When I sit down and look back at how 2025 went by, the first thing that comes to mind is how uneven it felt.
Some weeks disappeared in the blink of an eye. And then there were days, sometimes just a few hours, that dragged on and on. This year moved quickly and slowly at the same time.
As a content writer working across different clients, categories, and creative expectations, the year demanded constant switching between tones, formats, and ways of thinking. It wasn’t chaotic, but it wasn’t linear either. And somewhere in the middle of all that, what kept me grounded was good content in its many forms.
TV Shows. Web series. Good books. Ads. Every once in a while, I spotted something creative that stayed with me for days altogether.
This post is to honor the ad campaigns I saw in 2025 that I think about every once in a while.
Unfading Love – Thai Life Insurance
I have held this opinion for years. Thai insurance ads are some of the best pieces of advertising in the world.
There is something about the way these ads approach storytelling that feels deeply human. They do not rush to make a point. Instead, they let the emotions brew. They make you pause and feel. And they leave you thinking about it long after you have watched it.
Source – YouTube
Unfading Love is one such masterstroke by Thai Life Insurance.
The ad starts with an elderly woman who walks into a tattoo parlour. It is an unexpected setting for someone her age, inviting both confusion and mockery from those present.
When asked about the tattoo she wants, she shares a piece of paper with the artist. Some minutes into the tattoo, the thai artist finally summoned the courage to ask her what was being tattooed on her arm.
Turns out, it was a medical prescription of her son dealing with a life threatening condition.
At first, the moment feels puzzling. Why would someone choose to permanently engrave something like this onto their skin?
As the story unfolds, the reason becomes painfully clear. Through a series of flashbacks, we learn that the woman is battling dementia. She has already forgotten her son’s medication once before. And the fear of forgetting again is what brings her here.
What makes the story even more powerful is the contradiction at its core. A woman slowly losing her memories chooses permanence. Ink on skin becomes an act of love, responsibility, and resistance against forgetting.
The ad does not rely on dramatics. It does not push any product aggressively either. It simply shows the love of a mother in its rawest form.
The campaign has been very popular, amassing 4.8 Million Views and 18K likes across YouTube on their official channel.
Grab Human Ride – Grab Thailand
Human Ride by Grab is another Thai campaign that touched me deeply.
It immediately reminded me of a campaign from a few years ago that called out something many of us were guilty of at the time. Referring to delivery partners by the name of the platform they worked for. Swiggy. Zomato. Ola. Uber. As if the person delivering our food or driving us somewhere did not have a name or an identity of their own.
That small habit said a lot about how easily we reduce people to systems.
Grab Human Ride does something similar, but in a quieter, more emotional way. It forces you to see ride-hailing drivers not as extensions of an app, but as people navigating real lives. People with emotions, exhaustion, worries, and dignity.
Source – YouTube
In a world dominated by 10-minute delivery apps and instant rides, it has become dangerously easy to treat gig workers like machines. We tap a button, track a dot on a screen, and forget there is a human behind the wheel or the handlebars.
This campaign gently pulls that human back into focus.
It does not preach or accuse. It simply asks you to remember that convenience always has a human cost behind it.
The campaign also went viral, amassing 20 million views and 63K likes on the official channel of Grab Thailand.
Shark Tank India Hustle Culture Ad
Talking about campaigns that made people feel something, the Shark Tank hustle culture promo deserves a mention.
When this ad rolled out, it struck a nerve with a lot of working professionals. It took a jab at CEOs and showed the reality across many organizations when certain individuals leave.
Source – YouTube
The messaging was intentionally uncomfortable. For a few moments, it almost felt sarcastic. As if the campaign was holding up a mirror to workplace realities where effort is taken for granted on an everyday basis.
But instead of leaving you bitter, the ad nudges you to build something of your own. To embrace the hustle, not as blind grind culture, but as a way to take control of your work and your future.
The campaign rolled out across YouTube, OTT, and TV ads and received wide acclaim. On YouTube alone, the video amassed 6.9 million views.
Interview Practice with ChatGPT – OpenAI
I spotted this ad around a week ago while watching a series on OTT.
Source – YouTube
OpenAI had previously done ads on how people can use ChatGPT to learn different skills like cooking, planning road trips, and getting fit.
But this ad was part of a broader omnichannel rollout across TV, OTT, and digital media, in which ChatGPT was shown as a tool helping a young woman prepare for a job interview by practising her answers in English.
