Manuel Urbanke is a Moscow / Miami / Hamburg / New York / Berlin based Executive Creative Director and Art Director.

He currently runs ALDI Germany’s lead agency antoni_99 together with Anna Lichnog.

Manuel is an interdisciplinary creative director with an approach to weave storytelling, technology, and culture into creative solutions for brands, start-ups and artists.

Whether that’s building a new type of music label for the 21st century, changing the dusty perception of ALDI, or redefining the life of a painter through AI.

#ALDIstory

–

#ALDIstory –

Based on true stories: ALDI is part of German society. Anyone you talk to has a story in connection with the brand itself or its products. Our #ALDIstory campaign tells three of these real stories and invites people to share their own.

10K+ story submissions via TikTok and IG show the power of authentic, social-driven storytelling. By involving real people in the campaign’s films, we created deep emotional connections that resonated across Germany. Designed as an ongoing platform the brand continuously engages with their audience.

Agency: antoni_99
Production: LE BERG
Director: Andzej Gavriss

AT&T

–

Codes of Culture

–

AT&T – Codes of Culture –

Three digits, that encapsulate the pride and culture of an entire city: Area codes. An ongoing brand platform and US wide campaign that unpacks what it means to represent the 212 (NYC), 404 (Atlanta), 312 (LA) and many more.

All ads were shot with local heroes you’d usually not expect in an AT&T ad. But also featured superstars like A$AP Rocky, 21 Savage, Killer Mike, 2 Chainz, the mayor of Atlanta and many more. Fun fact: AT&T invented area codes 80 years ago, so it’s a perfect brand fit.

Agency: Translation LLC
Production: Arts & Science
Director: Allen Hughes

A$AP Rocky in a documentary about Dapper Dan and the influence of Harlem’s street style.

Brands Against Corona

–

Brands Against Corona –

Never touch the logo, right? Well, this Europe-wide Covid vaccination campaign managed to do exactly that: within 4 days 1000+ brands had joined and changed their brand slogan to an invitation to get vaccinated.

A personal highlight was iconic Manner wafers actually changing their slogan on their packaging.

Agency: antoni Berlin
Client: Health Ministry Germany

UnitedMasters

–

UnitedMasters –

Pharrell Williams came up with the name, Manuel came up with the brand. As employee #3 and Creative Director he helped develop this music startup from pre-launch to a 550M $ evaluation with 1.5M+ artists using this next-gen digital record label.

Agency: UnitedMasters
Roles: Creative direction, branding, artist development

NBA

–

Hands

–

NBA – Hands –

To kick off the NBA brand platform “This is why we play” this TVC follows the life of a regular kid who’s willing to sacrifice a lot for his love for the game of basketball.

Agency: Translation LLC
Production: Arts & Science
Director: Matt Aselton

bett1.de

–

hate comments

–

bett1.de – hate comments –

We turned hate into something good.

Germany’s biggest online mattress seller – managed to sell 2 million mattresses with one TV spot. This ad has been running daily on every TV station for 4 years. PEOPLE FUCKING HATED THAT AD. Which made them hate bett1. How to change that? We turned their online hate comments into the script for new ads. Suddenly people loved bett1 and engaged positively with the brand. Now everyone was able to get a good night’s sleep.

Agency: antoni_heaven
Production: Bubbles Berlin
Director: Caspar Jan Hogerzeil

FYI: that’s the original ad that ran for 4 years.

Hate comments everywhere.

New spots, based on hate comments.

Gucci x Dapper Dan

–

Gucci x Dapper Dan –

When Gucci copied a jacket by famous street wear designer Dapper Dan, they were facing cultural appropriation. Luckily, there was a solution which involves him getting his own Gucci sub-label, handmade in Harlem.

Agency: Translation LLC
PR: Steve Stoute

ALDI

–

Music Video

–

ALDI – Music Video –

Usually the cheapest groceries are at the bottom of the shelf. Not at ALDI. To make fun of other supermarkets ALDI launched a music video showing how people elsewhere have to bend over for bargains.

Featuring Paul Johnson’s iconic Y2K banger “Get Get Down”.

Agency: antoni_99
Production: Zauberberg
Director: Max Millies

AI Muse

–

AI Muse –

With “Unfinished” AI Muse Manuel’s art collective YQP managed to inspire an established artist to change his painting style and explore new ways of how he paints.

With countless exhibitions e.g. in Beijing and numerous press articles and TV coverage, this project pushed the popularity of Roman Lipski and made him a forerunner in the field of art & AI.

Client: Roman Lipski
YQP Art Collective

The latest iteration of the muse tracks Lipski in real time and serves live inspiration.

ALDI

–

Mother's Day

–

ALDI – Mother's Day –

Loving your kids sometimes hurts – the internet is full of parents sharing their pain. That’s why we partnered with a few of them to create this totally honest and unadorned Mother’s Day campaign that also features ALDI’s baby product range in a bold and real way.

Agency: antoni_99
Production: Tempomedia
Director: Alex Feil

Mercedes

–

Mosaic Storytelling

–

Mercedes – Mosaic Storytelling –

For the launch of the new Mercedes-Benz GLA we follow a man who has to puzzle together a road trip gone wrong. We came up with a new way of narrating a story online – mosaic storytelling. Interactive elements, GIFs, video-elements, photos and audio files were gathered into a new kind of user experience. Piece by piece users could go on a journey through the lost memories of our hero and find out what happened.

Besides this PR piece we were responsible for the entire campaign of the new GLA, including TV Spots, Print Ads, banners, Facebook posts and many more.

Agency: Jung von Matt Alster
Production: B Reel