The archive · Advertising · Marketing decision · 2024–2025
Mandaue Foam's 'Steal' drowns a burglary in multiplying home goods — Cannes Bronze 2025
GIGIL sells Mandaue Foam's giant product range with a comedy heist where lampshades, beds and furniture multiply until the burglars give up.
Mandaue Foam Home Store
What it had to solve
Mandaue Foam, a Filipino home store most people still associated with mattresses, asked GIGIL for a film that would promote the wide variety of products its stores carry. The client wanted something genuinely creative, told the agency there was no deadline and just asked for it to be really good.
How it works
Mandaue Foam is a Filipino home retailer with stores full of furniture, decor and accessories, yet shoppers still thought of it mainly as a mattress brand. The company briefed GIGIL to make a film promoting the breadth of its range, and the client signalled unusual trust: no deadline, and a request simply to make something really, really good.
GIGIL's answer was 'Steal', a burglary story with a surreal edge. Three burglars break into a seemingly ordinary house to look for valuables, and as they hunt, the houseware around them — lampshades, bed frames, dining furniture, light bulbs — begins to multiply again and again until the robbery spirals completely out of control. The multiplying effect, developed with director Marius Talampas and Arcade Film Factory, turned the product range itself into the joke.
The film became a national hit: 64 million views, a 200% spike in online brand mentions, and online sales up 63.22% versus the same 2023 period, with a 221% post-campaign increase that gave the brand its best online sales in two years. It also travelled well, winning a Bronze Film Lion at Cannes 2025 and becoming one of the most decorated Filipino campaigns of its cycle.
Why it lands
- The campaign came from a real business problem — people only knew Mandaue Foam for mattresses — rather than from an awards-driven ambition.
- The multiplying-houseware device dramatised the range without a single product shot feeling like a catalogue, turning a brochure brief into entertainment.
- The client's willingness to approve an unusual 'robbery' concept let the agency push past category convention in furniture retail.
- The effect was verifiable in sales: a 63.22% rise in online sales during the campaign and a 221% post-campaign jump showed the comedy moved business, not just views.
What it did
The film drew 64 million views, a 200% spike in online brand mentions and conversations, a 63.22% rise in online sales versus the same period in 2023 and a 221% post-campaign sales jump — the brand's highest online sales in two years. It won a Bronze Film Lion at Cannes 2025.
What you can take
When the brief is 'show the range', make the range the plot: instead of listing products, GIGIL let the products take over the story, so variety became comedy rather than inventory.
Since then
'Steal' collected a Bronze Film Lion at Cannes 2025, Graphite and Wood Pencils at D&AD 2025, a Silver at the 2025 London International Awards and the MAD STARS prize, and GIGIL's chief creative officer said the agency was already working on a sequel. For the Philippine industry it became proof that a local retail brand funding brave creative work could compete and win on the global stage.
Sources
- Behind the Work that Won: MAD STARS winner, Mandaue Steal by GIGIL
- GIGIL raises the Philippine flag high with historic wins at Cannes Lions and D&AD 2025
- Cannes Lions 2025 Film winners
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