Ahead of this year’s Cannes Lions, Ogilvy APAC has unveiled its 2026 Cannes Lions Top 10 Contenders, selected by Reed Collins, Chief Creative Officer of Ogilvy APAC.
According to the agency, “the selection reflects the breadth of Borderless Creativity, spanning work that moves people, shifts behaviour, reimagines categories, and turns local insights into ideas with wider cultural resonance.”
Here are Reed’s picks:
Vaseline Originals
Client: Unilever (Vaseline)
Office: Ogilvy Singapore
The Creator Economy Enters a New Era: Co-Ownership
BACKGROUND
Vaseline has been shaped by 3.5M+ organic “hacks” shared online, from brow tamers to primers. But the internet rewards virality over originality, and the creators who started those hacks are usually the first to be forgotten.
IDEA
We didn’t just verify Vaseline’s most popular hacks. We tracked down the people who started them. Creators like Jen Chae (@frmheadtotoe) and Lauren Luke (@panacea81), whose hacks date back to 2008, became Vaseline OGs, with their hacks turned into official Vaseline products.
EXECUTION
Every product credited the creator, and every sale paid them. Launched via TikTok Live and TikTok Shop with the OG creators front and centre, the programme grew into an ongoing network and product pipeline. Hailed by Financial Times as “setting a new standard for creator collaboration” and by Elle L’Officiel as “an important step in the influencer equity industry.”
Officially Unsponsored
Client: Wheelchair Rugby Australia (The Steelers)
Office: Ogilvy Melbourne
The Rugby Team That Rebranded Itself as ‘Officially Unsponsored’ and Secured 5 Sponsors in Weeks
BACKGROUND
The Steelers have won more medals and World Championships than any other Australian Paralympic or Olympic team. Yet for decades, they remained entirely unsponsored—a reality shared by too many disabled sports teams.
IDEA
We turned their unsponsored status into their loudest asset. The Steelers retired the iconic green and gold kit and relaunched as Officially Unsponsored, in blank white uniforms, with a single QR code where the sponsor patch should have been.
EXECUTION
Launched February 2026, the rebrand sparked national press and TV coverage across ABC, The Australian, Herald Sun, news.com.au, Sky News and more. The QR code led fans to The SponsorShop, where they could directly back the team and publicly call on major brands to do the same.
Indianis Dentris
Client: Colgate
Office: Brand David Mumbai
A Beautiful, Harmful Flower Species Growing in Most Indian Bathrooms
BACKGROUND
In India, toothbrushes are a blind spot. Because they don’t visibly deplete like soap or shampoo, people forget to replace them for months—causing bristles to fray beyond reason and fuelling a national oral health crisis of gum damage, cavities, and sensitivity.
IDEA
We turned the problem into its own cure. Using the visual language of botanical photography, we reframed India’s frayed toothbrushes as a newly discovered flower species: Indianis Dentris.
EXECUTION
A highly publicised photo exhibition at Mumbai Botanical Gardens put the “specimens” on display, each accompanied by a QR code revealing time-lapse footage of the flowers “blooming” from real worn-out brushes, before sending viewers straight to a microsite to buy a fresh one.
Cokesticks
Client: The Coca-Cola Company
Office: Ogilvy Ho Chi Minh City
A Chopstick Reimagined to Make Coke Part of Every Asian Meal
BACKGROUND
With Western food, Coke is the default choice. But with Asian food, Coke isn’t always the first drink that comes to mind. The challenge was simple: how do we put Coke back on every dining table across Southeast Asia?
IDEA
Introducing Cokesticks. We took something quintessentially Asian and reimagined it in the silhouette of Coca-Cola’s iconic contour bottle. A small, playful format that turned every meal into a Coke moment, making people think of Coke before they had even ordered.
EXECUTION
We placed Cokesticks where food decisions happen: restaurants, street food stalls, and delivery apps. Then we amplified them through KOLs, turning every bite into a Coke moment. Available across Southeast Asia, the campaign made Coke feel like the missing piece of the meal. So when people think Asian food, they think Coca-Cola.
Renu vs. The City
Client: St. Jude India ChildCare Centres
Office: Ogilvy Mumbai
Unlike Campaigns That Measure Success in Units Sold, This Campaign Measured Its Triumph in Lives Saved
BACKGROUND
Every year, 32,000 Indian families travel from poor villages to cities for free cancer treatment for their children. Treatment takes months. Savings run out within weeks. Most end up living on the footpath, mistaken by passersby for the homeless.
IDEA
Instead of asking people to watch suffering, we let a child show us survival. Renu vs. The City is a film where 9-year-old Renu, a real cancer patient, calmly offers viewers a “guide” to living on the pavement while battling the disease.
EXECUTION
Shot in a single continuous take with no relief cuts, the film uses Renu’s innocent, matter-of-fact voice to deliver an unbearable truth with dignity. The childlike eagerness draws viewers in. The reality she reveals makes it impossible to look away, long enough to understand both the problem and the role St. Jude plays in solving it.
