As I had mentioned in my earlier post listing my picks for the 10 best Indian ads, I watch a LOT of ads on a daily basis. I’m not an ‘interrupted-consumer’ of ads – I go after them, search for them, watch them, rewatch them, and so on. And this search is not restricted to Indian ads only. I’d say that I don’t watch ads as much as I observe them. In fact, I observe/watch more international ads than Indian ads. It’s a simple number-based logic – a lot more countries make ads, than just India ?
I had not considered making a list like this earlier. But someone wrote to me the other day after seeing my Indian ads list if I can also make time for an international ads list too. It wasn’t difficult, but it was time consuming. I keep track of every ad I watch even though I choose to write about very few (relative ratio). And I archive all my notes, so it becomes easy to assemble all the ads, go through them, and pick my favorites.
The 10 that you see below is from a pool of about 4,500-5,000 odd international ads that I watched all through 2025.
The same caveat remains – I do not have access to how these ads performed. That is something available only with the brand team and the agency (media buying) teams. So, I do not bother with what I cannot control and focus on what I can. That is how I reacted to the ads and what made me like them, over many others.
And so, here are my picks for the top 10 international ads of 2025.
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1- Chicken Licken (Agency: Joe Public)
My LinkedIn note on this ad.
Stupendously good use of exaggeration in service of the product! The narrative trusts and respects its audience, does not explain/over-explain and lands the point beautifully. The sheer imagination just before we see the man-hole and after the man enters the man-hole is brilliant! This is the kind of creativity that AI cannot imagine (yet)!
2- King Faisal Specialist Hospital & Research Centre (Agency: Publicis Middle East)
My LinkedIn note on this ad.
The one ad that touched me THE most in 2025. Like the first ad (above), the narrative (and the run time) trusts the audience to tell its story well, with patience and empathy. I also liked all the creative liberties taken while telling this story – they made me view the ad the second time, this time, not to be wowed by the payoff in the end, but to simply admire the writing that went into this ad.
3- Liga Contra el Cancer (Agency: Cheil Peru)
My LinkedIn note on this ad.
This ad’s idea was the most inventive I came across all of last year. It’s a very topical idea, but framed in a completely unique way that is also perfectly meaningful. Cancer is a genetic disease. But the way to frame it as an ‘inheritance’ makes the narrative bold and noteworthy. Inheritance need not always be good (money, property). There are a lot of other things we inherit from our parents and this ad flips the popular notion around inheritance for a great cause.
4- British Airways (Agency: Uncommon)
My LinkedIn note on this ad.
Very, very funny, and very relatable too! Excellent use of a quirky creative device to bring to life how jarring office work during a holiday would look like.
5- Netflix (Agency: Isla, Buenos Aires)
My LinkedIn note on this ad.
Valentine’s Day campaigns are all about bringing people (couples) together, but this Netflix campaign from Argentina confidently splits them, but meaningfully, in service of an appropriate product feature. Solid thinking!
6- Amnesty International (Agency: BAR Ogilvy, Portugal)
My LinkedIn note on this ad.
Phenomenally topical ad idea, and the best use of framing among ads I saw last year. As we see the things we take for granted around us break down gradually and the world going to __, here’s at least one ad that tells it as it is, while also making the narration smart and intelligent.
7- Pella (Agency: Singlethread)
My LinkedIn note on this ad.
This ad is a sheer joy to watch! I watched it a lot of times last year 🙂 Great choice of song and excellent moves by the young girl. Very imaginative way to show an otherwise routne product, in the most exciting and interesting manner mainly because the agency and the client decided not to focus on the product, but on what it enables! Yes, I did have a crib about the sequencing, but I presume that this is the full version of the ad while shorter versions without the jarring sequence we used in actual ads.
8- Dreamies (Agency: adam&eveDDB)
My LinkedIn note on this ad.
The best billboard idea I recall seeing last year. It’s not a flat, 2D design, of course, but whatever’s been done (3-dimensionally) is brilliantly in service of the product being sold! This is thinking-out-of-the-box, quite literally!
9- Amazon Audible (Agency: Droga5)
My LinkedIn note on this ad.
Strikingly imaginative story-telling for a product that I’m a huge fan of! The narrative brings to life how the product operates in our minds and what happens during the pauses. Even if you have never experienced this product, you could visualize how wonderfully it works inside your head!
10- Apple iPhone (Agency: TBWA\Media Arts Lab LATAM)
My LinkedIn note on this ad.
Terrific thinking behind this ad’s narrative – one that thinks up the most extreme use-case for a product feature and concocts a heartwarming human-interest story to land it! Very Apple!