8 brand video examples worth studying

The three brand videos I would study first are Levi’s “Fair Exchange” from 2023, Nike’s “Winning Isn’t for Everyone” from 2024, and YETI’s “The Tengu Club” from 2024: one turns a company’s own archive into cinema, one builds a brand argument out of an uncomfortable question, and one earns thirty minutes of attention without ever pitching a product.

I co-founded Moonb, and reviewing reference films is a normal part of briefing our work, so I watch a lot of these. Most “brand video examples” lists rerun the same canon: Dove’s Real Beauty Sketches from 2013, Airbnb’s Belong Anywhere from 2014, the usual museum pieces. That work has been analysed to death, and none of it tells you how a brand film gets made and distributed now. So this list is eight videos from 2023 to 2026, one per job a brand video can do, every one published on the brand’s own channel, embedded below, and checked against a dated source. For the production side of the same subject, the brand video production guide covers process and cost; this piece is only about what to steal.

A quick rule for what counts: a brand video sells the company, its beliefs, or its people rather than a single product push. A launch film qualifies when the release is really an argument about the brand. A performance ad built around a coupon code does not.

1. Origin story: Levi’s, “Fair Exchange” (2023)

Levi’s opened the 150th anniversary of the 501 with “The Greatest Story Ever Worn,” three short films that debuted during the 2023 Grammy Awards, each based on a true story from the company’s archive. “Fair Exchange” is the best of them: in 1982 Tbilisi, a young man trades the family cow for a pair of 501s. His family calls him foolish. The film shoots it like a period drama, muddy yard, brick walls, winter coats, and lets the absurdity of the trade carry the brand claim about how much these jeans meant behind the Iron Curtain.

The craft decision worth stealing is sourcing. The story came out of the Levi’s archives, where company historian Tracey Panek collects fan stories; the LS&Co. account of the real trade, published March 2, 2023, notes that within days of release the brand heard from the grandson of the man depicted. An origin film built on a documented, specific, slightly ridiculous true story will always beat a montage about heritage. If your company has been around more than a few years, someone in it is sitting on a story like this.

Here is the film from Levi’s own channel.

More examples of narrative-first brand building are in our brand story examples breakdown.

2. Manifesto: Nike, “Winning Isn’t for Everyone” (2024)

Nike’s Paris Olympics campaign is the strongest recent proof that a manifesto works better as a provocation than a hug. Narrated by Willem Dafoe, the anthem film asks “Am I a bad person?” and then lists the traits of champions that nobody puts on a poster: an obsession with power, an inability to be satisfied, a lack of empathy. Marketing Dive reported on July 22, 2024 that Nike positioned the campaign as a return to “sharper and bolder” brand marketing after a period of slumping sales, with LeBron James and Serena Williams among the athletes fronting it.

The observable choice to study is that the campaign argues against the safe version of its own category. While other Olympic sponsors ran feel-good sportsmanship spots, Nike said winning is ruthless and that its brand belongs to the people who want it anyway. A manifesto needs an edge someone could disagree with; if every competitor could sign your script, it is not a manifesto. Teardown sites that deconstruct ad campaigns shot by shot, like AdStellar’s campaign ad breakdowns, are useful here precisely because they force you to name the argument a film is making, not just its mood.

This 30-second cut from Nike’s channel, LeBron James training alone in a dark gym while the film calls his hunger the winner’s curse, shows how the idea compresses.

3. Culture and recruiting: LEGO, “Building the LEGO Dream” (2026)

Most careers videos are office tours with smiling b-roll. LEGO’s mini documentary, published on the brand’s channel in February 2026, follows five people from different countries who submitted fan designs through the LEGO Ideas platform and ended up working as set designers. It is sixteen minutes of interview-led filmmaking: real desks, real prototypes, people explaining the moment a hobby turned into a job offer.

The decision worth copying is the casting logic. Instead of asking current employees to describe the culture, the film follows people crossing the boundary from outside to inside, which is exactly the journey a candidate is imagining. The tension is real (will the design work, will the job live up to the dream) so the culture claims arrive as evidence rather than adjectives. If you are briefing a recruiting film, find the person who joined eighteen months ago through an unusual door, and build around them.

The full documentary is on LEGO’s channel.

We keep a longer list of employer films in company culture videos.

4. Customer story: Slack and Caraway (2025)

Slack’s customer story about Caraway, the cookware brand, published on Slack’s channel in September 2025, is under two minutes and does the one thing most case study films skip: it shows the customer’s world before it shows the software. The film opens in kitchens, on pans and product, with the Caraway team explaining how a small company runs global product launches. Slack appears as the connective tissue in that story, on a laptop at a kitchen counter rather than as a screen recording with a voiceover. The companion page on Slack’s site frames the same story as Caraway using Slack as its operating backbone.

The stealable choice is proportion. Roughly the first half belongs to the customer’s craft and pressure; the product enters only once you care about the people. That order is what separates a case study from a testimonial, and it is a structure you can plan before the shoot rather than rescue in the edit. There are good walkthroughs of this structure, including this guide to planning case study videos, and our own testimonial video examples roundup covers the adjacent format.

Here is the film from Slack’s channel.

5. Launch as a brand statement: Rivian, the R2 reveal (2024)

When Rivian revealed the R2 in March 2024, it staged the event in the round, founder RJ Scaringe standing in the middle of a small standing crowd rather than behind a keynote podium, and then surprised the room with two unannounced vehicles, the R3 and R3X. The highlights film Rivian published the next day plays like a brand film: the CEO’s framing in the video description is that the company exists “to help generate amazing memories,” not to recite specs.

