Pathos ad examples: 10 ads that get feeling right

“Make it emotional.” That line turns up in briefs at Moonb constantly, and it never says which feeling, or how the film is supposed to earn it. The ten spots below all ran between 2021 and 2026. Each one commits to a single feeling, and you can usually point at the casting or the song that gets it there. After them come two from the same years that went for feeling and ended up pulled or apologized for.

What pathos means in an ad

Pathos is the old rhetoric word for the emotional appeal. Its neighbors are ethos (why trust the speaker) and logos (the argument). In a marketing brief it means the ad wants you to feel something before it asks you to think anything, and wants that feeling to stick to the brand.

It does not have to be tears. Pride, relief, nostalgia, a protective jolt and plain joy all count. In the ones I rate, I can point at what caused the feeling, usually a person or a song. And the product has something to do in the story that a viewer would believe.

You can measure this. A Nielsen consumer neuroscience study looked at 100 ads across 25 consumer packaged goods brands. The ones that scored above average on viewers’ brain response (EEG) were linked to a 23% lift in sales volume over the brand’s average ad. The below-average ones were linked to a 16% drop.

Ten spots, the feeling each one chases and the craft behind it

Ad	Brand	Year	Emotion it reaches for	Craft lever
“Joy Delivered”	Amazon	2026	Gratitude, the kindness of strangers	One lead on an episodic journey home, scored to a Beatles song
“I’m Not Remarkable”	Apple	2025	Pride without pity	A full musical number that refuses the inspiration angle
“We Like the Way You Move”	Sport England, This Girl Can	2025	Joy, belonging	Street-cast women and a reworked dance track
“Dream Job”	Google Pixel	2025	Parental tenderness, a bit of pride	Home-video texture; the product helps him rehearse, the answers are his
“Born to Play”	NFL	2024	Aspiration	Shot in Ghana with a cast of 400 local actors
“You Got This”	adidas	2024	Release from pressure	A song that names the feeling, sung over stars and amateurs
“The Beginner”	John Lewis	2022	Tenderness, hope	Withholding the reason until the final scene
“Toxic Influence”	Dove	2022	Protective alarm	Deepfaking mothers into saying toxic things
“The Stepdad”	Disney	2021	Belonging in a new family	A sequel’s continuity and one precious object
“Imaginary Iggy”	McDonald’s	2021	Nostalgia	A whole childhood compressed, under an acoustic cover of a pop classic

1. Amazon, “Joy Delivered” (2026)

The newest spot here, and the one I would show a client first, because Amazon could have shown products and chose not to lead with them. Adweek’s November 2026 write-up describes Joy, played by New Zealand actress Kate Laidler, stranded at an airport after every flight is canceled. She hits a dead end with a bus, hitchhikes with donkey farmers, spends a night in a boat cabin and gets a cab from a giant, handing out the gifts meant for her family to the strangers who help her.

At two and a half minutes it is long for a holiday ad. I would not cut a second, because the trip home has to feel like effort or the thank-yous mean nothing. The score is a rendition of The Beatles’ “Golden Slumbers,” and Amazon’s in-house team, Amazon XCM, made it with the production company Smuggler.

2. Apple, “I’m Not Remarkable” (2025)

Apple released this on December 2, 2025, ahead of the International Day of Persons with Disabilities. MacRumors quotes Apple’s list of the features behind it, the ones it says help students with disabilities in college: Magnifier on Mac, Accessibility Reader, Braille Access, VoiceOver, Sound and Name Recognition, and Live Captions. Contagious credits Kim Gehrig as director (she also shot Apple’s Emmy-winning “The Greatest”) and Apple’s internal agency for the campaign.

The easy route for a disability ad is inspiration, and I think inspiration usually patronizes the people on screen. Apple skipped it. It is a full musical, choreography and chorus included, and the cast make the point, in Contagious’s words, that they are “no more or less remarkable than anyone else.”

On any purpose film I would ask the people on screen what they want an audience to feel before anyone writes the brief.

