Heineken hides 'HEI' in Chinese New Year greetings on delivery trucks — Golden Kancil 2024
With alcohol ads banned in Malaysia, Heineken cropped its logo's 'HEI' into CNY greetings on 11 delivery trucks — 33.9M reached, +14% sales.
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2,000 PUBLISHED CASES · REGULARLY UPDATEDBosideng puts its down jackets on a NYFW runway — mid-high-end sales grow 500%
China's 'grandpa down jacket' brand staged an ink-wash New York Fashion Week show in 2018; Hollywood stars wore the jackets, and sales followed.
Read the caseNTT and Dentsu let an ALS dancer perform again — brainwaves drive her live avatar ballet
NTT's EEG tech plus Dentsu Lab's interface let dancer Breanna Olson, who lives with ALS, direct a live avatar ballet — a Bronze at Spikes Asia 2026.
Read the caseCoinbase animates real money talk as clay animals with Aardman — 'Human Nature'
Coinbase's in-house studio had Aardman animate real money interviews as clay animals — seven films that aired during WNBA games.
Read the caseAsahi TV's 'Sacred Dirt' draws Koshien cheers in stadium soil — One Show Gold
Three posters for the summer Koshien championship drawn in stadium soil — the 'sacred dirt' players carry home — hung at the station fans walk through.
Read the caseInscryption hides a meta-mystery in a deckbuilder — IGF Grand Prize, GDC GOTY 2022
Daniel Mullins disguises a layered mystery as a card roguelike; each genre it shows — deckbuilder, escape room, found footage — is a mask the player peels off.
Read the caseIndie Hackers makes founders publish their revenue — transparency becomes the product
Courtland Allen turns Ask HN's 'how much do you make?' threads into a site where founders must disclose revenue; Stripe acquires it within a year.
Read the caseRenault lends free cars during job probation — pay only if hired; Cars to Work wins Cannes
People in mobility deserts got a free car for their job trial and paid only after securing the contract — Renault's Cars to Work won two Cannes Grands Prix.
Read the caseiFixit gives repair guides away free and makes money selling the parts
Two students who could not find instructions for fixing a laptop built a wiki of free repair guides — and funded it by selling parts and tools.
Read the caseKFC Thailand launches chicken rice by allying with street vendors instead of crushing them
KFC Thailand entered chicken rice by signing ten top street vendors into an association and a national guide — and sold out in under a month.
Read the caseOry Laboratory's Avatar Robot Cafe turns homebound people into paid robot waiters
OryLab's DAWN cafe is served by OriHime avatars piloted from home by people with severe disabilities — ADFEST 2020 INNOVA Lotus, now a permanent store.
Read the caseIntel's OKRs: Andy Grove's measurable goals win a microprocessor war
Grove replaced vague goals with quarterly OKRs — bold objectives, measurable key results, visible to everyone — and Doerr carried them to Google in 1999.
Read the caseHisense buys Euro 2016 boards to say in Chinese what China's ad law bans at home
The Euro's first Chinese sponsor put 'Hisense TV, China's No.1' on French stadium boards — a superlative banned at home — and let the debate do the marketing.
Read the caseMcDonald's Grimace birthday shake becomes Gen Z's meme — and Q2 US sales grow 10.3%
A retro purple-shake meal for 1970s mascot Grimace gave Gen Z a meme prop: absurdist TikTok skits, three billion views, 10.3% Q2 sales growth.
Read the caseSweden becomes first country with its own phone number — callers reach a random Swede
To mark 250 years without censorship, Sweden gives itself a phone number — dial it from anywhere and a random volunteer Swede answers.
Read the case'Searching for Birds on Wires' (2026): bird photos as a score win Abradee Cannes Gold
A 2009 photo of birds on power lines became viral music; Abradee turned 60 such photos into a symphony — and a Cannes Audio & Radio Gold Lion.
Read the caseShiseido cans dying island miso as 'BEST AFTER 2055' — a dated time capsule
Shiseido cans Ogi Island's endangered miso stamped 'BEST AFTER 2055', the predicted extinction year — awareness rose 3.6x.
Read the caseActivision launches Black Ops 7's fake tech firm The Guild in the real world — ADC Gaming
Activision marketed Black Ops 7 by launching its fictional robotics villain as a real company — fake magazine covers, ads and an IPO before the reveal.
Read the caseBaonanas sells banana pudding to fix a dented car — a decade of dessert shops
A hit-and-run left a $1,500 dent, so a couple sold their signature banana pudding into a '#Baonanas' repair fund that became a company.
Read the caseRIO × Six God: a mosquito-repellant-scented cocktail sells 5,000 bottles in 17 seconds
A RIO cocktail flavored like Six God mosquito water launches on Tmall and sells out in 17 seconds; the follow-up 17,000 bottles go in a minute.
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