THAT
A year in emotion
Editor’s CREATIVE TEAM’S NOTE
Earlier this year we launched Grayling’s new creative proposition – Creativity That Connects –the aim of this proposition was to encourage us all to create work that strikes a chord emotionally.
Why? Because if you make your audience feel something, they’re more likely to act on it (buy your product, support your cause etc).
Over the course of the year we’ve seen emotion pop up across the business… from new biz decks to client proposals and we love to see it.
Even just posing the question to your client as to ’what emotion do you want to ignite within your audience?’ can give you a headstart to creating work that works and hits you/your client/your audience right in the feels.
As we go into 2025 we will continue to bang the drum for emotion and encourage you all to continue to build emotion into every piece of creative work that goes out of the door.
This zine looks back on the work that hit emotionally this year, contains outstanding emotion-based-insight from colleagues across the business and will hopefully inspire more creative work that hits emotionally.
GRAYLING, WHAT FEELING?
FEELING? FEELING?
GRAYLING, YOU FEELING? FEELING?
FEELING?
HEATHER BLUNDELL, CEO
Campaign that hit you in the emotions during 2024?
“The Meal” by McDonalds: Super simple, emotionally charged and smart talent. It went everywhere due to the ingredients to the idea.
Predictions on the emotions that will cut through in 2025?
To echo the words of Alex Goss, we need more fun in a news story and landing a smile, a ping of joy can cut through next year. The above is a perfect example of that. It’s not a funny subject matter, but the idea still makes you smile because it is so clever.
ANIKA MISTRY, SENIOR Campaign that hit you
“England ‘Til I Died” by
Predictions on the emotions
From a Gen Z perspective, emotions - we’ve had years, we’re now taking fun (think brat girl summer
CRAIG HAWKES, Campaign that during 2024?
“Hey Jude” by Predictions cut through The nation is of healing. We positivity, to matter what.
WHAT YOU
SOCIAL MEDIA EXEC
you in the emotions during 2024? by British
Heart Foundation
emotions that will cut through in 2025? perspective, I think the fun/wild/free/wild a lot to deal with over the past few taking that time back, less serious - more summer but throughout 2025).
HAWKES, HEAD OF OPERATIONS
that hit you in the emotions 2024? by adidas on the emotions that will in 2025? is bruised, angry and in need We need more belligerent to help people keep smiling no what. Hope is infectious.
NATHAN KEMP, CHIEF INNOVATION OFFICER
Campaign that hit you in the emotions during 2024?
”The Misheard Version” by Specsavers: picked up a Cannes Lions this year so I think that gives me license to include it!
Predictions on the emotions that will cut through in 2025?
Predicated emotion. Nostalgia. When there’s lots of uncertainty going on / times of crisis - which there most definitely is going in 2025 - marketers often lean into nostalgia - by borrowing familiar cues from the past it can help ease anxiety and inspire a sense of warmth, trust and confidence towards a brand or product.
LEO WATSON, ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR
Campaign that hit you in the emotions during 2024?
“England ‘Til I Died” by British Heart Foundation: that was pretty deep
Predictions on the emotions that will cut through in 2025?
I think ‘joy’ is really needed in 2025. Certainly the world of politics could use it right now. But the country, and indeed the world, is just so bleak at the moment that surely joy will have some cut through?
BILLY PARTRIDGE, HEAD OF SCOTLAND
Campaign that hit you in the during 2024?
Paris 2024: It’s not easy to cut with messaging at an event they really landed that this would Olympics for spectators - everyone feel involved, and it wouldn’t
Predictions on the emotions through in 2025?
Joy! I think we’re in for a tough economically and socially and manage to find a way, difficult is, to bring genuinely joy to people’s will win. We’ll all be very sceptical won’t be easy, but perhaps humour self-mockery might work, or trends that bring happiness
WHAT YOU
SCOTLAND
the emotions cut through but I felt would be an everyone would wouldn’t be elitist.
emotions that will cut tough year and brands that difficult though it people’s lives sceptical so it humour and or tapping into will help.
NADIA PADAYACHY, UK MARKETING MANAGER
Campaign that hit you in the emotions during 2024?
Burger King’s Post-Birth Meal – I didn’t find it shocking but I could relate! Loved the realness of it, made me smile too. Clever.
Predictions on the emotions that will cut through in 2025?
It would be nice to be surprised with joy.. We’re all so desensitised to things so we need a jolt of joy not a ping.cut through?
Campaigns that hit right in the emotions in 2024
Don’t skip leg day
Morley’s X Gymbox was the campaign nobody saw coming in 2024 and this collab gave pure gains with Morley’s on Brick Lane being transformed into a gym and free gym passes hidden across chicken boxes… but it also spoke a truth; balance in life works.
EMOTION Surprise
EMOTION
DON’T STOP YOUR FUTURE
DSYF
Idris Elba launched a visually striking campaign calling for Government action to combat knife crime affecting communities across the UK. Featuring 247 stacks of clothing displayed in Parliament Square, each representing the last outfits worn by those who have been stabbed and murdered in the last 12 months.
