ever showing a casino, letting implied stories do the selling.
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2002Lamp
A woman discards her old lamp for a new one in a melancholy mini-drama whose twist turns the guilt of replacing furniture into the brand's argument.
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2002The Sculptor
A young man smitten with a print ad reshapes his boxy old car into a 206, a quest showing the car is wanted enough to sculpt by hand.
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2001BMW Films: The Hire
Eight genuine short films by leading directors follow a mysterious Driver, putting entertainment first and distributing it by pull rather than interruption.
1990s
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1999Michael Power
Each episode runs as a mini-adventure in which the hero foils villains and saves the day before unwinding with a Guinness.
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1999Surfer
A surfer waits out the ocean and then rides a wave that erupts into white horses, a parable whose payoff rewards patience.
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1994Yebo Gogo (Windmills)
A roadside haggle turns when the yuppie locks his keys in the car and the unflappable vendor calmly produces a Vodacom phone.
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1993Aaron Burr (got milk?)
The plot builds towards a radio quiz prize and then strands its hero, dramatising the insight that people notice milk only when it runs out.
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1991Heritage Minutes
Each minute dramatises a moment from Canadian history, such as a surgeon mapping a patient's brain, with characters and a payoff rather than a lecture.
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1990Le Lion (La Lionne)
A woman and a lion face off over one bottle on an African hilltop, a reversed Beauty and the Beast that she wins with a primal cry.
1980s
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1989Bud Bowl
Six stop-motion spots spread through the broadcast tell one continuing football game between beer bottles, so viewers follow it from pregame to the final quarter.
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1988Christmas Express (Hometown Express X'mas)
A girl waits on a night platform, the crowd disperses and her boyfriend seems absent, until he moonwalks out from behind a pillar with a gift.
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1987O Primeiro Sutiã (My First Bra)
Ninety seconds follow one girl through a rite of passage, ending on a line that ties the brand to a first you never forget.
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19841984
Stages the launch as a short dystopian film whose climax shatters Big Brother, mentioning no features and showing no product in use.
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1983J.R. Hartley ("Fly Fishing")
An elderly man fails to find a fly-fishing book in shop after shop until the directory locates a copy, and the twist reveals he wrote it.
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1981Myriam ("Le 2 septembre, j'enlève le haut")
A teaser in three instalments, with a model promising to undress and then doing so, builds suspense towards a payoff naming the advertiser.
1970s
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1979Hey Kid, Catch! ("Mean Joe Greene")
A scowling, limping star accepts a Coke from a young fan, drains it and repays him with his jersey, a complete character reversal.
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1972Three Brothers ("Mikey Likes It")
Two boys too wary to try a healthy cereal test it on their little brother who hates everything, and his surprising approval is the payoff.
1960s
1950s
1930s
1920s
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1926They Laughed When I Sat Down at the Piano
The headline stages a guest jeered at the piano who then silences the room, with long copy paying off the reversal.
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1925Often a Bridesmaid but Never a Bride
The sad tale of Edna, nearing thirty and never a bride, dramatises the problem before the cure is offered.
1910s
1900s
Storytelling: how it works
Storytelling ads work like short films: there are characters, a situation, a turn and a payoff, and the brand's role is revealed through the story rather than announced. Many of the most celebrated commercials, from Christmas epics to sixty-second dramas, are built this way.
How to spot it
- A beginning, a middle and an end, even in thirty seconds.
- A character the audience follows and cares about.
- A twist or reveal that reframes everything before it.
Why it works
Stories hold attention, invite people to fill in meaning and are easy to retell. The challenge is to make the brand essential to the story rather than a logo tacked on at the end, and each example below shows how that was done.