Compiled by Janet Hamilton
A TV ad in Australia (9/2000) for a faster internet connection, where a bored man starts off folding a tsuru, a couple more, and by the end, his room is full of complex models.
A commercial for Conimex was on Dutch television (10/2000) for a box with ingredients to make a Japanese dish. The box is folded into a cow and then back into a box again. The company said the commercial was from England. The model is a variation of Dave Brill's Rhinoceros (Brilliant Origami, page 135) with a different head.
A 10/2001 commercial shows a woman preparing an elegant Japanese dinner by hand, including making her own sushi. There was a brief shot of her putting the finishing touches on an origami lily. The punch line of the commercial: When her date arrives, he looks at the beautiful, extravagant dinner table, says "Wow!" and rushes over to it. He picks up a bottle of beer and says, "You got Miller Lite!"
A March 2001 commercial opens with a tight shot of an origami fortune teller being opened and closed quickly. The voice over had the refrain, “I must decide, I must decide....”. The decision to be made was which of the Dunkin Donuts breakfast sandwiches to get.
During a team figure skating competition on CBC (the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation) in March 2001, there was an ad for Canadian Tourism. It began with a map of Canada, which folded into a canoe complete with canoeist with paddle, which then animated and moved across the screen. It then unfolded back to the map and refolded. Another fold from the map was a Canadian Maple Leaf with stem, and finally two masks - comedy and tragedy. The folding and unfolding animations were very fast, and may have involved more than one piece of paper, scissors and glue.
A Danish commercial in May 2001 showed a guy eating a Tom's Guldbar chocolate bar in front of another guy. When he's finished he takes the paper and crumples it. You see the other guy's face briefly, and when you see the first guy again he's holding a flapping bird and making it flap.
An ad for Ultra Clorox bleach stated that their bleach bottle is smaller because the store-brand bleach contains 2 gallons more water. The listeners yell boo-hiss, then someone throws a paper airplane at a picture of the store-brand bleach.
A commercial in Canada for Molson Canadian aired 8/2001. Two guys are competing for the last hamburger at a barbecue, and go through a series of challenges, each one ending with them tied exactly. It starts with "Rock, Paper, Scissors", and then an egg and spoon race, then they both fold origami birds. They continue with chin-ups, ice sculptures, and chess before a bear comes along and eats the burger while they are competing. The commercial ends with them both reaching for the last bottle of beer.
A commercial for Wrigley's Big Red gum in March 2002 showed a lion on the counter folded out of a big red wrapper.
In July 2002 a Starburst commercial showed a girl putting a wrapped Starburst in her mouth and then pulling out the flat wrapper, having unwrapped the candy in her mouth. Then the guy puts a wrapped Starburst in his mouth and pulls out a folded origami crane.
Kohl's department store's (Kohl's) "back to school" commercials in July 2002 showed a girl playing with a cootie catcher.
The cellular phone company Cingular had a commercial showed a girl taking a complex application of some sort, and instead of filling it out, folding it. At one stage it looked to be a traditional blow-up frog, but the in next shot it had evolved into a Pegasus. The agency that did the ad is called Believe and they are based in New York City. The models were folded by Anne LaVin, who stated that she created a three-piece Pegasus: one crane base for the head/torso/forelegs; one crane base for the body/hindquarters/tail; one (triangular) piece for the wings. It was posed rearing up, wings outspread, balancing on its two hind legs and tail. The legs were reinforced with gel material from the lighting crew and weighted with sheets of brass, cut to shape and inserted into the body of the model during folding.
A Burger King commercial ran in August 2003 for their Chicken Cesear Salad Sandwich. The origami was designed by Joseph Wu and the models folded by Gay Merrill Gross, Roz Joyce, Tony Cheng, DelRosa Marshall and MaryAnn Scheblein-Dawson.
Shoko Aoyagi of Australia put her talents to use in an August 2003 TV ad for sanitary pads that are so thin they can be folded into butterflies! The clever ad shows a young woman folding the pad which then flies away as a butterfly in a cloud of other folded butterflies.
