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

Most industries strive to minimize uncertainty, but sometimes that’s where advertising thrives. We saw several examples this past week, from AI’s endemic randomness put to good use in a tourism effort to a brewer’s lightning-fast response to a smashed billboard. We also enjoyed surprisingly weird work from two different continents—and one ad whose location may forever be a secret. Below, check out the Top 5 campaigns of the week. Ad Age A-List & Creativity Awards Final deadline approaching for annual program Enter here 5. Silk & Spice: Meant to Be Discovered Agency: Stream and Tough Guy A billboard on a deserted island won’t get many IRL eyeballs, but it was eye-catching to the rest of us nonetheless. The fun visual alone does a lot of the heavy lifting here, but wine brand Silk & Spice also added a treasure-hunt element to its “Meant to Be Discovered” campaign. Anyone who actually locates the remote ad will find a wine bottle, corkscrew and glass waiting for them in a box attached to the structure—so you can enjoy a solo happy hour as you ponder how to get home. 4. NBC Sports: Peyton’s Olympic Pitch Agency: In-house Getting Peyton Manning to front your sports marketing campaign isn’t exactly a groundbreaking strategy. Thankfully, everything else about this NBC Sports promo was delightfully unexpected. Manning quickly veers into bizarroland with the ludicrous suggestion that the network kick off its Paris Olympics coverage next year by building a baguette blimp. Soon, Manning picking pieces off the spongy dirigible and eating them is a LOL moment, and the whole spot is entertainingly odd—part one of what will hopefully be a charming campaign for months to come. 3. PRISM+: As Close as You Can Get Agency: MullenLowe Singapore Speaking of odd, this Singaporean campaign for a maker of QLED TVs takes this week’s WTF honors with its depiction of a naked dude on a kitchen table getting stuffed like a turkey—a disconcerting metaphor for how immersive PRISM+’s TV-watching experience is. And that’s just one of three wacky executions, brought to life by renowned oddball director Wuthisak “Un” Anarnkaporn. In a region that loves its absurdist comedy, these spots are no doubt going over well. 2. Visit Myrtle Beach: Mitarry Best Agency: MMGY Global Yes, we’ve seen lots of campaigns use generative AI to create intentionally bad creative for laughs. But this Myrtle Beach tourism ad on Reddit (reimagining the beach resort as a horribly futuristic place called “Mittary Best”) really stands out, not just for the weirdo imagery but for the commentary around it. For every wacky pic in the Reddit article, MMGY wrote some very funny copy, faux-saluting AI for its ingenuity—and faux-bashing the agency for being second-rate. As the bots come for our jobs, at least we know we can comfort ourselves with gallows humor. Ad Age Creativity Bookmark our section covering the best in brand creativity every day Read more here 1. Coors Light: Shohei Ohtani Can Agency: Rethink Plenty of reactive advertising involves doing a lazy social-media post and calling it a day. But when Shohei Ohtani smashed a Coors Light billboard with a foul ball in New York in August, Rethink jumped in with a bigger plan. Soon it unveiled a commemorative can, featuring a black square that mirrored the dead pixels on the damaged digital board at Citi Field. It also welcomed Ohtani’s team home with activations at Angel Stadium in early September. Fun and well executed, this was another good reminder to double down whenever your brand is presented with an unexpected spotlight in culture. Ad Age A-List & Creativity Awards Final deadline approaching for annual program Enter here

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

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