12 Best Animated Advertisements of All Time (2026)
Twelve of the best animated advertisements ever made, each embedded with the studio that made it and a short breakdown of why it still works.
Animation lets an advertisement do things a camera cannot. It can build an impossible world, make you feel for a monster or a piece of paper, and hold a single emotional beat for sixty seconds without a product shot in sight. The best animated ads rarely sell a feature. They tell a small, complete story so well that the brand rides along on the feeling, and that is exactly why they still get watched years after they aired.
Here are twelve that earned their place, each embedded so you can watch it, with the studio that made it and a short note on why it works. Together they are a masterclass in the idea that in advertising, making someone feel something almost always beats telling them something.
The 12 best animated advertisements
1. John Lewis, “Man on the Moon”
Made by adam&eveDDB, this is the benchmark for emotional narrative advertising. A wordless story about a girl trying to reach a lonely old man on the moon, scored to Aurora’s cover of Oasis’s “Half The World Away,” it lands its “show someone they’re loved this Christmas” message without a product shot until the very end. The restraint and the single clear emotional beat are the whole lesson.
Why it lasts: one clear feeling, told with total discipline, beats a dozen selling points.
2. Chipotle, “The Scarecrow”
A Pixar-grade dystopian short from Moonbot Studios, carried by a haunting Fiona Apple cover of “Pure Imagination.” It makes an emotional argument about industrial food versus real ingredients and never once cuts to a hard sell. It proved a brand film could go massively viral on craft and narrative alone, taking Cannes and One Show awards along the way.
Why it lasts: entertainment-first, values-driven animation can outperform conventional advertising outright.
3. Chipotle, “Back to the Start”
Directed by Johnny Kelly and produced by Nexus Studios, this stop-motion short tells a complete arc, a farmer industrialises his farm and then reverses course, with no dialogue at all, carried by Willie Nelson covering Coldplay’s “The Scientist.” The tactile handcrafted animation makes it feel like a piece of culture rather than a commercial.
Why it lasts: a handmade texture and a wordless story read as sincerity, which is hard to fake.
4. Android, “Friends Furever”
From Droga5, a sixty-second montage of unlikely animal friendships, a cat with ducklings, an elephant with a sheep, set to Roger Miller’s “Oo-De-Lolly.” It became the most-shared ad of 2015 by selling Android’s “be together, not the same” idea purely through charm, with zero product shots.
Why it lasts: a simple, warm idea travels further on its own than any media spend can push it.
5. Coca-Cola, “Happiness Factory”
Concept by Wieden+Kennedy Amsterdam with animation by Psyop: a coin drops into a vending machine and the camera dives into a whole imagined world of creatures who bottle, cap, and deliver the drink. It aired in over a hundred countries and remains a gold standard for character-driven CG that sells a feeling rather than a fact.
Why it lasts: turning a mundane product moment into a world is a reliable way to make people care.
6. Compare the Market, “Aleksandr the Meerkat”
The 2009 launch spot from VCCP that introduced Aleksandr Orlov, an aristocratic meerkat, on nothing more than a pun between “market” and “meerkat.” The deadpan CG character and his “simples” catchphrase turned a dry price-comparison product into one of the UK’s most recognisable mascots, running for well over a decade.
Why it lasts: a distinctive character can carry a low-interest category for years on personality alone.
7. Cravendale, “Cats with Thumbs”
From Wieden+Kennedy London, a masterclass in absurdist brand storytelling that builds an entire mock-serious mythology around cats evolving opposable thumbs to justify why milk matters. The deadpan voiceover and cinematic CG cats made it ITV’s Ad of the Year and a real viral moment.
Why it lasts: a single bold, strange idea, committed to fully, can lift a forgettable product into a talking point.
8. Slack, “Work, Simplified”
A fully animated brand film by Giant Ant (who also turn up in our motion graphics companies roundup) that visualises the chaos of modern work and how Slack calms it, all fluid motion design and a warm colour story rather than a product demo. It is the clearest example on this list of how to make an abstract software value feel human.
Why it lasts: concept-led animation can make even a productivity tool feel emotional and legible.
9. Duolingo, “Make It Fun”
From Duolingo’s first global campaign, written by Wieden+Kennedy Amsterdam and animated by Le Cube: a full musical-theatre number where Duo the owl and friends sing about the real obstacles to learning a language and land on the fix, to make it fun. A strong mascot and a catchy show-tune structure turn a functional pitch into entertainment.
Why it lasts: a memorable mascot plus a song is a durable formula for making a practical product likeable.
10. Headspace, “The Hole in the Road”
The signature Headspace style, animated by Nexus Studios and narrated by co-founder Andy Puddicombe: simple, warm character design and a calm parable about how hard it is to change something you cannot see. It turns an abstract mindfulness idea into a memorable visual metaphor, and the gentle craft is inseparable from the brand.
Why it lasts: matching the animation’s tone to the product’s feeling makes the ad and the brand one thing.
11. Android, “Rock, Paper, Scissors”
Another Nexus Studios and Droga5 collaboration that turns a rock, a piece of paper, and a pair of scissors into bullied misfits who band together, carrying Android’s diversity message with no dialogue at all, scored to “St. Elmo’s Fire.” It was widely named the best ad of Oscar night 2016.
Why it lasts: pure visual storytelling can make an abstract value instantly clear and deeply moving.
12. John Lewis, “Moz the Monster”
A second adam&eveDDB entry, this one blends a physical puppet with post-production CGI to tell the story of a boy and the friendly monster under his bed, scored by Elbow covering “Golden Slumbers.” The craft of fusing a tangible puppet with digital expression is a quiet reminder that animation and live action are not rivals.
Why it lasts: mixing techniques in service of one warm idea can produce something neither could alone.
What the best ones share
Line these up and the through-line is obvious. Almost none show the product until the final seconds, and several never really show it at all. Each one commits to a single idea, whether that is a lonely man on the moon, a scarecrow’s quiet rebellion, or a meerkat with a grudge, and lets craft do the rest. They understand that an animated advertisement is competing for attention against everything else on a screen, and that a real feeling is the only thing that reliably wins.
A last note on who makes work like this, since I work at Moonb and animation is a big part of what we do: nearly every film above came from a specialist studio, and one of them, Giant Ant on the Slack film, sits in our motion graphics companies roundup if you want to see where that kind of craft comes from. The pitch ends there; the lesson is that a clear idea and real craft outlast any trend.
Frequently asked questions
Longer than most people expect. A sixty-second film like these runs anywhere from a few months to the better part of a year, because the timeline covers concept, boarding, a style pass, full animation, and sound design. The stop-motion pieces such as "Back to the Start" are especially slow, since every frame is physically posed and shot by hand. That patience is what makes the result play like culture instead of a commercial.
A familiar song carries emotion the animation does not have to build from scratch, and a cover reframes it so the ad feels like its own piece rather than a borrowed needle-drop. Aurora reworking Oasis, or Willie Nelson covering Coldplay, gives you recognition and surprise at once. It can also be a cleaner licensing path than clearing the original master recording. In most of these films the music is doing as much of the emotional work as the picture.
No. Several of these carried low-interest categories, a price-comparison site and a milk brand, on nothing more than a strong character and one idea committed to fully. Animation can be a smart route for a smaller brand precisely because a distinctive mascot or a clear visual metaphor travels on charm, not on media weight. What it really demands is a real idea and the discipline to hold to it, which is more about clarity of thought than the size of the production.
