Tombras' PODS Campaign Takes Home Clio AI Specialty Award Sponsored by Google

The work emerged from the Google Creative Lighthouse program

AI-driven creativity was celebrated last night at the Clio Awards, where Tombras was honored with the Google-sponsored 2025 Clio AI Specialty Award for the agency’s PODS campaign, which cleverly transformed a PODS moving container into The World’s Smartest Billboard.

If you live in New York City, maybe you saw the PODS moving container on your block: Over a 29-hour period, a PODS container drove through every single one of New York City’s nearly 300 neighborhoods, displaying real-time content about everything from traffic conditions to subway delays to weather reports along the journey.

This innovative work was developed within Google’s Creative Lighthouse program, an initiative designed to illuminate the creative potential of Google AI by challenging top agencies to craft “impossible ads” with its powerful suite of tools.

Here, Sadie Thoma, director of U.S. ads marketing at Google, talks about what made Tombras’ campaign stand out and how all creatives working in advertising and marketing can use AI to their advantage. She also has an announcement to make about the evolution of Google’s partnership with the Clios.

MUSE: Let’s kick off this conversation with your announcement.

Sadie Thoma: We’re incredibly enthusiastic about the evolution of our partnership with the Clios in celebrating AI-driven creativity. Building on the excitement of this year’s Clio AI Specialty Award, we are thrilled that starting with the 2026 awards cycle, it will be a formal, submission-driven category within the Clio Awards.

This award will challenge the global creative community to infuse AI into their work in new and fresh ways. We envision this as a canvas for true innovation, where Google AI can be leveraged across the creative process—from generating new audience insights and personas to sparking ideation to production to running work in market.

While entrants can certainly develop their ads with the help of other AI tools as well, a key criterion is that all submissions must demonstrate the use of Google AI in some capacity to bring their idea to life, and with tools like Veo 2, there is such exciting opportunity to show what is possible creatively. GenAI technology has gotten quite advanced quite quickly and it’s incredible to see how leading creatives are already using it.

We’re working with the Clios team on submission details, and they will share more information soon.

Now, tell us more about why Google was onboard as the presenting partner for the inaugural Clio AI Specialty Award.

We partnered with the Clios, a globally respected organization championing creative excellence, because we both recognize the profound impact AI is having on creativity.

This award aims to specifically celebrate outstanding work that demonstrates innovative, effective, and responsible use of AI in advertising and marketing.

It’s about recognizing those who are not just using AI, but using it brilliantly to achieve creative breakthroughs—lighting the path forward for AI and creativity in our industry.

What was it about the Tombras campaign for Pods that made it worthy of winning the honor this year?

Their work was selected because it exemplified truly innovative and effective use of Google AI end-to-end. They developed proprietary AI tools on Google Cloud, integrated diverse real-time data signals in a unique way, used AI to dynamically adapt thousands of creative messages for hyper-local relevance, and crucially, drove significant, measurable business results for their client, PODS.

It stood out as a holistic, strategically grounded, and impactful application of AI that pushed creative boundaries while delivering clear commercial value.

The Tombras ad was born out of Google’s Creative Lighthouse Program. What falls into the category of an “impossible ad?”

An “Impossible ad” is really shorthand for a creative execution or campaign that simply would not be possible without AI. It could encompass extreme personalization at scale, complex visual concepts that were previously too time-consuming or costly, hyper-dynamic creative that adapts in real-time, or simply generating breakthrough ideas from vast amounts of data faster than ever before.

This is about tackling ambitious creative challenges where Google AI can uniquely remove barriers related to scale, speed, complexity, insight generation, and more, enabling work that would have previously been deemed too difficult or unachievable to deliver.

What’s exciting is that we are collectively on a journey as an industry to define what the future of creativity will look like, and showcasing “impossible ads” allows us to illuminate what’s ahead in a very tangible and inspiring way.

Who has taken part in Google’s Creative Lighthouse program, and what have the participants and Google gotten out of it?

We’ve worked with a diverse mix of globally recognized creative agencies, independent shops, and a few in-house teams. A few of our past partners have included Monks, BBDO, VaynerX and Tombras. For 2025, some of our partners include WPP, Publicis, McCann and Jellyfish.

Agencies and brands get hands-on experience with Google’s latest AI tools, dedicated support from Google experts, and a platform to create new, innovative work for their clients and the industry. They’re pioneering exciting new storytelling in the space and demonstrating their leadership in the intersection of AI and creativity.

