Eco-friendly rides

Launched in Ireland in August 2024, Heineken's 'It's your call' campaign, crafted by ad agency Rothco, delivers a compelling message within the Alcoholic Drinks industry through a captivating film medium. This campaign strategically positions Heineken as a brand that respects consumer autonomy and responsible drinking choices, emphasizing empowerment and personal accountability. With a single impactful media asset, the campaign leverages storytelling to create emotional engagement, encouraging viewers to make mindful decisions when enjoying alcoholic beverages. The campaign’s tone is approachable yet thoughtful, reflecting Heineken’s commitment to quality and social responsibility while fostering a strong connection with its audience. Presented in English, the campaign has garnered steady engagement, demonstrating its relevance and resonance in its target market. Overall, 'It's your call' effectively combines creative excellence with socially conscious messaging, reinforcing Heineken’s brand values in a competitive category and inspiring consumers to take ownership of their drinking experience.

In 2014, Transat Holidays launched an innovative ambient campaign called Cuban Taxi Surprise in Canada, designed to captivate and engage the urban audience in Toronto. Created by the ad agency Dentsu, this campaign featured a cleverly placed Cuban taxi that surprised unsuspecting passengers by offering them all-inclusive vacation tickets to picturesque Cuba. The strategy behind this activation was to create a memorable and authentic brand experience that not only highlighted Transat Holidays' expertise in transporting travelers to exotic destinations but also reinforced its position as Canada’s leading holiday travel airline. Through this immersive approach, the campaign aimed to evoke emotions of excitement and spontaneity associated with holiday travel, encouraging immediate brand interest and positive word-of-mouth. With a focus on genuine interaction, it connected the transport industry’s service element directly to the destination appeal, showcasing the ease and joy of booking a vacation with Transat Holidays. The campaign was supported by broad social media engagement on platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube, driving viewers to explore more about Air Transat’s diverse destinations and services. The accompanying media asset garnered significant attention with nearly half a million views, hundreds of likes, and dozens of comments, underscoring the strong consumer resonance and digital reach achieved. By combining real-world surprise elements with a robust online presence, the Cuban Taxi Surprise campaign effectively blended offline excitement with online amplification, embodying a strategic and creative milestone in ambient advertising for the brand and the transport industry.

The Christmas surprise campaign, launched in Canada in December 2014 for the brand Metro and created by the ad agency Publicis, exemplifies a strategically crafted digital initiative within the Retail Services industry. This campaign leverages a single impactful media asset to engage audiences during the festive season, aiming to connect emotionally with consumers through a narrative that blends holiday warmth with the convenience and community spirit associated with Metro. Emphasizing digital media ensures precise targeting and measurable engagement, aligning with contemporary consumption habits where online platforms play a central role in holiday shopping decisions. The collaboration with Postproduction experts Mikros Image Canada Inc. and the coordination efforts led by Élodie Pollet highlight a seamless production process, enhancing the visual storytelling and overall creative quality. Positioned as a festive digital experience, the campaign successfully uses the Christmas theme to evoke joy and surprise, driving brand affinity and consumer interaction. By situating Metro as a thoughtful and approachable retailer during a peak shopping period, the campaign not only boosts immediate sales potential but also strengthens long-term brand loyalty. The concise yet emotive digital asset contributes significantly to these objectives, reinforcing Metro’s market presence while showcasing effective use of digital channels in retail advertising. This initiative stands as a compelling example of holiday-themed marketing that combines emotional resonance with strategic digital media deployment to create memorable consumer experiences. { "campaign_title": "Christmas surprise", "country": "Canada", "publication_date": "December 2014", "brand": "Metro", "agency": "Publicis", "media_type": "Digital", "industry": "Retail Services", "media_asset_count": 1, "postproduction": "Mikros Image Canada Inc.", "production_postproduction_coordination": "Élodie Pollet" }

The campaign Buyout, Conspiracy Bookstore, Corner Office, launched in the United States in November 2017 for FedEx by BBDO, strategically highlights the reliability and affordability of FedEx Ground as an essential shipping partner for small businesses. Through a relatable narrative centered on a small business owner operating from her home, the campaign emphasizes the value of recognizing and rewarding employee initiative in choosing a trusted shipping service. This film-based transport industry campaign, composed of three distinct media assets, conveys a message of efficiency and partnership by showcasing the boss’s effort to acknowledge her employee’s recommendation of FedEx Ground, thereby reinforcing the brand’s position as a fast, dependable option tailored to meet the practical needs of small business logistics. The storytelling approach humanizes the brand, making FedEx Ground not just a service provider but a collaborative partner invested in the success and satisfaction of its customers. By focusing on everyday workplace dynamics, the campaign effectively resonates with current and prospective small business owners, illustrating how FedEx Ground can transform shipping challenges into seamless solutions. The choice of film as the medium enables visual storytelling that deepens audience engagement, heightening brand recall and emotional connection. This concise yet impactful campaign reinforces FedEx's commitment to affordability and speed, qualities that are crucial to small businesses navigating competitive landscapes. Overall, the campaign not only promotes FedEx Ground’s operational strengths but also celebrates the contributions of employees within small enterprises, positioning FedEx as an integral part of their growth and achievement.

