Runway's Big Ad Contest

LOG · WHAT IT IS AND WHAT IT DOES

Runway's Big Ad Contest gave us a set of briefs and asked us to make ads for them using AI. I chose two. Fizz Soda: show that this soda is so good, you'd do just about anything for it. The Pippin Garden Hose: nobody buys a garden hose for fun, so show that owning one is the moment a person crosses from 'young person' to 'officially an adult'.

WHY

I was a theater kid, and always wanted to see how those kinds of creative character twists and attention to detail transfer outside of engineering.

WHAT I WORKED ON

Everything. I used Nano Banana for scene generation, Runway for animation and ElevenLabs for the voice, then did the editing, sound effects and music in Premiere Pro. The thinking behind each ad:

1. Fizz Soda: the 3am thirst

   Drawing on the brief's insight of absolute need, I combined it with the internet's most viral drink meme: "3am water", or the "3am thirst". Leaving your bed when you're dreaming of a sweet life is the hardest thing to do in modern life, whether it's for wizz, rizz, bizz or an early flight. But when the 3am thirst hits, you wake up and walk around willingly to find the answer: Fizz! The whole ad is built around that idea, answering the brief's "do just about anything", or perhaps "the hardest thing", for Fizz. Around the meme I wove a Gen-Z, internet-native rhyme scheme (wizz, rizz, bizz, leading to the ultimate fizz), engineered the audio in at least five layers for depth of detail (listen with headphones), kept a consistent, cinematic pink-versus-green lighting theme taken from the Fizz can's colors, and used SnorriCam shots to convey urgency, need and action.

2. Pippin Garden Hose: you've been preparing for this your whole life

   I answered the brief by flipping its insight. The core idea: the hose has always been there with you "for fun", and the final evolution of childhood play, becoming an adult, is gardening. In a 30-second, sun-drenched timeline anchored by the signature "Pippin Green" hose, we follow a journey of youth: kids use it as a jump rope, pre-teens battle in a muddy tug-of-war, and teens use it as a limbo stick. All that chaotic, playful energy ends in a pristine, high-definition shot of a man expertly misting his garden with a look of pure, peaceful mastery. Setting the hose's history as a literal toy against its grown-up function dramatizes the brief's "threshold": the exact moment of becoming an adult. The twist, "You've been preparing for this your whole life", says you didn't just suddenly start caring about lawns; you finally graduated to the ultimate level of playing with Pippin.

WHAT CAME OF IT

It got a lot of views, but wasn't one of the finalists.