Unfading Love
Client: Thai Life Insurance
Office: Ogilvy Bangkok
A Mother’s Love, Made Impossible to Forget
BACKGROUND
In 2024, Oxford named “brain rot” its Word of the Year, describing the excessive consumption of low-value, toxic online content. In Thailand, this negativity continues to spread across social platforms year after year. As a brand rooted in the enduring values of love and life for over 80 years, Thai Life Insurance wanted to invite people to make social media meaningful again.
IDEA
In Thailand, parents never stop being parents. No matter how old their children become, they continue to worry, care, and protect. Unfading Love brings this truth to life through the story of a mother living with Alzheimer’s, whose grown son has asthma. Afraid that one day she may forget the name of his medicine, she chooses to have it tattooed onto her skin in her son’s own handwriting.
EXECUTION
Rather than relying on overt branding or conventional health messaging, the film lets the human story lead. Through restrained direction, authentic performance, and visual symbolism, the defining moment of the tattoo becomes more than a plot point. It becomes love made permanent. The film extended beyond the screen through #MakeSocialMediaMeaningful, inspiring people across generations to share their own stories of care, love, and meaning.
Love Hurts
Client: Unilever (Vaseline)
Office: Ogilvy Singapore and VML Johannesburg
A Daily Skincare Ritual, Reframed as an Act of Love
BACKGROUND
Across diverse Black diasporic communities, applying Vaseline before leaving the house is a daily ritual. It is instinctive, physical, and deeply embedded in family health and wellbeing. A gesture of protection most children resist and most parents insist on, rarely captured on screen.
IDEA
Love Hurts set out to immortalise this ritual through cinematic storytelling. Rather than explaining the behaviour, the film observes it, letting performance, pacing, and visual detail do the work. The hands. The movement. The resistance. The care.
EXECUTION
The film pairs the ritual with a stripped-back cover of Love Hurts by Nazareth, whose title became the creative inspiration. The track holds the ritual’s emotional complexity, acknowledging the physical discomfort of the application while carrying the shift from childhood resistance to adult recognition of care. No product claims. No voiceover. A wellness message transformed into something felt rather than stated.
The Nipple Sponsorship
Client: Unilever (Vaseline)
Office: Ogilvy Singapore
The Most Unexpected Sponsorship in Marathon History
BACKGROUND
Every year, 100,000+ marathon finishers cross the line with bleeding nipples. Runners have long known the hack: Vaseline. But amid the flood of training, pacing, and hydration tips dominating marathon prep content, protection against nipple chafing kept getting buried.
IDEA
Vaseline signed the first-ever sponsorship deal not with athletes, but with their nipples. Runners who had long championed the hack became Official Nipple Ambassadors, with real sponsorship perks: gear, supply, and marathon tickets.
EXECUTION
Ambassadors hijacked marathon prep content across social, turning carb-loading and pacing videos into nipple-protection content, making skin protection an essential part of every runner’s plan. Through TikTok Shop, they promoted Vaseline to their communities, with every purchase generating a revenue share back to the ambassadors.
The Switch Hit by Mikkeller
Client: Mikkeller
Office: Ogilvy Taipei
Reversing the Curse for Taiwanese Baseball Fans
BACKGROUND
Baseball is Taiwan’s national sport, but caring too much has created a uniquely Taiwanese phenomenon: the “jinx curse.” Fearing they might cost Team Taiwan the game, thousands of fans want to watch, but don’t dare.
IDEA
During the World Baseball Classic (WBC), Mikkeller hosted The Switch Hit, an “unwatch party” at its Taipei flagship bar. On screen, classic Taiwanese period dramas. Hidden underneath, the live baseball game, delivered in real time through the characters’ own voices.
EXECUTION
A live WBC data feed was fed into a text-to-speech engine powered by ElevenLabs voice cloning, recreating each period drama character’s voice. Real-time lip sync software synchronised the actors’ mouths to the new commentary, while live broadcast direction swapped out the original audio. Qing dynasty characters delivered lines like “Tseng retires the red-hot Kim Do-young on a fly ball to right!” in perfect sync. Coincidentally, Taiwan beat Korea 5:4 that day, its first-ever WBC win over Korea.
Your Skin is Your Armor
Client: Bulk Homme
Office: VML & Ogilvy Japan
Turning Skincare into Samurai Armor
BACKGROUND
In Japan, skincare brands sell beauty and perfection, not protection. Bulk Homme, a men’s skincare brand, saw an opening to speak a different language: health, function, and a quieter masculinity no brand in the category represented.
IDEA
The answer lived in Japan’s own history: Kacchu, traditional samurai armor that was light, durable and built to protect. The perfect metaphor for what skincare should do daily against skin’s most potent threats: dryness, wind, sunlight, and cold.
EXECUTION
Partnering with Japanese craftsmen, Bulk Homme’s entire product range (The Emulsion, The Body Wash, The Shaving Foam, The Face Wash) was meticulously transformed into a modern, stylised suit of samurai armor. A campaign film and photography series placed the armored samurai against each of the four elemental threats, turning a skincare message into a cultural statement.