Red Market’s Flash marathon – stealing speed camera, created by Gutz and Glory and launched in Belgium in 2014, brought a kinetic jolt to the retail services sector with a campaign that literalized the connection between consumer effort and tangible reward through a striking on-the-ground stunt: around 1,200 participants raced past a speed camera, and the faster their recorded speed, the greater the discount awarded on their next Red Market visit. In a saturated market where discounting often slides into a race to the bottom, Red Market inverted the traditional paradigm, challenging customers to earn their deals through competition and performance in a high-energy event that blurred the boundaries between retail promotion and urban spectacle. The heart of the initiative — marrying the familiar mechanics of speed enforcement with a playful, participatory twist — was embodied in a single media asset that captured the campaign’s contagious excitement and broadcasted it to both in-person audiences and digital viewers, fueling shareability and brand visibility while deepening local impact. The enterprise stands as a textbook case for what Clapboard’s FORMAT#6 — Benefit Causes Story — describes: the narrative and the action are entirely powered by the product’s benefit itself; discounts aren’t simply offered, they are transformed into the very reason for the event, animating the campaign with a self-reinforcing creative logic that is as motivating as it is memorable. Instead of defaulting to character-driven drama or abstract claims, the concept deployed real participants and an intuitive incentive that required no translation, tapping into basic instincts for play, speed, and instant gratification — but repositioned in service of the brand’s value proposition. By making the physical act of running the central mechanism for unlocking savings, Gutz and Glory generated an environment where Red Market’s audience became willing advocates and protagonists, blurring the line between brand and participant and translating a transactional benefit into genuine social theater. The initiative, operating firmly within the retail category, demonstrates how ambient tactics, when fused with participatory design and shareable documentation, can elevate even the most practical promotion into a headline-grabbing campaign with lasting memory value. Clapboard rates this 73/100. Ultimately, Flash marathon – stealing speed camera is a pointed reminder to retail marketers that audiences will embrace even the most familiar offers when the core benefit is reimagined as an event worth chasing.

The joy of giving campaign from eBay, created in partnership with Exposure for the United Kingdom market in 2014, marks a pivotal turn for the eCommerce category as it leverages the emotive peak of the December holidays to reposition the brand beyond its traditional role as an online marketplace and into the realm of meaningful social connection. By foregrounding generosity and the emotional resonance of gift-giving, the campaign appeals directly to both the professional services sector and broader consumer mindset, highlighting the ease and joy facilitated by eBay’s platform as intrinsic to the act of giving. Anchored by a digital-first approach, the narrative avoids clichés of competitive self-comparison or celebrity presence, instead building its emotional arc around authentic stories of gifting and the tangible happiness sparked between givers and recipients. This is a textbook example of what Clapboard’s taxonomy would classify as FORMAT#6—Benefit Causes Story: the actions and emotional peak of generosity are catalyzed by the unique benefit eBay offers—namely, accessible and thoughtful gifting at scale. The creative restraint of deploying a single standout media asset serves to amplify impact rather than dilute it, ensuring that the campaign’s message lands with clarity and relevance at a moment when consumer attention is saturated and traditional brands scramble for differentiation. Exposure’s work elevates eBay’s brand perception, drawing on the heightened emotional charge of the season to reinforce eBay as an enabler of personal connection, rather than simply a transactional utility. Importantly, the campaign eschews heavy retail messaging in favor of stories that bridge digital experiences with real-world emotions, signaling a sophisticated understanding of what moves holiday audiences and what elevates a platform from service provider to social facilitator. Clapboard rates this 48/100. In foregrounding the emotional dividend of connection over the hard sell, eBay’s joy of giving signals a shift in how eCommerce brands can own cultural moments by amplifying the human stories their platforms make possible.

