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edited and compiled by James Herring
Created by German aeronautics firm Airstage, the incredible model featured 23 moving parts designed to recreate the creature’s movements on screen. Behind the scenes.
Polaroid has unveiled a giant billboard on New York’s Coney Island Beach that uses growing concerns around data centre water consumption - the wider campaign encourage people to spend less time online and more time engaging with the world around them.
The social-first campaign reimagines familiar IKEA items as flag designs, using everything from furniture and lighting to plush toys, home accessories and décor.
Porsche has launched a new conservation initiative that combines practical support for rhino protection with a documentary spotlighting the work of The Black Mambas, the world’s first all-female, unarmed anti-poaching unit.
Partner post | Tracksuit
UK craft beer brand BrewDog’s retail sales have dramatically declined after being sold to US company Tilray Brands – and there was major backlash after the sale resulted in the loss of almost 500 jobs. According to The Grocer, “BrewDog’s share of total craft beer sales has dipped from 53.7% a year ago to 49.3% today.” Yikes.
In the Craft Beer category, BrewDog is the market leader of the brands we track, with 81% awareness in the UK. However, in the last year, Awareness has decreased 3-percentage-points and Consideration 5-percentage-points, from 68% to 63%.
BrewDog is also near the bottom of the category when it comes to the statement “Is a brand I trust”. When someone trusts a brand in this category, they are 2.6x more likely to move from awareness to consideration. This has decreased by 4-percentage-points when comparing the last six months to the preceding six months, prior to the sale in March 2026.
In H1 brands put their own icons to work (Iconomics), invented products worth covering (PR-oducts), and trusted audiences to fill in a stripped-back identity (Debranding). They paired off with unlikely partners, built things you couldn’t scroll past, and reacted in minutes when the moment arrived. Underneath ran a sharper mood — brands siding with users against tech that’s getting worse – aka Anti-Enshittification.
read the report here
NHS Blood and Transplant has launched a striking out-of-home campaign that removes the red from some of Britain’s most recognisable logos to highlight a critical shortage of blood used to treat sickle cell patients.
🛠️ Case Study: Kit Kat Heist
The PR Lions jury handed its top prize to “The KitKat Heist” — Burson and VML’s response to a genuine supply-chain theft that the brand chose to broadcast rather than bury, then deputised the public to help solve. It is crisis comms run in reverse: instead of containing the story, KitKat fed it, and turned a stolen shipment into the most-talked-about confectionery moment of the year.
When Iceland’s last McDonald’s closed in 2009 following the country’s financial crash, local resident Hjörtur Smárason bought a burger and fries on the restaurant’s final day and decided not to eat them. Instead, he kept them as an experiment. Years later, the meal appeared largely unchanged. According to McDonald’s, the food didn’t resist decay because of preservatives; it simply dried out before it could rot. Today, the burger and fries remain on display at Snotra House, a guesthouse in southern Iceland, where they have become an unlikely tourist attraction and a strangely compelling relic of the country’s economic crisis.
partner post | Ad Forum
Empower your teams with AdForum’s Creative Library and access award winners at Cannes Lions, ANDY’s, Clios, D&AD, LIA, One Show, FAB Awards, Eurobest, EPICA, +++. Take a test drive here or contact us for more info.
partner post | words and pixels
The Insight: Dads in the UK have some of the worst paternity leave rights in the world. With the government currently reviewing parental leave, The Dad Shift seized a rare moment for change with a sobering thought: if your baby was born at the start of the World Cup, your paternity leave would end before the group stages finished.
The Intervention: The Dad Shift subverted the traditional football shirt with a simple request: “Extra Time for Dads; 2 Weeks Isn’t Enough”. The activation hit disruptor status because of who wore the shirts. Not footballers. 50 MPs, including Peter Kyle and Kate Dearden (the ministers closest to the paternity leave review).
The Impact: The Dad Shift’s strength is consistency. They repeatedly disrupt familiar “two week” moments with the same message: “Two Weeks Isn’t Enough”. This latest guerrilla activation stood out amongst some of the world’s biggest brands and helped build momentum, with 110 MPs now backing better paternity leave.
Got a problem in need of disruption? That’s our kind of brief www.wordsandpixels.co
Dior has turned Eric Carle’s beloved children’s classic The Very Hungry Caterpillar into a 23-piece luxury capsule collection, bringing one of publishing’s most recognisable characters into the world of high fashion.
To launch Supergirl, DC Studios turned a London billboard into a giant 3D installation.
The answer lies in football’s annual boot-launch cycle. Major manufacturers including Nike, adidas and PUMA often use major tournaments to debut new boot ranges worn by their sponsored athletes. Bright colours, particularly pink, are popular because they stand out against the green pitch and attract attention on television broadcasts. This year, however, so many players have appeared in pink boots that what was designed to be a distinctive marketing tactic has become one of the tournament’s most noticeable visual trends.
💥 Not every great piece of communication comes from a brand.
Cannes Lions - all the Grand Prix winners - in this round-up
Ranch Dressing - international fans visiting the US have gone viral discovering ranch, with clips of near-religious first tastes racking up millions of views across TikTok and X. Airport security agency TSA leaned into the trend with deadpan social posts telling fans to pack ranch in checked luggage — “please avoid chugging your ranch outside security — the airlines will check it for you”.
Meta - has stripped the Ray-Ban branding from its new in-house glasses line and handed one of three new frames to Kylie Jenner. The wager is that a beauty-mogul edition can drag smart glasses from gadget to accessory; whether celebrity styling is enough to clear the category's lingering surveillance-camera-on-your-face problem is the more interesting question.
Stella Artois's - World Cup campaign is built around global ambassador David Beckham and the ritual of raising a Stella chalice. During Wednesday's Brazil–Scotland game in Miami, the broadcast cut to Beckham in a hospitality box drinking a large glass of red wine — a teeny mismatch. Marketing isn’t straight forward. Neither are humans.
Google has invested $75M in A24 to develop AI-powered tools for filmmakers. A24 will have access to Google DeepMind’s research and infrastructure The agreement does not give Google access to A24’s content library or data.
The UK Attorney General’s office has quit X, becoming the first government department to abandon the platform amid mounting concerns about misinformation, racism and content that could fuel real-world violence. (The Guardian)
EU lawmakers - have backed plans to ban airlines from charging extra for standard cabin baggage. Under the proposed rules, passengers would be entitled to bring a small personal item and a carry-on bag weighing up to 7kg as part of their ticket price. The changes are expected to take effect from 2027.
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