MJZ brought levity to a world in upheaval

There may not have been better a moment of humanity caught on film in 2024 than 98-year-old Dick Van Dyke dancing barefoot to Coldplay’s “All My Love” in a music video shot by Spike Jonze of MJZ. See all of Ad Age’s 2025 Agency A-List winners here In an extended cut of the video, Van Dyke muses about his family and a lifetime in the performing arts as Coldplay’s Chris Martin sits at the piano. “I think I’m one of those lucky people who got to do for a living what I would have done anyway,” Van Dyke says. “All My Love” was among the work turned out by MJZ last year—including many brand campaigns as well—that highlighted a collective desire for normalcy and levity in a year marked by global upheaval and strife. And it was accomplished as MJZ overcame industry challenges forcing it to do more with less—significantly smaller production budgets and unfavorable payment timing by clients and agencies. “With long-held assumptions and beliefs of safety, integrity and interconnectedness jarringly turned on their heads or demolished entirely, focusing on the daily and the smaller things in life have provided a refuge from the dizzying upset,” the Los Angeles-based production company—with offices in New York and London—wrote in its A-List entry. There was little evidence in MJZ’s 2024 work of internal struggles, but it tended to mix joy with sadness. Even the ridiculous—Verdan Rupic’s “Believe in Chicken” for KFC—came with a message: Hold on to something. Director Steve Ayson’s spot “Coat,” promoting Life360’s Tile tracking devices, is a dark comedy in which a boy overhears his parents bitterly bickering over a lost coat, then does all he can to be sure his next one stays with him. The ad, from agency Alto, says Tile helps you “family-proof your family.” “Sicker Than the Patients,” Henry Hobson’s emotional PSA for the Frontline19 charity, shows tragic glimpses of health care workers who show remarkable strength and bravery with their patients but who struggle to cope behind the scenes. The work captures moments patients never see: a health care worker breaking down in the aisle of a pharmacy, the emotional toll that wishing an ill patient a happy birthday can exact, an EMS worker retreating to a bathroom in shock to wash the off blood. The film notes that over half of workers at the NHS [the U.K. national health care system] suffer poor mental health; it then shows the same workers regaining composure. Frontline19 supports wellness for health care workers. The basic human joys of sunshine and delicious food come to life in “Find Your Summer,” an ad for ice cream brand Magnum, but not before director Juan Cabral’s work reminds the viewer of how a city in winter can be a cold, gray and lonely place. In Cabral’s ad for the Entertainer toy shop, viewers meet Ray, a purple, blue and orange plush toy that sings along to Baxter Dury’s cover of “It Must Have Been Love” by Roxette, as it gets plowed into by another toy, illustrating the fickleness of children and their possessions. Cabral’s best work may have been for Axe: a two-minute music video created with (and featuring a cameo from) Argentine DJ Bizarrap, showing couples on first dates experiencing an explosion of attraction—set to a Bizarrap-remixed version of the ’90s hit “What Is Love.” See all of Ad Age’s 2025 Agency A-List winners here

MJZ brought levity to a world in upheaval

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