KFC’s Like father like son campaign, launched in France in Year 2014 by agency Lowe, frames the quintessential Tenders bucket as an icon of conviviality and familial connection, centering its 30-second narrative on the simple, universally recognizable impulse to share irresistibly tempting food. Positioned within the food and drink market, the film opens on a father and son who, unable to resist, take turns reaching into their KFC bucket as they head home, routinely extending the gesture to others encountered along the way—a direct dramatization of the product’s appeal and an authentic nod to the moments of togetherness the brand aims to foster. This approach, which Clapboard’s taxonomy classifies under FORMAT#6—Benefit Causes Story, grounds every interaction and narrative beat in the tangible benefit and shareability of the product itself, letting flavorful temptation drive the entire journey and reinforcing the bucket’s status as both social glue and generational ritual in the French context. For KFC, the campaign is as much about correcting misperceptions as affirming brand truths: the film quietly announces that only whole chicken pieces, never reconstituted, are served, prepared fresh in-house—a differentiator handily underscored through unembellished, credible storytelling rather than boastful declaration. Lowe’s creative articulation eschews didactic exposition and instead leans into a visual and emotional shorthand recognizable to millions of French families, building brand proximity with subtly observed gestures and a focus on real moments of sharing, which elevate the KFC product narrative above transactional fast food advertising. The campaign’s warmth and emphasis on everyday authenticity reflect a broader strategic bid by KFC to anchor itself as a sincere, unpretentious presence in French eating culture, aligned with local values of honesty and shared pleasure rather than imported Americana or manufactured spectacle. In production, restrained direction avoids overstatement, allowing the emotional logic of the Tenders bucket as a bond between generations to resonate clearly—a tactic well suited to a brand with aspirations of long-term cultural embedding. Clapboard rates this 62/100. Campaigns like Like father like son matter to the food and drink sector because they illustrate how product benefit, rendered without artifice, can propel genuine storytelling that builds enduring emotional relevance with local audiences.

Air New Zealand’s A Very Kiwi Christmas, crafted by Host and launched in the Australian market in Year:2014, brings the brand’s longstanding values of care and connection to the forefront of the travel and leisure category by centering its digital storytelling on an authentic festive surprise for the children of Portobello, Otago Peninsula. The campaign hinges on a deceptively simple yet resonant premise: the airline’s capability to connect people and places becomes the direct cause of a joyful communal event, eschewing grandstanding spectacle in favor of real-world warmth, generosity, and the distinctive cultural lens that defines the Kiwi holiday experience. Rather than the traditional problem/solution arc, this single-asset campaign exemplifies what Clapboard’s taxonomy would classify as FORMAT#6—Benefit Causes Story, in which the product’s inherent benefit is not illustrated but enacted, serving as the invisible hand that makes the memorable story possible. The narrative unfolds without recourse to celebrity, demonstration, symbolic overstatement or parody, instead foregrounding the heartfelt moment Air New Zealand enables and underscoring its role not just as a transporter, but as a facilitator of the meaningful experiences that bond communities during times of togetherness. In highlighting how the simple act of travel can fuel connection and foster a sense of local pride, Air New Zealand blends brand purpose and emotional resonance in a way perfectly tuned to the holiday season, offering the audience not just a glance but a genuine feel for what celebrating Christmas means in the context of New Zealand’s distinctive culture. With the quietly evocative tagline Meanwhile, in New Zealand..., the campaign strengthens brand affinity through its embrace of sincerity and relatability, achieving a campaign that is both grounded and aspirational—qualities that have powered its engagement and recall within the competitive transport industry. Clapboard rates this 69/100. At a time when many in travel and leisure resort to spectacle or celebrity to drive awareness, this campaign demonstrates that meaningful brand storytelling is most effective when rooted in real benefit and authentic local insight.

JC Penney’s The Gift of Giving campaign, launched in the United States in 2014 and developed by Havas, carved out a distinct moment in retail marketing by transforming the holiday shopping environment into a live stage for generosity and surprise. Positioned at the height of seasonal consumer frenzy, the campaign sidestepped conventional transactional messaging, instead building a narrative around candid social experimentation: ordinary shoppers were enlisted to hand-deliver presents to strangers, catalyzing spontaneous acts of giving that reaffirmed the emotional core of gift exchange. As ambient media, the activation leveraged the physical retail context while deploying digital video—a key asset that attracted more than 2.2 million views on YouTube—to extend its reach and emotional resonance far beyond the store floor. Driven by the campaign hashtag #JustGotJingled, JC Penney established a participatory framework that encouraged sharing, amplifying presence across Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Pinterest to sustain ongoing dialogue throughout the season. The storytelling is structured according to Clapboard’s FORMAT#6 BENEFIT CAUSES STORY approach, in which the benefit—JC Penney’s accessible, thoughtful holiday range—spurs the campaign’s core action, delivering unpredictable moments that become the campaign’s emotional bedrock. This benefits-first framework eschews traditional conflict and resolution arcs, instead allowing the act of giving itself to produce the twist, embodied in unscripted recipient reactions and allowing viewers to vicariously share in the warmth of these exchanges. Alongside its narrative pull, the campaign remained rigorously commercial: direct calls to action prompted viewers to prepare their homes and shop gifts at JC Penney, with an ecosystem of online and in-store coupons making participation seamless and value-driven. By occupying both the high ground of emotional connection and the real-world drive to retail action, The Gift of Giving elevated JC Penney’s holiday positioning as a retailer uniquely attuned to the spirit—and practical realities—of the season. The campaign earns 67/100 in Clapboard’s global creative archive. In extending the power of benefit-based storytelling into a live retail context, The Gift of Giving demonstrates how activating authentic consumer emotions can still serve as an engine for both brand goodwill and commercial impact in the retail category.