A January 2004 commercial for Liberty Tax Service used dollar-bill origami. The commercial featured animated hands "folding" dollar bills into various items you could buy after you got an instant tax refund from them. One item was a car with moving wheels that appeared to have been folded from dollars. They also showed a house and a sailboat and a couple of other things.
An ad for Honda CDTi aired in September 2004 in France. The ad shows someone doing origami with silver metallic paper and folding a number of small engine parts, then the motor is displayed as if it had been assembled from the parts. The origami is used as a metaphor for clean and sharp engineering.
February 2005 - a Toyota Avalon automobile commercial featured an origami
bunny hoping down the street. Robert Lang collaborated on the commercial. http://www.methodstudios.com/mot616
March 2005 - In a Tide detergent commercial a lady wipes her child's face, tears the cloth in half , washes one half in Tide and one half in another detergent. She then take the one washed in Tide, and folds it into a bird.
March 14, 2005 - A commercial for Tropicana orange juice starts off with a little girl on a Subway complaining about the long train ride. Cut to a crowded NYC subway car and a voice over about it being hard to get up in the morning. Quick shot of glum commuters. Then a woman opens up a Tropicana OJ and drinks it. She brightens up, swipes a page from a guy's newspaper, folds a Randlett Flapping Bird and gives it to the little girl. The whole train brightens up. Was it the OJ or the origami? The models used in this Tropicana commercial were done off-stage by Carol Stevens.
Toyota recently launched its Innova Utility Vehicle in India. The TV ad which features Origami, done by Himanshu Agrawal, Origami Mitra, India. http://www.toyotabharat.com/about/tv-commercials.html
An origami-related commercial for a line of Asian Oriental frozen dinners. The frozen dinner box transforms into a dinosaur and charges the camera. It morphs back into its original form, then turns into a geometric star model. It morphs back to its original form again, then morphs into a very nice bird and flies off.
An ad for the 2006 Mitsubishi Endeavor was a
collaboration between Robert Lang, Linda Mihara, and Merritt Productions. The
moving things -- the dragon, the deer, the flying birds -- are
computer-generated, but are generated from real origami models. Everything else
is really folded paper: the trees, leaves, sky, clouds, buildings, bridge,
wheat, fencing, telephone poles, traffic lights, trash cans, trees, bushes,
Victorian houses, mountains, hills in the background. http://www.adrants.com/images/Mitsubishi_OrigamiMGNA-3753.mpeg
1/3/2006 - An ad for McDonald's was shown at the end of "Sesame Street". The promo shows hands folding a 12 pointed star, then it breaks into an 'origami world' with origami swimmers, landscapes, etc.
1/2006 - a commercial in Japanese for Filemaker Pro software features a piece of paper folding and unfolding by itself into many complex models. May appear to be multi-piece models. http://havepaperwilltravel.blogspot.com/2006/01/japanese-commercial-with-origami.html
2/2006 - Discover credit card ad shows a fancy buffet, where they were serving up 5% back with folded money in various shapes. Models in the ad were by Joseph Wu.
Nutri-Grain bars had a TV ad in April 2006 that had a bar folding a blue wrapper into a plane, then jumping into the plane and flying away.
An ad for the Renault Clio car had some pretty girls
pull up next to a young man in a Clio. The girls flirt by blowing bubble gum
bubbles, and the young man responds by putting a candy wrapper in his mouth and
folding a crane with his tongue. http://www.haibun.com/quick/renault%20clio%20nokia%20origami.mov
JUNE 8, 2006, NEW YORK, NY – The Fifteenth Annual AICP
Show, The Art & Technique of the American Commercial, was presented by the
Association of Independent Commercial Producers. Close to 2,000 members of the
advertising and production industry gathered to view the hour and
22-minute compendium of the best commercials of the previous year, which
premiered at The Museum of Modern Art. The show started with this tribute
to the show's sponsors from the new motion design division of NY's Version2.
It's a fantastic origami/papercraft themed video though much if not all of it is
computer generated. http://feed.stashmedia.tv/feed/2006/6/9/version2-steals-the-show.html
http://stashmedia.tv/feed/AICP_320x240-20MB.mov
Spotted 8/11/06 - an ad for Postaroo, a local bulletin board. It began with a piece of newspaper containing classified ads which folding itself through several stages and ended up as a standing kangaroo.