Mended Murals
Mended Murals was created to shed light on the importance of caring for skin of colour and increase access to skin health resources as a part of their longstanding mission to make skin
health care more equitable and accessible to all communities.
To promote their message Vaseline mended much loved community murals, helping skin to shine again.
easyJet asked primary school children what they think a pilot looks like and revealed that over 50% of kids in 2024 still think a pilot is male. Using adorable kids to deliver a powerful and memorable message.
This campaign calls on tech giants to ‘correct autocorrect’ in the name of equality and to better reflect a modern, multicultural UK. From their conducted research they found that almost 5,500 names given to boys and girls in England and Wales in 2021 alone received the wavy red line treatment courtesy of Microsoft’s UK English dictionary – a fact that has to change if we want a truly equal society.
Frustration
Gallery of Hope
Breast Cancer Now used AI to help people living with breast cancer visualise their future memories. Showing that with more investment in treating the disease, everyone should be able to experience these futures and humanising the rhetoric around cancer diagnosis.
Nothing makes dogs happier than food. But what if we could hear that happiness? Pedigree turned dogs’ tails into orchestral conductors in an experiment filmed live with the Polish Radio Orchestra, showing that the way to make owners happy is to show how happy a pet food can make their dog.
Joy
EMOTION
The Melanoma War
This bold film features ex- sunbed user Ross Robinson, who has a lesion on his back from continued sunbed use, to deliver the message and urge people to sign a petition to regulate the tanning industry. With the petition itself having been burned using currently legal levels of UV radiation.
THE LAST BARF BAG
A campaign dedicated to a product that nausea drug Dramamine’s effectiveness has helped to make obsolete – the barf bag. The company created a one-day pop-up exhibition displaying hundreds of the most historic and rare barf bags dating back over five decades and showing a collection of various items created from repurposed barf bags.
The Meal
To mark Mental Health Awareness, McDonald’s removed the iconic smile from their Happy Meal boxes for the first time, to help start a conversation around children’s mental health. The boxes were accompanied by stickers representing different emotions, helping children to discuss their feelings.
EMOTION
Acceptance
Commemorating the lives of 12 young football fans whose lives were tragically ended by heart disease. The work marks a broader campaign to emphasise the critical need for heart research funding by spotlighting the unfulfilled dreams and aspirations of those affected.
IMAGINE WITH PETACOS
Poker, known as the Colombian beer of friendship, teamed up with neighbourhood stores providing them Poker beer crate furniture to create spaces of social and communal fun in exchange for selling their beers.
EMOTION
Joy
HOSTILE ARCHITECTURE
Using art to expose the cruelty of hostile architecture by covering spikes with posters of homeless individuals, highlighting the inhumanity of these designs.
EMOTION Outrage
Is it even a city?
Use deadpan Norwegian humour to create an anti-ad that sells Oslo by not selling it at all.
Never just a period
A film about how painfully unprepared women are for a life inside their bodies, bemoaning centuries of terrible education, lack of research and knowledge, and years of dismissing and minimising women’s health problems, using comedy to poke fun at the strange experience of inhabiting a body without the proper knowledge.
SPECIAL DELIVERY
Grubhub offered to pay for new Mums’ first meal after giving birth in the month of August (the peak month for births in the US). New Mums could claim their post birth meal on a specially designed website and have meals they’d craved delivered to them directly. Delivering when customers need it most.
MISSED BIRTHDAYS
Using a birthday balloon to represent and remember every person who lost their life in a striking installation at London’s Westfield centre.
Sadness
Statues with slings
Take over famous statues of men across London & Edinburgh with baby slings to highlight UK having the worst paternity leave in Europe and leaving dads out of the conversation on parenting rights.
McMistakes for McRib
McDonalds announced the return of their McRib with a raft of accidentally on purpose ‘mistakes’ which caused mass headlines and excitement amongst McRib fans.
The CPR Bra
A bra designed by St. John’s Ambulance to raise awareness and educate the public that it’s OK to do CPR, even if a person has breasts.
Daisy the granbot
O2 created human-like AI Granny to answer calls in real time from fraudsters, keeping them on the phone and away from customers for as long as possible. Trained using cutting-edge technology and real scambaiter content, lifelike ‘Daisy’ is indistinguishable from a real person, fooling scammers into thinking they’ve found a perfect target when really, she’s beating them at their own horrible game. Using humour to grow scam awareness.
THE SAFEST VOLVO EVER MADE
Volvo tugs on heartstrings to promote its electric XC90 SUV with a shock ending that promotes its safety features telling the touching story of a first-time father who reflects on his hopes and fears as he raises his daughter, guiding viewers through the pivotal moments of her life, from birth to adulthood.
FAMILY PORTRAIT
Christmas can be a complex time for many families, but this ad from JD Sports shows the joy of our blended lives in a documentary style spot whilst celebrating and embracing the nuances of family as you define it.
Specialbuys baubles
Aldi tapped into love for the brand this Christmas, launching a range of middle aisle inspired baubles for supermarket fans to embrace the festive spirit. Bringing some much needed joy and humour to the season.