Glad’s Bring a Smile campaign, created by DDB for the United Arab Emirates market in 2012, exemplifies how the integration of purposeful social impact and consumer engagement can deliver powerful results for a household product in the highly competitive House and Garden category. Timed around Ramadan, Glad leveraged cultural resonance to introduce an out-of-home supermarket activation that connected individual product purchases to a collective act of generosity: for every Glad pack chosen, an image of a beaming African child emerged from the display, serving as a personal visual thank you from one of the 20,000 children who would ultimately receive a free meal through the brand’s initiative. This creative execution, which transformed a mundane aisle interaction into an emotionally charged, meaningful gesture, aligns squarely with what Clapboard’s taxonomy would designate as FORMAT#6—Benefit Causes Story, where the brand’s benefit directly catalyzes a positive real-world action and the resultant emotional payoff becomes the heart of the narrative. Rejecting traditional problem-solution tropes, the campaign redefined the role of a household purchase, enabling shoppers to contribute to a larger cause with no additional effort, and deepened Glad’s positioning as a brand committed to community support and social responsibility. The supermarket stand blended seamlessly into the shopper’s routine, making the mechanism for giving both intuitive and visually rewarding, and the reciprocal exchange—a Glad pack for a meal, a charitable act gifted by a smile—became Glad’s signature for Ramadan that year. By distributing 20,000 free meals by the campaign’s culmination, Glad achieved lasting social impact while reinforcing brand affinity and trust among its core audience. The campaign’s effect was amplified by its simplicity: a single media asset that generated both in-store engagement and widespread brand goodwill, proving that clever creative doesn’t always require a multi-channel blitz to resonate or to shift perceptions. In the context of cause-driven marketing, Bring a Smile is a compelling demonstration of how a brand can authentically inhabit a social mission without overstatement, harnessing contextual insight and consumer empathy as its primary creative levers. Clapboard rates this 71/100. In a retail landscape defined by transactional messaging, this campaign stands out for its elegant intertwining of charitable impact and brand experience, reminding the industry that relevance and empathy can drive both purpose and purchase when anchored to a clear, emotionally resonant action.

Supercheap Auto’s Big Break competition campaign, launched in Australia in 2017, exemplifies the retailer’s ability to turn a straightforward promotional mechanic into a powerful brand-building tool by using film as its primary channel to animate the excitement of winning within the automotive retail category. Developed for a market where functional value and emotional aspiration often go hand in hand, the campaign’s core film asset skillfully constructs a narrative in which the very existence of the competition—the chance at a transformative automotive prize—drives the action and propels participation, an approach that sits squarely in Clapboard’s FORMAT#6 Benefit Causes Story classification. Rather than defaulting to overt demonstrations or testimonial formats, this campaign leverages the promise of a ‘big break’ as the spark that mobilizes everyday customers and car enthusiasts alike, tapping into the universal desire for attainable rewards and underlining Supercheap Auto’s continued resonance as a customer-centric, reliable, and affordable retail partner. The communication strategy keeps the entry process and prize messaging front and centre, ensuring the creative is not only accessible but also unmissable amid category noise, with clear storytelling that removes hurdles to engagement and encourages immediate action whether in-store or via digital platforms. By foregrounding the competition itself as the narrative linchpin, the film connects the brand’s tangible benefits—value, trust, and automotive know-how—with consumers’ aspirations, maximizing reach and frequency while organically stimulating word-of-mouth and incremental visitation. Strong branding is never lost in the creative translation, as the visual tone, pacing, and offer clarity align unwaveringly with Supercheap Auto’s established reputation in retail services; this unity is further supported by robust digital activation and film placement, which together drive mass awareness without diluting the campaign’s central promise. The campaign earns 72/100 in Clapboard’s global creative archive. As retail promotions continue to vie for share of mind and wallet in an increasingly media-fragmented environment, this campaign proves that a clearly articulated offer, paired with a compelling benefit-driven story, remains a high-yield strategy for brands determined to translate brand equity into measurable engagement.