Advertising agency WCRS has created an ad called Expo for 3 (three.co.uk),
which tells the story of a guy texting a girl during a boring lecture. The text
messages are represented by little paper notes flung between the couple over the
heads of their classmates and behind their professor’s back. The nimble
fingered students fold the paper with an outrageous manual dexterity that must
be the envy of origami experts the world over. http://www.moving-picture.com/expo
Robert J. Lang created some models for a McDonald's TV commercial produced
for Burrell Communications in mid-2006. The hip-hop themed commercial included
an origami boombox and human characters adorned with chains, Kangol hats, and
other accessories -- all folded from McDonald's cheeseburger wrappers! (Actually
they were folded from origami hanjii paper printed with the cheeseburger wrapper
pattern.) The commercial was called "After Party" and was originally
made for a McD's franchisee convention, but apparently they liked it enough to
broadcast it on TV.
January 2007 - A commercial aired during the winter x games on ESPN showed a person getting attacked by a bunch of origami monsters and airplanes. He drinks an Amp (energy drink) and defeats them by cutting them with scissors and knocking them into the shredder.
February 2007 - New Febreze air freshner commericial shows a girl folding in the bathroom and making an origami mobile. Linda Mihara and Robert J. Lang worked collaborated on the folding. The spot was produced by MJZ (the same folks who produced the 2006 Mitsubishi Endeavor commercial). They did both English and French versions (the latter for Canada).
February 2007 - A Garmin GPS commercial features Steve Grimmet, who used to be a singer in the 80's in the heavy metal band Grim Reaper. In the video a driver is opening a map which transforms into a rampaging Maposaurus, "a fireball spitting origami road-map menace". Another driver pulls out his Garmin GPS and tranforms into a hero that defeats the mean Maposaurus while the Steve Grimmet band sings "Grab your Garmin take on the world - GPS power saves the day". The video can be seen at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=taRPwYe1EYA and the commercial can be seen at http://champion.garmin.com/
A Kohl's Department Store commercial uses a background with lots of brightly folded flowers. The ad campaign also included coupons and flyers with origami butterflies with the slogan "Transformation is in the air."
May 2007 - Mark Bolitho completed an origami ad for Grazia magazine. The add states "this week in Grazia, your chance to win the entire Kate Moss top shop collection..." while showing origami models of various fashion and beauty accessories floating by. An origami shoe then unfolds to the magazine cover. _http://www.partizanlab.com/partizanlab/commercials/ ?team_stush_
Ultimate Fighting ads on The Fight Network, with fighters talking tongue-in-cheek about their love of origami.
June 2007 - TV ad for Time Warner cable digital phones featured "Sir Charge" explaining extra fees charged by other companies. At one point he he held up an origami crane that appeared to be folded out of money.
Quikrete (concrete) had the yellow product packaging folding, wrapping, and buillding a city. Their tag line was "King of the Concrete Jungle"
An ad for Donato's Pizza features a man describing his pizza-gami creations,
and shows an origami swan folded from what appears to be pepperoni pizza. The ad
ends with a new fold he learned from Donato's - stromboli. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c9wI6OCml2I&mode=related&search
December 10, 2007 - Beringer Vineyards announced that it has launched a
multi-million dollar TV advertising campaign. Visually captivating, the
origami-like TV ads were created using stop motion animation, a very time
consuming process that is often replaced today by faster, computer-generated
technologies. The choice of paper as a medium, coupled with the artisan
qualities of the music and the filming were all selected carefully for the
emotional and sensorial effects they convey. Using paper shaped as roots, leaves
and grapes, the spot tells the story of a bud transforming into grapes and then
into the wine behind the paper label. A very talented group of artists, under
the direction of award-winning director, Olivier Gondry, and renowned paper
sculptor, Su Blackwell, brought the concept to fruition. http://www.beringer.com/beringer/page/tv_ad_campaign.jsp
Jupiter Drawing Room Cape Town and Masters & Savant Worldwide created an
animated ad for Getaway magazine. The commercial starts with original origami
animals that come to life and start a chase between a lioness and an impala,
with the final winner being a crocodile. The animals were folded out of pages of
the magazine, and unfold in the end to a center page spread, representing the
excitement to be found on every page. http://www.bizcommunity.com:80/Article/196/12/25142.html
A commercial for ValPak coupons by mail showed a blue envelope that folded into an airplane and flew away.
