Every week, the Friday Ad5 rounds up five pieces of work worth your attention — campaigns that caught the eye, made a point, or quietly did something no one else thought to try. Or something we just simply liked.
This week, geography gets stretched in several directions. Cathay Pacific makes a virtue of how much Hong Kong can squeeze into a square kilometer, while China Mobile goes considerably bigger, sending one determined romantic through dimension after dimension in search of a missed connection.
SNICKERS turns a hungry sports fan into an actual troll, Apple gets in on a joke Mac owners have been making about themselves for years, and Uber gives Gareth T three minutes to finish a love confession. Sometimes a little constraint goes a long way.
Cathay Pacific Finds More to Discover by Covering Less Ground
Cathay Pacific and Leo Singapore put Hong Kong’s density to work in ‘Hong Kong: The Most Fun Per km²,’ a social-first campaign built around the variety packed into the city’s neighborhoods.
Creators from Southeast Asia and Oceania were each challenged to explore a single square kilometer, uncovering food, culture, shopping and other experiences without covering much ground. The same device extends to social, with Instagram’s grid transformed into a map of Hong Kong.
SNICKERS Turns a Hangry Sports Fan Into an Actual Troll
SNICKERS takes ‘You’re Not You When You’re Hungry’ into Australian sport with T&P Australia and Publicis One Mars, turning actor Broden Kelly into a prosthetic-covered hunger troll with plenty to say from the sidelines.
The hero film has Kelly directing a diatribe at unsuspecting amateur players before another spectator hands him a SNICKERS. Separate films take the idea into AFL and NRL sporting moments, giving the global platform a distinctly Australian setting.
China Mobile Sends a Missed Connection Across 10,086 Dimensions
F5 Shanghai and China Mobile take a missed connection to cosmic proportions in ‘Cosmic True Heart,’ an AI-generated short film created for the brand’s 10086 customer service platform around China’s Qixi Festival.
After losing contact with a woman he meets on the subway, a young man searches for her across parallel worlds ranging from the Wild West to alien landscapes. His journey eventually reaches the 10,086th dimension, where China Mobile’s hotline reconnects the call – and gives him another shot.
Apple Takes Japan’s ‘Mac Doya’ Meme Out of the Café
Apple and TBWA\Media Arts Lab Tokyo lean into Japan’s ‘Mac Doya’ meme for the MacBook Neo, teaming with four-member creator group Zeropuri to take the proud art of publicly displaying your Mac to increasingly unlikely places.
@am0princess
After starting, naturally enough, in a café, Zeropuri takes the joke to Harajuku, parks, beaches and ramen lines, before things get stranger with appearances inside a claw machine, a phone booth and footage framed as CCTV. All of the content runs through the group’s TikTok account.
Uber Gives Gareth T Three Minutes to Finish What He Started
Uber Hong Kong and Special give Cantopop singer-songwriter Gareth T another chance at romance in ‘Keep Doing What You Do,’ a new platform built around what riders can do with the minutes between booking an Uber and its arrival.
The hero film revisits Gareth T’s song ‘Your Ride Is Here,’ in which an early Uber interrupts his confession. This time he gets three minutes – enough for things to escalate into levitation, rain, doves and a sword before his ride turns up.
Seen something clever, quirky, important, or downright brilliant? Let us know.