What is worth studying is how the launch structure itself communicates brand. The intimate staging says accessible; the surprise reveal says confident; the founder doing the talking says conviction. A product launch becomes a brand video when the format of the announcement expresses the company’s personality as clearly as the product does. If you are structuring one of these, thinking in terms of a product marketing video framework first, audience, argument, then asset, keeps the film from collapsing into a feature list.

The official highlights are on Rivian’s channel.

6. Rebrand film: Decathlon, “Ready to Play?” (2024)

Decathlon relaunched its whole brand on March 12, 2024: a new purpose (“move people through the wonders of sport”), a new symbol called the Orbit, and a repositioning from store chain to what the company’s own announcement describes as “a global multi-specialist sports brand, moving all people, from beginners to top athletes.” The launch film, “Ready to Play?”, barely shows any of that. Sixty seconds of people playing: a kid sizing up a hoop at golden hour, a runner grinning mid-stride on a tree-lined road, a pile-on celebration at a caged five-a-side pitch; one of the campaign’s cutdowns even folds in a phone clip of a man dancing on a treadmill.

That mix is deliberate. Transform magazine reported on March 27, 2024 that the film, made with AMV BBDO and directed by Hector Dockrill, “features both original and found footage that celebrates global athletics, through both young beginners and hall-of-famers.” The found footage is the stealable decision: a rebrand film can either demo the new design system or prove the new promise, and Decathlon chose proof. Clips that visibly were not shot for an ad are what make “sport for all” believable on screen. If your rebrand is really a repositioning, point the launch film at the people the new positioning claims to serve, and let the identity ride along. We cover more identity overhauls, good and bad, in rebrand examples.

Here is the full film, from one of Decathlon’s official channels.

7. B2B explainer with a point of view: Mercury (2023)

Mercury, the banking platform for startups, published “How ambitious companies bank at startup speed” in September 2023, and it is the rare B2B explainer that explains through casting instead of interface. Real founders talk to camera in their own workspaces about moving fast; the product’s job is inferred from who these people are and what they are building. Thirty seconds, no dashboard tour, and you still leave knowing exactly who the product is for.

The transferable decision is to define the product by its ideal customer rather than its feature set. B2B software films default to screen recordings because they are easy to approve, but screens look interchangeable; people do not. If a founder, an engineer, or an operations lead on camera would make your category obvious, that is usually the stronger opening, and the interface can wait for the demo. For the more traditional animated route, our corporate video examples list includes several films that do it well.

Here is Mercury’s film from its own channel.

8. Single-subject documentary: YETI, “The Tengu Club” (2024)

YETI’s film program is the standing rebuttal to the idea that brand video must be short. “The Tengu Club,” published October 2024, is a thirty-minute documentary following fishing guide Hilary Hutcheson as she traces her Japanese American heritage to the Tengu Club in Seattle, which the film presents as the oldest salmon fishing club in the United States, confronting pieces of that community’s unexposed history along the way. Snow, grey water, unhurried interviews. The coolers barely appear.

The decision to study is editorial patience. YETI behaves like a publisher with a point of view about the outdoors, and the brand association comes from choosing the subject rather than from product placement. This model scales down: a small brand can profile one customer, one place, or one craft with a two-person crew, as long as the subject has a real story and the brand resists the urge to interrupt it. Pick the person your audience would want to meet anyway, then get out of the way.

The full film is on YETI’s channel.

The eight side by side

Brand and film	Year	Job it does	Format	Runtime	What to steal
Levi’s, “Fair Exchange”	2023	Origin story	Scripted period short	1:00	Mine the archive for one true, specific story
Nike, “Winning Isn’t for Everyone”	2024	Manifesto	Athlete films with VO anthem	0:30 cut	Make an argument someone could reject
LEGO, “Building the LEGO Dream”	2026	Culture and recruiting	Interview documentary	16:29	Follow people crossing from fan to employee
Slack x Caraway	2025	Customer story	Doc-style case study	1:48	Give the first half to the customer’s world
Rivian, R2 reveal	2024	Launch as brand statement	Live event highlights	1:30	Let the staging express the brand
Decathlon, “Ready to Play?“	2024	Rebrand film	Found-footage launch film	1:00	Prove the new positioning with real people
Mercury, “Bank at startup speed”	2023	B2B explainer	Founder-cast spot	0:30	Define the product by who uses it
YETI, “The Tengu Club”	2024	Documentary brand film	Longform documentary	30:48	Choose the subject, then get out of the way

Turning one of these into a brief

The pattern across all eight is that the strong choice was made before anyone touched a camera: which true story, which argument, which person, which staging. So start the brief there. Write down the one job the film has (trust, hiring, category definition, proof), the specific human situation that opens it, and what the viewer should do or believe in the last ten seconds. Only then argue about style and runtime.

Two practical notes from making these for clients. First, match the format to the evidence you actually have: an archive earns a period piece, a passionate customer earns a documentary, a strong founder earns a casting-led film, and if you have none of those yet, an honest explainer beats a hollow manifesto. Second, plan the versions on day one. Every film above lives as cutdowns, verticals, and stills across channels, and retrofitting those after the master is locked is where budgets quietly die.