3. Sport England, “We Like the Way You Move” (2025)

This Girl Can has been Sport England’s campaign for women who do not feel they belong in sport and exercise for about a decade. Anyone on your team who thinks pathos needs sadness should watch the 2025 chapter. Shots reported in September 2025 that Priya Ahluwalia directed it through RSA Films for the TGC Collective. The cast was street-cast from across England, and the spot champions women from South Asian Muslim and Black communities, women aged 55 to 74, pregnant women and new mothers.

Composer Amy McKnight reworked BodyRockers’ “I Like the Way” for it, MORGAN sings, and the title line turns into a compliment to the women on screen.

4. Google Pixel, “Dream Job” (2025)

Google’s in-house team made this national spot for Super Bowl LIX. A father uses Gemini Live on a Pixel 9 to rehearse for a job interview, and Adweek describes the assistant helping him shape his answers from his years as a dad, from negotiating how many bedtime stories to read to coordinating family Halloween costumes.

Some of it is styled as old camcorder footage, date stamp and all, with a baby in a high chair, as if the memories came out of the family’s own archive. Gemini gets very little to do. It helps him rehearse, and every answer comes out of his own years as a dad, which is why I like it.

Remember this one when you get to the misses. Google made a Gemini ad the year before that went the other way.

5. NFL, “Born to Play” (2024)

The NFL ran this two-minute film straight after the Super Bowl LVIII halftime show. The league’s own release describes a young football fan in Ghana imagining a game across the city on his way to school, alongside players including Saquon Barkley and Justin Jefferson, and says the story was inspired by a speech former player Osi Umenyiora gave at a football camp.

Per the same release, 72andSunny created it, Andrew Dosunmu directed, and it was shot entirely in Ghana with more than 90 local crew members and a cast of 400 local Ghanaian actors. I care about that detail more than any of the star cameos.

6. adidas, “You Got This” (2024)

adidas launched this film in February 2024 to kick off a campaign about negative pressure in sport. Campaign Brief’s launch story lists the athletes, among them Pat Mahomes, Trinity Rodman, Lionel Messi, Linda Caicedo, Jude Bellingham, Anthony Edwards, Rohit Sharma and the All Blacks, and quotes adidas saying the goal was to help young players confront pressure and “bring the joy back to sport.”

The film is set to Queen and David Bowie’s “Under Pressure,” which names the exact feeling adidas wants to defuse, so nobody has to say it out loud.

7. John Lewis, “The Beginner” (2022)

Of all the John Lewis Christmas ads, this is the one I point to when a script explains too much.

The National’s launch report describes a 90-second film of a middle-aged man learning to skateboard, falling and trying again, until a social worker arrives at his door with Ellie, a teenager carrying her own skateboard, at her new foster home. It was made with adam&eveDDB and the charities Action for Children and Who Cares? Scotland.

For most of the runtime you watch him fail without knowing why. The reason only lands late in the film, and it changes how the earlier falls read. The track, per Campaign Brief, is Mike Geier’s cover of Blink-182’s “All the Small Things.” The product barely shows up; The National counted two brief glimpses of the Lewis Bear toy.

Our storytelling ads roundup breaks down more films built this way.

8. Dove, “Toxic Influence” (2022)

Ogilvy made it and Henry-Alex Rubin directed it through SMUGGLER, according to Shots’ coverage of the April 2022 launch. In the near four-minute film, mothers and daughters watch toxic online commentary, then see the mothers themselves on screen saying equally harmful things. The mothers had been deepfaked during the casting process without knowing.

The alarm it goes for is the protective kind a parent feels, and it only works because the voice belongs to someone the girl trusts. I find it hard to watch, and I am a little uneasy about how it was made. The mothers did not know. If I borrowed the format, I would want consent and aftercare sorted before anyone opened the edit.

9. Disney, “The Stepdad” (2021)

Disney UK’s Christmas short is a sequel, and it uses that. Disney’s own description on the video says it follows Nicole, the granddaughter from the previous year’s ad, now grown up with two children, Max and Ella, as their new stepdad Mike moves in. At its center is a precious storybook Max has from his birth father. Mumbrella reports it runs over three minutes and was made with Make-A-Wish and Flux Animation Studios in New Zealand.