The beauty of this ad is how ChatGPT switches naturally between languages, just as many people in India do. It felt real. Familiar. And quietly powerful.
What made this campaign work was not the novelty of AI. It was the localization. ChatGPT was not positioned as something futuristic or elite. It was shown as accessible. In the era where Perplexity and Google Gemini are offering free memberships with data subscriptions to get adopted by the masses, this ad by ChatGPT moved the product from being a tool to something that can fit seamlessly into individual lives.
Made for Life – IKEA Norway
Talking about life, it would be unfair if I did not mention IKEA Norway’s Made for Life campaign.
Instead of showcasing products in pristine homes, the campaign shows objects as carriers of memory.
This one 30-second ad particularly stays with you. It spotlights a simple cup. An inexpensive one, in fact, priced at just a few kroner.
Source – YouTube
But as the story unfolds, the cup becomes something else entirely. The ad reveals an elderly man living with memory loss. On some days, he forgets that his wife is no longer around. And on those days, he still sets out a cup of tea for her. The cup remains. Even when the person does not.
The Made for Life campaign has numerous such short films where in a short span they convey something deeply human.
The campaign does not force sentiment. It simply observes. And in doing so, it makes IKEA feel less like a brand and more like a part of lived experience.
Every Home Is a Castle – BirlaNu
That reminds me of another ad that recently popped up in my feed from the home solutions provider BirlaNu.
Source – YouTube
This 35-second ad is a story seen through the eyes of a young family, for whom their home is not just a structure, but a castle.
What stands out in this entire ad is that it is built using generative AI without leaning into anything uncanny or unsettling.
That idea taps into something deeply familiar, especially in the Indian context. For many families, building a home is not just a milestone. It is a dream come true. A symbol of years of effort.
The campaign hits the right nerve because it plays with that emotion. In fact, within 5 days of going live, the video has amassed a million views on YouTube already.
Meet Liz – Skinny
Since we are already talking about AI, I cannot refrain from mentioning the Meet Liz campaign by the New Zealand telecom operator Skinny.
Skinny did something very interesting here. When looking for a brand ambassador, they did not pick a traditional celebrity or influencer. Rather, they interviewed around 400 people to understand what their most satisfied customer actually looked like and created Liz, an AI-powered clone of their 65-year-old customer Liz.
Source – YouTube
What makes this campaign stand out is the transparency.
In a time when AI-generated images often evoke mixed emotions and invite critique, Skinny was upfront about what they were doing.
That honesty mattered.
The campaign did not try to blur lines or play into confusion. It leaned into clarity. AI was the tool, not the trick. And because of that, the execution felt thoughtful.
In a year where AI marketing drew a lot of criticism, Get Skinny showed how the technology can be used responsibly, without losing trust.
Sometimes, doing it openly is what makes all the difference.
Perplexity Super Bowl Moment
And that brings me to one of the smartest tactical plays of the year. Perplexity’s Super Bowl Tweet.
Instead of spending millions on a thirty-second TV spot, the CEO of Perplexity did something far simpler. He tweeted.
Source – X
He invited people to download the app and ask five questions during the Super Bowl. If a question stood out, the user would win a million dollars.
Not a dollar spent. And the impact was immense. It increased app installs by 50%.
What made this work was timing and confidence. The campaign went live during Superbowl when everyone keeps an eye out for offers. And by trusting curiosity over spectacle, they delivered a win without spending a dime. Or was it a million dollars?
From Watching Great Ads to Building Better Content
The campaigns mentioned here are only a small slice of the work that surfaced across our screens. There are many more that deserve to be in the spotlight. Maybe I will share them in another post, some other day.
But I ought to mention that as writers, we do not consume this work passively. We learn from it.
Every ad teaches us something about emotion, restraint, timing, or clarity. Those learnings often show up in unexpected ways. Sometimes, it helps us frame the right narrative for a topic, like an article on weapon detection systems for schools.
Other times, they reflect on how we curate a subject line that makes someone open an email. Or in how we take a transactional asset, like a case study, and make it feel human.
At Concurate, this is exactly how we work. We observe what resonates outside our ecosystem and apply those insights to build content that people remember and act on. We curate content with higher recall value, so when your company comes up as an option during the decision-making stage, it inclines your buyers to take action.
If you want to build campaigns that deserve attention and drive real outcomes, book a call with us today!
