Watching the work roll across the screens at the Palais, a pattern kept repeating. The campaigns that stayed with us did not interrupt people; they gave them something to do, to share, or to argue about. Crisis turned into participation, honesty turned into media, and a tub of petroleum jelly turned into a product line invented by the internet. Here are the ones we at Eventers kept coming back to, what each one actually did, and a link to the film that tells the story.
The KitKat Heist
KitKat / VML and Burson
When more than 400,000 KitKat bars, roughly 12 tonnes, were genuinely stolen in transit across Europe before Easter, KitKat did the opposite of damage control. It broadcast the theft, leaned into the joke, and launched a Stolen KitKat Tracker that let anyone enter the batch code on their own bar to check if they were holding stolen goods. A real supply-chain crisis became the brand's most talked-about campaign, reporting around $224 million in earned media on zero media spend. It is the clearest proof of the year that the right response to a crisis can be participation, not silence.
Vaseline Originals
Vaseline / Ogilvy Singapore
For years people invented their own uses for Vaseline and shared them as "hacks," and the brand quietly watched the credit go nowhere. Vaseline Originals traced the most popular hacks back to the creators who started them, named them the originators, and turned their ideas into real products that shared in the sales. The numbers tell the story: products outselling Vaseline Jelly by 466%, one selling every three seconds, and a 24% lift in new hacks posted. It is co-ownership rather than sponsorship, and a model more brands will copy.
r/eal reviews
Dove / DAVID, AKQA and WPP Media
Dove took its most-loved hair mask to the most skeptical room on the internet, Reddit, asked for unfiltered reviews, and committed to publishing the first 50 verbatim, flaws and all. Real posts from users with handles like "Hair Goblin 92" ran across out-of-home and social, including the unflattering ones, on the bet that honesty from strangers beats polish from a brand. It generated over a billion impressions, a number-one recommendation status, and a reported 108% sales lift, proving its own thesis: honesty is the most powerful influencer.
Could Have Been a Heineken
Heineken
Built on a small, very recognizable truth, that some WhatsApp voice notes are far too long, Heineken created the first voice-to-beer bot on WhatsApp. Send in a rambling voice note and the time it would have taken to listen got swapped for a real beer, with the line "could have been a Heineken." It turned roughly 280 hours of voice notes into beers, was talked about across 82 countries, and posted the brand's highest brand-power score. A simple cultural observation, executed with restraint.
Unloved
Intermarché / Romance, Paris
The French supermarket out-Christmas-adverted everyone with a hand-animated fable about a lonely wolf, feared by the other animals, who learns to cook and finally earns a place at the table. In a year of AI-generated holiday spots, its painterly, human craft was the whole point. The campaign claims 13.1 billion impressions, 393 million views and 228,000 pieces of user-generated content, making it the most shared French campaign in fifteen years, and proof that craft still travels furthest.
The Million Dollar Puzzle
Slack and Salesforce, with MrBeast
Instead of a 30-second Super Bowl spot, Slack ran an eight-week product demo disguised as a game. A MrBeast-fronted ad hid a $1 million puzzle that 276,000 people actively played, using Slack to decode clues across multiple films, and the behind-the-scenes content doubled as a genuine demo of how the team coordinated the whole thing on Slack in 27 days. A rare case of a B2B brand creating a true cultural moment, with search interest and active players to match.
I'm Not Remarkable
Apple
For International Day of Persons with Disabilities, Apple put students with disabilities front and center, pushing back on the idea that using accessibility features to live your life is "remarkable," when it should simply be normal. It is a clear, well-crafted spotlight on Apple's accessibility tools that lets the people who use them carry the message.
The Sponsored Truth
Samsung Malaysia / LEO, Kuala Lumpur
Working from the insight that people trust peers over brands, Samsung invited the public to share honest opinions about the Galaxy Z Fold7 on social, then captured, filtered and turned those comments into live Google search ads, the first search ads "written by the people, for the people." The campaign cites a 93% search impression share, a 4.13x social engagement rate, 2.5x return on ad spend and 79% of total paid digital sales. We could not find a public case-study film on YouTube; the official entry is on The Work.
The Famous-ish Background Actor Who Made Mayo a Star
Hellmann's Canada, #MainFlavourEnergy
To promote mayo from supporting player to star, Hellmann's cast Hollywood's most recognizable background actor, Jesse Heiman, the guy you have seen in a hundred scenes but can never name, and mirrored his career with mayonnaise's own bit-part status. He appeared organically in creator content before the reveal, and the campaign reports 93% of seeded creators posting organically and 5.28x average web traffic. We could not find a dedicated case-study film on YouTube; the campaign is documented on Ads of the World.