Belonging in a family that already exists is a hard feeling to sell, which may be why Disney gave it more than three minutes. The story hangs on Max’s storybook, his link to his birth father, and the song carries the rest. Universal Music Publishing says “Love Runs Deeper” was written by PARKWILD and sung by Gregory Porter, who said in UMPG’s announcement that the first line moved him.

10. McDonald’s, “Imaginary Iggy” (2021)

Leo Burnett London made this for the fifth year of McDonald’s UK’s #ReindeerReady Christmas campaign. Adweek describes Matilda inventing Iggy, a furry imaginary friend, one Christmas, keeping him through years of family rituals, then shutting him in a closet as she grows up. afaqs picks up the ending: she sees another child talking to someone invisible, misses her friend and brings Iggy back out.

A whole childhood goes by in one short film, which is about the quickest way I know to make parents nostalgic. Mabel sings an acoustic version of Cyndi Lauper’s “Time After Time” over it, a song plenty of the parents watching grew up with. The embed is McDonald’s Ireland’s upload of the ad.

Two ads that reached for feeling and missed

Both brands already appear above. In each case the trouble started with what the product was asked to do at the emotional high point.

Google’s “Dear Sydney” ran during the Paris 2024 Olympics. A dad asks Gemini to help his daughter write a fan letter to the hurdler Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone. People were angry about whose feeling it was. The feeling in the story was a kid writing to her hero, and viewers objected to software doing the writing. Google told CNBC that “while the ad tested well before airing, given the feedback, we have decided to phase the ad out of our Olympics rotation.” Google’s Super Bowl spot six months later, “Dream Job,” gave the same assistant far less to do.

Apple’s “Crush!” for the iPad Pro, in May 2024, showed a hydraulic press flattening instruments, paint, cameras and arcade games into a thin tablet. Apple wanted awe at how much fits inside one device; plenty of viewers saw things people love being destroyed and felt the loss. Apple’s Tor Myhren told Ad Age, as MacRumors reported, “We missed the mark with this video, and we’re sorry,” and Apple said the ad would not run on TV.

When emotional advertising is the wrong choice

Some buying decisions are mostly about facts: compatibility, specs and price comparisons, a regulated financial product, a medical appointment or recall notice. The viewer needs to understand and act. A heartfelt story there makes a simple task feel heavier, or looks like it is hiding something. I would lead with the information there and keep the warmth in the delivery, a calm pace and a voice that does not rush anyone.

It also goes wrong when the brand cannot back the feeling. I get nervous when a client wants a film about belonging and their own customers would never describe them that way, because people check. Before you brief an emotional spot, write down what the brand actually does that makes the feeling believable. If that list is short, sort out the brand personality first and write the script after.

What to borrow from these ten

I ask for the feeling before the story, in words specific enough to argue about: “pride without pity,” say, or “the relief of putting pressure down.” Then I look for the one choice that will carry it. Most of these ads lean on a single one, like the street casting for Sport England or the withheld reason in John Lewis.

Music is the decision I see teams leave too late. At least five of the ten build on a song the audience already half-knows, most of them rearranged so it means something new: Golden Slumbers, I Like the Way, Under Pressure, All the Small Things, Time After Time. I want to hear a track against pictures before anyone pays for a license or a session singer. A rough pass costs very little: this walkthrough on how to make an AI music video goes from a track to a draft video you can watch, and that is usually enough to hear whether the song fits. The final cut still needs the real track and an editor.

Look hard at the product’s job, too. Joy’s gifts end up with the strangers who help her, so the presents become her thank-yous. John Lewis keeps its own products to two glimpses of a toy bear and lets the skateboard Ellie brings with her carry the welcome. The question in both is whether a viewer would believe the object belongs in the scene. I run every product beat in a script past that question.

Last, show the cut to people who have not read the script, and ask what they felt before you ask whether they can name the brand. For more recent work to study, try our lists of the best TV commercials and the best YouTube ads; ad creative testing covers checking a feeling against results once the spot is live.