MANILA, PHILIPPINES – October was a testament to reinvention through bold imagination, delivering a remarkable mix of purpose-driven artistry, hyper-local stunts, and brilliant real-time meme marketing.
This month, adobo Magazine saw agencies and brands move far beyond traditional ads to deliver real-world stunts in order to transform cultural memes while embedding deep social meaning into their products. This batch of adobo Picks proves that the greatest campaigns aren’t just seen — they are felt, experienced, and shared.
From darkening a city’s waters to redesigning public restrooms for inclusivity, these five campaigns show that true reinvention doesn’t just capture attention — it moves people, sparks emotion, and reshapes the creative conversation.
GIGIL darkens Manila waterway for Netflix’s ‘Wednesday’ Season 2 (Philippines)
Forget billboards; GIGIL literally changed the face of Manila for the return of the hit Netflix series, Wednesday. By collaborating to temporarily darken a major urban waterway, the agency executed a masterclass in site-specific, high-impact spectacle.
Leveraging that sense of dark mystery and intrigue, GIGIL transformed Jenna Ortega’s frightful experiences — crying black tears — into an audacious and attention-grabbing installation in one of Manila’s busiest commercial hubs, signifying her character’s encounters with new foes and woes in the gothic halls of Nevermore Academy.
In case you didn’t know, in the series, black tears signify Wednesday’s severe exhaustion due to the excessive and intense use of her psychic powers. The condition, also experienced by the character’s Aunt Ophelia, is also a warning that her powers are becoming too much for her to handle, signaling a dangerous path ahead for her and her family.
To drive engagement for season two of the series, GIGIL worked with the Venice Grand Canal Mall, a popular immersive Italian experience featuring a man-made 650-foot long, 50-foot wide replica of the city’s Grand Canal, complete with gondola rides, Italian-inspired architecture, and replicas of iconic Venetian landmarks.
L’Oréal Thailand’s Beauty Inside Out transforms expired makeup into art therapy tools (Thailand)
What if beauty could heal more than just the skin?
This is what L’Oréal Groupe Thailand and McCann Worldgroup Thailand did as a groundbreaking effort to promote both sustainability and mental wellness, showcasing the power of circular creativity. Through the “Beauty Inside Out,” campaign, the social initiative gives new purpose to expired cosmetics by transforming them into art therapy tools.
Rather than disposing of unused beauty products, thousands were creatively repurposed into art therapy kits, developed in collaboration with renowned Thai artist Juli Baker and Summer, who contributed her whimsical illustrations as coloring pages and designed the packaging for the “Beauty Inside Out” boxes. Each kit, filled with expired foundations, eye shadows, and lip products, invites patients to paint, draw, and express themselves — bringing the healing power of art therapy to mental health hospitals across Thailand.
Moreover, the campaign anchored on the L’Oréal Groupe’s mission to “create the beauty that moves the world,” while tackling a pressing issue: the surplus of unused products that often end up as waste.
A total of 400 art therapy kits were distributed to patients at Srithanya Hospital, Thailand’s foremost mental health institution. Integrated into guided art therapy sessions, the kits have helped participants spark creativity, build social connections, collaborate in groups, and strengthen focus and decision-making — proving that beauty can truly inspire healing from within.
Rhian Ramos turns viral meme into reality with KERATINplus collaboration (Philippines)
This campaign is the definitive blueprint for meme-to-market success.
When Filipina actress Rhian Ramos took on the role of Kera Mitena in the fantasy series Encantadia Chronicles: Sang’gre, the internet couldn’t help but notice the playful coincidence in her character’s name. Social media users quickly connected it to the viral “KERATIN??? MAY PLUS???” catchphrase from Filipino actress Maja Salvador’s KERATINplus ad, spawning a wave of memes and witty online jokes that spread across platforms.
This time, Rhian decided to join the fun herself.
In a cheeky new collaboration with KERATINplus and boutique ad agency Creative Cracker, the actress fully embraces the “Kera Keratin” meme in a video that has already amassed over 8.6 million views online. The spot humorously reimagines her Encantadia persona — only now, instead of wielding magic, she finds herself in a grocery store in the human world, hilariously encountering a bottle of KERATINplus on the shelf.
The move felt inherently authentic and culturally agile, leveraging an in-the-moment trend for immediate high-trust engagement and product relevance, a stellar example of letting the audience write the script.
Cathay Pacific, Leo Singapore prescribes ‘Tripment’ to cure vacation deprivation (Singapore)
Singapore ranks among the most overworked cities globally, with 62% of Singaporeans admitting they seldom use up all their vacation days each year, according to Expedia’s 2024 Global Vacation Deprivation Report. The finding underscores a growing concern: in the pursuit of productivity, rest and relaxation have become rare luxuries.
To address this, Cathay Pacific and Leo Burnett Singapore have teamed up to launch a campaign called “Tripment,” featuring Dr. Teck M.C. — an AI-powered “doctor” created using OpenAI’s GPT and Whisper technologies, with a bespoke voice generated through ElevenLabs.
Designed as a playful yet purposeful “teleconsultation” experience, Tripment offers personalized travel “prescriptions” to remedy conditions like Monday-itis, Corporate Jargon-xiety, and other symptoms of overwork. The campaign aims to remind Singaporeans of the healing power of travel — and that sometimes, the best cure really is a much-needed getaway.
Publicis London, Tork challenge public restroom design in new inclusivity campaign (London)
Publicis London has teamed up with Tork, an Essity brand and global leader in professional hygiene, to launch a powerful campaign exposing the often-overlooked barriers to hygiene in public restrooms — challenges that affect more than half of people every day.
Drawing from new global research, Publicis London and Tork created an interactive, non-inclusive restroom installation designed to make these hidden obstacles tangible. The restroom features exaggerated barriers such as a dispenser that releases sand-covered hand towels, stiff soap dispenser handles, and an excessively loud hand dryer — each representing the everyday difficulties faced by individuals with conditions like arthritis, eczema, and neurodiversity. Through sensory discomfort and physical inaccessibility, the experience vividly brings to life the need for more inclusive hygiene solutions, amplifying that inclusive hygiene should be a right, not a privilege.
The campaign runs across the UK, USA, Europe, and Australasia, with media handled by Zenith.
