Every week, the Friday Ad5 rounds up five campaigns worth your time — work that made us stop scrolling, raise an eyebrow, or occasionally feel something we weren’t expecting.
This week runs the full range. There’s a condom brand deploying AI-generated kaiju monsters to make STI statistics feel like a disaster movie. There’s a beauty brand that identified a gap in the hearing aid market and built a product to fill it.
A Flipkart summer campaign built around the very particular energy of the Indian uncle in summer, a McDonald’s Philippines film that expands who the word “mother” covers, and a Singapore campaign from Ogilvy and the CNB that gives voice to the people drug abuse leaves behind.
Different creative challenges all connected by a refusal to reach for the obvious answer first.
Four Seasons Naked Goes Full Monster Movie to Make STIs Feel Real
Rising STI rates among Gen Z in Australia are the brief. The response from independent creative agency Emotive and AI film production specialists AiCandy Australia is a campaign film called “The Rise of the STIs” — and it does exactly what the title suggests.
A casual decision not to use a condom quickly escalates into cinematic chaos: a giant baby kaiju crashes through a city, followed by monstrous personifications of gonorrhoea, chlamydia, and syphilis tearing through streets and buildings. The absurdity is deliberate. Research from La Trobe University shows more than half of young Australians didn’t use a condom the last time they had sex; data from the Kirby Institute shows more than 101,000 chlamydia cases in Australia in 2024, around half among 20–29-year-olds.
The social rollout is built to evolve — characters will respond directly to audience comments, turning reactions into part of the storytelling. The campaign is led by Snapchat, supported by influencer seeding and PR.
Flipkart Finds Its Summer Campaign in the Uncle on the Couch
According to a new Flipkart campaign, every Indian summer produces a familiar character: the uncle who has fully stopped caring what anyone thinks about how he’s dressed. Flipkart and 22feet turned that cultural fixture into a campaign for the SASA LELE half-yearly summer sale, timed to the annual push for cooling appliances.
“The classic summer uncle phenomenon returns every summer and is endured by the rest of the country,” said Vishnu Srivastav, Chief Creative Experience Officer at 22feet. “We all know the obvious enemy, which is heat. But when we looked beyond that, we found another enemy, which is the sheer embarrassment that family members go through. And the rest is some Vijay Raaz magic.”
The campaign uses the uncle’s heat-defying wardrobe choices as the hook, and the solution — upgrade the cooling appliances — as the relief. Humor-led, culturally specific, and anchored to a sale. Exactly what it needs to be.
McDonald’s Philippines Asks Who Really Raises a Child
Mother’s Day campaigns tend to flatten the subject. This one from McDonald’s Philippines and Leo Manila doesn’t. “My Many Mothers” follows a young working mother and the network of people who fill in around her — an aunt who handles school pickups, another who helps with homework, a grandmother who provides steadiness and wisdom.
“Motherhood today is shaped by real-life demands and realities. There are single parents, overseas workers, and blended families — but beyond that, there are also people who choose to take on the role of a mother in both big and small ways,” said Ada Almendras-Lazaro, Chief Marketing Officer, McDonald’s Philippines.
Directed by Joel Limchoc, the film keeps its focus on the repeated, everyday acts of care rather than grand gestures. It’s a portrait of how raising a child in the Philippines is often a shared responsibility — and a quiet acknowledgment that the people doing that work don’t always share the title.
Ogilvy Singapore and the CNB Tell the Tragic Story of the People Drug Abuse Leaves Behind
Launched for Singapore’s Drug Victims Remembrance Day, “Stories, Unfinished” from Ogilvy Singapore and the Central Narcotics Bureau is built around a simple premise: the consequences of drug abuse are most often carried quietly by the people around the user. The campaign sets out to make those people visible.
A short film follows the fictional story of “Ryan” before and after drug abuse, tracing the impact on those he left behind. Three teaser films extend the narrative from the perspectives of his best friend, girlfriend, and mother. From there, the campaign moves off-screen entirely — “The Library of Stories, Unfinished” is a live public exhibition running May 15–17 at Suntec City, featuring three room sets staffed by actors portraying characters from the film. Visitors can ask questions, listen, or simply spend a moment with them.
“With ‘Stories, Unfinished’, we wanted to create an experience that shifts audiences from passive awareness to emotional understanding by showing not just what drug abuse does to a person, but what it leaves unresolved for everyone around them,” said Troy Lim, Group Creative Director, Ogilvy Singapore. Pop-up installations travel to heartland locations from May 23 to June 27. Admission is free.
Wardah and Dentsu Indonesia Build a Hearing Aid the Market Never Thought to Make
Most hearing aids are designed to sit inside the ear. For hijab-wearing women, that creates a practical problem: fabric covering the ears can limit the effectiveness of standard devices. According to the release, 1 in 3 Indonesian women aged 50 and above experience partial hearing loss, and wearing fabric over the ears can increase the risk of falls and accidents by up to 60%.
Wardah and Dentsu Indonesia’s answer is Hear in Hijab — a brooch-style hearing aid worn outside the hijab that transmits sound wirelessly to the ear at up to 100dB of enhanced clarity. Developed in partnership with Digital Nativ, the device weighs 12 grams and is compatible with most hijab fabrics. The first devices have reached selected users, with a second phase underway to widen reach across Indonesia.
Hear in Hijab won the Grand Prix of Medium — the highest honor in its category — at Citra Pariwara, Indonesia’s most prestigious creative awards. The case for inclusion-led innovation doesn’t get much more concrete than this.
Seen something clever, quirky, important, or downright brilliant? Let us know.
