Oleksandr Usyk and Tyson Fury can’t escape each other ahead of their upcoming fight.
Boxing and Formula 1 racing aren’t among the very top sports in the U.S., but they’re both growing in popularity—and they lead our top 5 this week, thanks to two top-notch films created in two different parts of the world.
The rest of this week’s list is a bit of a grab bag, but a fun one—with a small soda player punking Coke over its AI holiday ads, a notably immersive stunt enticing German tourists to Canada and the latest bonkers collab from Liquid Death.
See the full top 5 below.
Coca-Cola’s AI-generated holiday ads were met with derision from many corners of the internet, and all-natural soda brand Zevia piled on with an amusing takedown of its own. The second half of the spot is a bit vanilla, but it’s still memorable and fun—and right on brand for Zevia to call out the artificiality of any kind.
Liquid Death has become a master of collabs, but we didn’t see this one coming. The canned water brand teamed up with Kimberly-Clark’s Depend to create the “Pit Diaper,” a quilted pleather undergarment that holds Depend’s Guards for Men—and is designed to let concertgoers stay in the mosh pit rather than walk to a bathroom to pee. It’s surprising that K-C signed off on this, but it goes to show the range of brands eager for a bit of that Liquid Death special sauce.
Honors for most curious tech project of the week go to Zulu Alpha Kilo for its Destination British Columbia tourism campaign, which turned a car wash in Germany into an immersive ad for B.C. Lots of Germans use car washes (anti-pollution laws forbid people from washing their cars at home), and Zulu—working with production company Unit9—tricked this one out with all manner of audio and visual delights to simulate the experience of being in the Canadian wilderness.
Melina Matsoukas makes some of advertising’s most beautiful films, and her tribute to Lewis Hamilton is up there with her best—capturing the human story behind the driver’s seven Formula 1 world championships. Stormzy’s “Blinded by Your Grace” sets the perfect tone, as Matsoukas mixes new and found footage into an indelible meditation on role models and teamwork. Just brilliant craft.
Boxing trailers are really becoming a thing, and acclaimed director collective Megaforce shot this latest one, which mixes violence and humor in much the same way the sport’s best rivalries do. The occasion this time is the upcoming Oleksandr Usyk vs. Tyson Fury heavyweight rematch. The film shows each fighter haunted by the other, accosted by hallucinations wherever they go. There’s a lightness of touch here that you wouldn’t associate with boxing—the same was true of last year’s Tyson Fury vs. Francis Ngannou trailer—and it really helps to broaden the sport’s appeal. The great craft around that wry tone is what really makes the work breakthrough.
