The top 5 creative campaigns you need to know about right now

It’s been trendy in recent years for advertising to tackle social problems, not just sell products. These efforts have been hit or miss, but this week we saw several strong campaigns in this area. Whether addressing digital addiction, littering or the scourge of gun violence, three campaigns on this week’s Top 5 used impressive creativity to come at endemic problems from a fresh angle. We also saw a soda brand bring back a classic jingle and a casket company launch a talk show from inside a pair of coffins. See the full Top 5 below. See all of Ad Age’s 2024 Creativity Award winners here 5. Fanta: Wanta Fanta Agency: Majority Coca-Cola-owned fruit soda Fanta takes a trip down memory lane, while also looking to the future, in reviving its old “Wanta Fanta” jingle—in a dizzyingly fun 60-second spot from Majority. The song feels tailor-made for TikTok (indeed, the social plans for this campaign are vast), but the TV spot is impressively wacky and eye-catching and just has that undefinable cool factor. Also, it’s great to see a small agency such as Majority taking on big global projects like this. 4. Titan Casket: Grave Conversations Production Companies: Good Fiend Films, TheYearOfElan Productions Talking about death is hard. If you’re a casket company, that’s a problem. But Titan Casket has been slowly working to make itself more approachable—by weaving humor into some of its content. The company recently worked with Maximum Effort on a tongue-in-cheek campaign aimed at “burying” daylight saving time. Now, we get another campaign that’s even more impressive: a celebrity talk show where the guests lie in coffins and talk about the end of life (among other things). The online video series is way funnier than you’d expect, with David Dastmalchian proving to be a skillful host and Kate Siegel as a great first guest. We’re wishing “Grave Conversations” a long and successful run above ground. 3. Heineken x Bodega: The Boring Phone Agency: LePub Digital detox is popular right now, and Heineken leans into the trend with The Boring Phone, an actual phone that the brewer has created with help from U.S. fashion brand Bodega and European phone maker Human Mobile Devices (HMD). The Boring Phone isn’t capable of much. You can send and receive calls and text me ssages, take a few low-res photos and play a cheesy-looking game called Quick Snake. And that’s the point: You shouldn’t be on your phone while you’re out on the town with friends anyway. Expect to see more digital detox campaigns as the year goes on. Ad Age Creativity Bookmark our section covering the best in brand creativity every day Read more here 2. Change the Ref: American Cancer Story Agency: Klick Health Gun violence is usually thought of as more of a political issue than a public health issue, but it’s certainly the latter as well. In fact, among children, it’s a full-on public health crisis, as guns are now the No. 1 killer of people under 18 in the U.S. Change the Ref, the longtime gun-control organization, emphasizes this in a shocking new film that conflates gun violence deaths and cancer deaths (the No. 3 cause of death among kids), and suggests we should be tackling both issues equally. The spot, produced by Taking Over Films, is notable not just for its framing of the issue in a new way, but for the explicit violence at the end—something most gun-violence PSAs shy away from. 1. Coca-Cola: Recycle Me Agency: Ogilvy New York We’ve seen a lot of out-of-home ads from Coca-Cola recently, from VML’s global campaign with unauthorized street paintings of the Coke logo to Ogilvy Paris’ “Catch the Coke” digital boards in Europe. But it’s this “Recycle Me” campaign from Ogilvy New York that seems destined to bring home some big awards. The ads feature crushed versions of Coke’s iconic logo as a reminder to recycle. The brand said it used various techniques to crush the cans, including mechanical presses and vacuums, and extracted the imagery from there. There’s a lot to like about this work: It’s simple and striking and doesn’t shy away from breaking down an iconic brand asset to memorably make its point. See all of Ad Age’s 2024 Creativity Award winners here

The top 5 creative campaigns you need to know about right now

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