October 2008 - THE ANIMATED “Origami” commercial conceived by Rostant Advertising for the Guardian Holdings Group, and produced by Roy Williams Animation, won the “Most Successful Commercial Animation 2008” at the Animae Caribe 7th Caribbean Animation Awards. The concept uses origami style objects (humming bird, boat, London bus) moving across stylised backgrounds to tell the story of the countries in which GHL operates and the company’s core business and values. http://www.newsday.co.tt:80/businessday/0,88583.html
October 2008 - An HP Touchsmart PC commercial starts off with paper folding into rocket shapes and taking off to create fireworks. The end has more paper folding into paper planes and flying around. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JLQ5LlDrN1E
November 2008 - A TV commercial for the X Box Fable 2 game shows a character is using a fortune teller.
November 2008 - An ad for the Oral B Triumph toothbrush exlpains the 3D action of the brush by using origami to explain the difference between 2D and 3D.
November 2008 - an ad for TomTom GPS units show a $100 bill folding into a car to advertise that TomTom will be $100 during the holiday shopping weekend.
December 2008 - A commercial for GameStop shows a grandma shopping, she sees "Origami Craft
Bonanza" on a table and picks it up. The tag line is,
"If you don't tell Grandma what to get you, she'll pick something out her
self". The commercial insinuates that the origami kit is not a desirable
gift. http://www.youtube.com:80/watch?v=mJcIUXqN1bU
December 2008 - A K Mart commercial for a diamond heart pendant begins with money being flipped through the air and ending up as a folded $ tree.
January 2009 - An ad on cable TV station Nickelodeon showed a young man and woman catching sight f each other. The man takes yellow paper that folds itself into a bird and flies to the woman and gives her a message. She takes pink paper that folds itself into a bird that flies back with a return message. The man and woman approach each other and give a high five, then burst into yellow and pink dust and paper pieces. The ad ends saying "The N, TV for teens."
Brand New School recently completed work on an ad via Saatchi & Saatchi for the Toyota Rav4 sport utility vehicle. A gas station folds into the ground and a fountain springs up, people unfold as they approach the car, airbags fold into origami, and the street folds into itself swallowing other SUVs. http://brandnewschool.com/project.php?id=603
April 2009 - A commercial for Courtyard by Marriott features the new lobby design unfolding. "I like to call this ad 'Courtyard Origami,'" said Brian King, vice president, Global Brand Manager, Courtyard by Marriott." http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_gpAyOc8J-8&feature=PlayList&p=A7DCDED3D70C943A&index=0
May 2009 - A TV commercial airing in Canada for Stella Legere (Stella
Artois's light beer) shows a woman at a French cafe unsuccessfully trying to get
a waiter's attention. A man across the fountain folds an origami boat and floats
a beer across to her. She drinks it, kisses the bottle, and floats it back.
However, it is intercepted by another origami boat with a skull and crossbones
(pirate!) which steals the bottle and brings it back to another man who gives
her a nod. http://www.clubstellaartois.ca/legere
July 2009 - A new commercial on the newly re-branded Syfy channel has a short
segment with origami birds, a train, and giant unicorns.
Octiber 2009 - A VW Golf ad features origami cars. "Yurie" is a
former automotive engineer who left the job to forget the stress of competing
against VW. She is shown in her new career running a hotel in Japan, placing
origami cars on a table. A VW Golf drive by outside, and she crumples one of the
cars in hand.
http://newgolf.ca/ Choose "View"
followed by "TV ads". Choose the ad on the right.
October 2009 - Macy's print and TV ads for Columbus Day show a woman and a dog with newspaper 'boat' type origami hats.