Ad Museum Tokyo's 'Morning is born' crowns One Show winners as roosters
Dentsu sold an exhibition of One Show winners with roosters that crow before dawn — brands moved by instinct, not forecasts.
Read the casecreatives.centerA CASESTUDIES.CHAT ARCHIVE
Ideas that make
you look twice.
Creative work with a story behind it. From the brief to the impact.
The full archive, in the appPublished cases
2,000 PUBLISHED CASES · REGULARLY UPDATEDRovio's Angry Birds turns slingshot physics into the first 1B-download mobile franchise
A Finnish studio near bankruptcy built its 52nd game on touch-screen slingshot physics; it became the first mobile franchise to hit a billion downloads.
Read the caseCodetree closes at $128k after a Friday-night full-price offer with a Sunday deadline
Three partners who had just picked issue tracking as their next business bought Codetree, closing at full asking before the broker's wider market opened.
Read the caseMcDonald's Japan turns a cult radio show into in-store nights — ACC 2024 Media Grand Prix
For its after-5pm Yoru Mac menu, McDonald's Japan had comedy duo Audrey record an ad-lib 'All Night Mac' radio show aired only in stores — dinner visits rose.
Read the caseRent the Runway turned designer dresses into 4-day rentals for $150.
Two HBS students founded Rent the Runway: designer dresses for 4–8-day rentals, ~$150 vs. $1,000 purchase, with prepaid return and dry cleaning.
Read the caseIKEA Norway turns 70 years of product names into a baby-name catalogue
With no new products to sell during a baby boom, IKEA Norway published an A-Z of 800+ human-sounding product names — and won Epica's PR Grand Prix.
Read the caseSkarper's click-on DiskDrive turns any disc-brake bike into an e-bike — iF Gold 2025
A London startup hides a whole e-bike powertrain in a unit that clicks onto the rear disc brake, converting any bike to electric in seconds.
Read the caseMax Fleischer's Rotoscope traces live film to make cartoons move like people
A 1915 glass-projection device let animators trace filmed movement frame by frame — Koko the Clown was born from it.
Read the caseUber courts Northern England in its own blunt voice — 'Alright our Uber'
Uber's data showed the North barely knew it existed, so Mother talked to 14 towns in their own dialect — first trips grew 12% and a Gold Effie followed.
Read the caseFinland becomes the first country with its own emojis — sauna, Nokia 3310, headbanger
Finland's Foreign Ministry released the world's first national emoji set — free stickers of saunas, Nokias and metal heads that ended up in Unicode.
Read the caseHaryana's 'No toilet, no bride' campaign made toilets a marriage condition
A north Indian state turned marriage-market leverage into sanitation policy: village women refuse grooms with no toilet at home, and toilet ownership soared.
Read the caseHodari's album Iradoh! debuts as a three-act musical film — El Ojo Audio Grand Prix
Brazilian artist Hodari's second album launched as a three-act musical film about three brothers — El Ojo 2025 Audio Grand Prix and a Latin Grammy nomination.
Read the caseFerrari SC40: a one-off F40 tribute is the first bespoke car to top Red Dot
A single-client Ferrari built on 296 GTB hardware, with all-new bodywork echoing the F40, is the first One-Off ever to win Red Dot: Best of the Best.
Read the casePapers, Please: stamping passports becomes a moral dilemma — and a hit
Lucas Pope's 2013 indie turns border document checks into moral choices; it won IGF's Grand Prize and has sold 5 million copies across 40+ platforms.
Read the caseDinner in the Sky hangs a restaurant from a crane — and franchises vertigo to 60 countries
Two Belgians hoisted a dinner table 50 metres up a crane, charged €295 a head, and turned one stunt into a franchise that has landed in some 60 countries.
Read the caseTigerair's Infrequent Flyers Club rewards not flying — 500k members, Spikes Media GP
Australia's budget airline builds a loyalty club for people who rarely fly: self-printed status cards, no lounge — and 500,000 members.
Read the caseBook Off: 10%-in, half-price-out rules make used-book shops a national chain
A piano dealer replaced book expertise with rules—buy at 10%, sell at half, ¥100 after 3 months—and built Japan's biggest secondhand chain.
Read the caseKFC turns a chicken shortage into 'FCK' — one apology ad, 1B+ earned reach
When a logistics failure closed 900 UK KFCs, one full-page apology — an empty bucket that spells 'FCK' — turned a crisis into a billion-reach brand moment.
Read the caseCursor 1.0 turns its AI into an agent: PR review, background coding, one-click MCP
Anysphere's Cursor 1.0 (June 2025) ships Bugbot PR review, background agents, Memories and one-click MCP — the editor's AI graduates from suggesting to doing.
Read the caseIBM's ValuesJam lets 50,000 employees rewrite the company's values in 72 hours
In July 2003 IBM ran a 72-hour intranet forum where about 50,000 employees debated what the company should stand for — the output became its values.
Read the case