focus @ ad black sea 2026

Only a few days remain until Ad Black Sea – the festival that brings together Georgia’s entire creative industry alongside international speakers and guests. As we told you in our previous article, this year is particularly important and exciting, as Ad Black Sea celebrates its 10th anniversary.

The milestone is being marked accordingly, and this year’s international speaker lineup is especially impressive: David Droga, Cindy Gallop, Mihnea Gheorghiu, Natasha Jen, Catalin Dobre, and others. The number of entries submitted to the competition is equally impressive: this year, a record number of works have been received from 14 countries.

But what interests us most is which cases from Georgia’s creative industry have been submitted. So, we did a little inside research and decided to share a few of them with you. Let’s start with the speakers.

first time on the ad black sea stage

David Droga, Cindy Gallop, and Natasha Jen will all take the Ad Black Sea stage for the first time. Each brings such an impressive body of experience that their talks are bound to be among the festival’s highlights.

David Droga is one of the most influential figures in the modern advertising industry and the founder of Droga5. He holds the record for the most Cannes Lions awards in the festival’s history, including its highest honorary distinction, the Lion of St. Mark. Droga5, the agency he founded, was named Agency of the Decade by both Adweek and Ad Age in 2020.

Cindy Gallop is one of the advertising industry’s most distinctive and provocative voices, as well as an entrepreneur and public speaker. She spent much of her career at BBH before founding the platforms IfWeRanTheWorld and MakeLoveNotPorn. Gallop is particularly known for challenging established industry conventions and actively advocating for gender equality, diversity, and change in business.

Natasha Jen is one of the world’s leading designers, a partner at Pentagram’s New York office, and an influential voice in the design industry. Her work spans branding, graphic, digital, and spatial design. Jen has worked with organizations including Google, Reddit, Pfizer, Waze, and The Metropolitan Museum. She is a six-time National Design Award nominee and a member of the Alliance Graphique Internationale. This year, alongside speaking at Ad Black Sea, she will also serve as President of the Design Jury.

georgian work at ad black sea 2026

We don’t yet know which of these entries have made the shortlist, but we can share the work we know for certain has been submitted – and which we’ve covered more than once ourselves.

"Love comes back, you just have to believe" – TBC x Playmakers

We told you about this New Year’s campaign in our December in Focus. To recap, the campaign was built around a real statistic: in 2025, emigrants sent nearly 7 million money transfers to Georgia. TBC and playmakers turned this data point into a New Year’s campaign, this time shifting the focus in the opposite direction: what do we send to the people who have emigrated?

The main video tells the story of a grandmother and her granddaughter. The grandmother is something of a “Santa Claus” for her family, constantly sending packages from Greece. This time, however, she receives a gift from her granddaughter. Creators living abroad also joined the campaign through a series of additional activations.

Ultimately, the emotional story translated into real action: through a special TBC and DHL offer, customers could send gifts to loved ones living abroad. In this way, the campaign transformed a statistic about remittances into an idea about sending love and gratitude back.

A continuation of the same campaign, Who is Santa, has already won two Silver and one Bronze award at creative industry festivals in Kyiv and Baku. At its center are the women who make New Year happen in Georgian households.

“Everything is fine in the country” – Batumelebi & Netgazeti x Supermarket

“Everything is fine in the country” is the title of another video created by supermarket for the media outlets Batumelebi and Netgazeti – effectively, a short film.

“A country where there is no independent media is a country where everything is fine” is a social satire that once again reminds us why independent media matters. It highlights what follows media censorship, propaganda, and the suppression of independent thought.

The contrast between positive language and a harsh social and economic reality; the smile that feels completely absurd against this backdrop – this is the price a country pays when independent media disappears.

It is also worth noting that Georgian agencies – and supermarket in particular – have recently been actively investing their creative resources in socially responsible campaigns. That, in itself, is something worth recognizing.

"It’s a virus. freedom is contagious" – PSP x Playmakers

After PSP and playmakers’ triumph at last year’s Ad Black Sea with “Birds Never Forget How to Fly”, followed by numerous international awards, expectations were high for this year’s work. As a reminder, “Birds” was also shortlisted in the Titanium Lion category at the 2026 Cannes Lions Festival – a major achievement in itself.

This year, PSP and playmakers used a virus as a metaphor for freedom – an idea that connects naturally to a pharmaceutical brand while also responding to the current context, much like “Birds” did.

The video is built around the visual language of street surveillance footage. People captured in different locations are accompanied by the words “Freedom Detected.” The voice of the campaign belongs to Amiran Gamkrelidze, who during the pandemic urged us to maintain distance and follow restrictions. Now, he delivers the opposite message: freedom is a “virus” that cannot be defeated by isolation, quarantine, or antibodies.

The metaphor is brought together by LOUDspeakers’ song “rogor gavdzlebt aq?”, making the campaign’s social and political context even more explicit.

As we know, alongside the campaign itself, PSP’s brand transformation and long-term creative have also been submitted in the relevant categories.

"The future doesn’t stop, the future is coming" – Bank of Georgia x Supermarket

We have already written about this campaign in detail together with the brand and agency, but here’s a reminder: Bank of Georgia’s May 26 campaign shifted the traditional Independence Day narrative away from the past and toward the future, putting a new generation at its center. Its central idea – “Freedom is born anew every day” – became an extension of the brand’s “Don’t Stop” platform.



The dynamic video brings together dozens of characters and locations, while its visual language sees children symbolically breaking through the boundaries of the frame and screen – representing a generation that “no one and nothing can stop.”

The campaign continued with 100,000 phone calls, as the brand reached out to Georgian emigrants to wish them a Happy Independence Day through the voices of the new generation and thank them. Across digital channels, the campaign generated millions of views, tens of thousands of comments, and shares.

 

Vaska’s infinite marathon – Supermarket

This year, Georgia’s creative industry lost Vaska Chubinidze, a brand strategist and co-founder of supermarket. In his memory, “Vaska’s Endless Marathon” was held at Satibeshi, bringing together hundreds of participants.

The idea behind the marathon is to continue Vaska’s energy and constant movement – not simply as a one-time event, but as an annual tradition.

Zoommer prices everywhere & iphone xvii – Zoommer x Supermarket

Zoommer has accustomed us to the idea that Black Friday is the day when Zoommer prices are everywhere. Messages reflecting this idea appeared across numerous points in the city: “The time when Zoommer prices are everywhere,” “Every store is offering Zoommer prices,” and more.

For the announcement of the iPhone XVII, meanwhile, the brand paired the expected technical discussion with a humorous video. The iPhone is referred to as His Majesty iPhone XVII, while the video sarcastically explores the replacement of the “latest iPhone” against a backdrop of masterpieces from world art history.

The idea draws on a cultural context that extends beyond Georgia: if you have the latest iPhone, your status is high. But once a new iPhone comes out, your iPhone is no longer the latest. The result is a concept that works simultaneously as humor and satire.

Both campaigns have been submitted to their respective categories at Ad Black Sea. Now we wait to see what happens.

 

in conclusion

As we can see, this year’s Ad Black Sea stage will bring together people who have helped reshape the rules of the creative industry, while the competition itself features work that has transformed important local stories into creative ideas.

Which entries will make the shortlist – and ultimately, which will make it among the winners – we’ll find out in just a few days. And then we’ll be able to say with certainty what won at Ad Black Sea 2026.

See you in Batumi!