For Google, we have an opportunity to gain invaluable insights into how our AI tools are being used creatively in the real world, and showcase tangible examples of AI’s power to transform creative processes and work. This initiative is also deepening relationships with key agency and brand partners, who are with us on this journey.

At its core, our Creative Lighthouse Program is about co-creating the future of marketing and storytelling. We partner with agencies and brands to inspire what’s next, and demonstrate how Google AI empowers us to collectively pave the path forward for more innovative and impactful advertising.

How can AI be used in the planning stages of an ad campaign?

AI, particularly tools like Gemini and NotebookLM, can be incredibly powerful in the planning stages. These tools can rapidly synthesize vast amounts of audience research, market trends and competitor analysis to uncover insights that might otherwise take extensive human effort to find.

Agencies in our program have used AI to develop detailed audience personas, identify core themes or tensions for a brief, brainstorm initial campaign territories, and even generate draft creative briefs or strategic frameworks. It acts as a powerful research assistant and thought-starter, accelerating the path from data to a strong strategic foundation.

And how can AI be helpful in generating creative assets?

Generative AI tools like Imagen 3, Veo 2 and Gemini are pretty extraordinary. They can help us to get what may be a concept in our heads onto a screen in no time, and we can rapidly visualize ideas through mood boards or initial image/video generation, helping teams articulate creative direction, iterate and make decisions faster than ever before.

AI can generate countless variations of copy—headlines, social posts, scripts—and do it with real-time data, create diverse image backgrounds or elements, produce initial video sequences or storyboards and even generate music or voiceovers.

This allows creative teams to scale asset production significantly, personalize content more easily, and explore more creative options within tight timelines and budgets, like Tombras did with dynamic OOH copy.

I assume the Google team offers support to the ad agency participants taking part in the Creative Lighthouse program in terms of answering questions, etc. Is there much need for them to come to you for help or guidance, or not so much?

Absolutely. Dedicated support is a core part of our Creative Lighthouse program. We provide access to Google creative and product experts through briefings, personalized consultations, and ongoing office hours. While these agencies are incredibly capable, the AI landscape is evolving rapidly.

Participants definitely utilized the consults–sometimes for technical questions about specific tools like API integrations or advanced prompting techniques, other times for strategic brainstorming on how best to apply AI to their specific challenge, or even just to validate an ambitious idea.

It’s a collaborative process, and the support helps ensure they can maximize the potential of the tools effectively and efficiently. We are all in this together.

Admakers are often early adopters of new tech and ways of working. This was the case with morphing in the ’90s, for example. Does this also seem to be the case with generative AI?

Yes, very much so. We’re seeing tremendous curiosity and a real appetite for experimentation with generative AI among agencies and creative teams.

Like previous technological shifts—desktop publishing, digital editing, CGI—GenAI is being explored not just as a novelty but as a fundamental tool that can augment the creative process. Agencies recognize its potential to enhance efficiency, unlock new types of creative expression, and deliver more personalized experiences.

The participants are definitely among those early adopters leaning in to understand and shape how these tools will integrate into their workflows.

How does GenAI foster experimentation during the creative process?

GenAI dramatically lowers the barrier to experimentation. Creatives can visualize ideas almost instantly—generating multiple visual styles, copy variations, or video concepts in minutes rather than days. This speed allows teams to explore more territories, test more hypotheses, and iterate far more rapidly than before.

If an idea doesn’t visually pan out when generated, they can pivot quickly without significant sunk cost in production time. It encourages a “what if” mindset, allowing teams to try bolder or more unconventional approaches because the cost of trying is so much lower.

While AI tools are clearly catalysts and accelerators, it’s key to recognize that human insight, judgment, and ultimately, human creativity remain essential.

GenAI is a game-changing tool. But what is there about human creativity that simply can’t be replaced by GenAI?

That’s a crucial point. While GenAI is incredibly powerful for ideation support, generation, and scaling, it lacks genuine human lived experience, intuition, cultural nuance, subjective taste, and strategic oversight.

AI can generate options based on patterns, but the why behind a campaign, the core strategic insight, the emotional resonance that truly connects with an audience, the ethical considerations, and the final curatorial judgment—that remains fundamentally human.

AI is a phenomenal co-pilot or collaborator, augmenting human creativity, but it doesn’t replace a creative’s vision or a writer’s unique voice and empathy.