What even is this ad? Welcome to the surreal advertising feed

You open Instagram. A dancing mango floats by, followed by a fish in high heels, whispering brand slogans. Shah Rukh Khan levitates near a beach, eating parathas with a third hand sprouting from his shoulder. A washing machine flashes its teeth. A child with neon eyes stares into your soul and says, “Moisturise or perish.” You swipe up. You have absolutely no idea what you just witnessed.

No, this isn’t a fever dream. It’s advertising today.

Surrealism, once confined to arthouse films and niche magazines, is now front and centre in brand storytelling. Globally, big brands are tossing the old playbook. Gucci is making its models float mid-air, while Diesel has a freakish-style house. These ads are starting to look more like hallucinations than product promotions. 

Burberry made a film called ‘Night Creatures’ where people on a night walk get picked up by a mysterious creature and float in the air. Weird, absurd, and nothing to do with the brand. 

“People are tired of seeing the same kind of content every day”, says Rohan Mukherjee, Co-founder of byooooob. “Surrealism feels fresh because it’s unpredictable… it reflects the kind of chaos we experience online and offline.”

It’s not just visual chaos for chaos’s sake, it’s intentional. Surrealism disorients, then delights. It mirrors the fragmented way we consume media, fast, fractured, and emotion-first. A LinkedIn column by Sami Viitamäki argues that “nonsense marketing” is outperforming traditional logic-led storytelling because it allows for deeper engagement through emotion, humour, and intrigue.

“Surrealism offers us a gateway into our subconscious, a portal into dreams,” adds Shai Samantey, Co-founder & Director at Jungle. “Exploring these realms… gives one a bigger canvas to create.”

What is driving this shift? 

One reason for this visual shift is technology. AI has cracked open surrealism’s gate, allowing more creators to play in dreamlike, illogical spaces. Midjourney, DALL·E and Runway lets creators make bizarre visions without needing heavy design or VFX.

“AI made surreal visuals more accessible. Anyone with an idea can create strange, dreamlike images without needing to know design software,” says Mukherjee. 

Samantey agrees, “As filmmakers, anything in our wildest imagination can now be brought to life. AI not only helps you build your vision but also reimagines it in ways you may not have seen before.”

But not everyone sees AI as the magic bullet.

“We are just scratching the surface. Even our most advanced AI models are nowhere near the complexity of the human brain,” says Ram Madhvani, Co-founder, Director, and Producer at Equinox Films.

Pranoy Kanojia, VP Strategy, Enormous Brands, adds, “AI has supercharged this. The aesthetics of brain rot have improved, blurring the lines of absurd and real.”

There’s even a name for this online explosion of weird, AI-crafted content: AI Slop — a genre built on bizarre juxtapositions and visual overload, engineered to keep you scrolling.

And young audiences, especially Gen Z, are leaning into it.

Mukherjee says, “Mostly younger audiences who are online a lot. They’re used to content that moves fast, breaks rules, and doesn’t always make sense on the surface. Surrealism speaks to that mindset — it’s emotional, visual, and leaves space for interpretation.

“At the end of the day, we are all dreamers,” adds Samantey. “A good piece of content that uses surrealism can be appreciated and consumed by all audiences.”

Studies support this. According to a YPulse survey, 73% of Gen Z actively seek ‘visually bold, weird, or unexpected' content. 

Data from Kantar’s 2024 Creative Effectiveness Awards also adds a strategic layer, ads with ‘Bizarrely Bold’ visuals like Deliveroo’s surreal ‘Octoman’ featuring an octopus on a date via delivery, consistently outperform for attention and memorability. 

This proves that surrealism isn’t just a trend or random weirdness. When used with purpose, it can be a smart brand strategy. Brands can use surreal visuals to stand out, make people feel something, and get noticed in a busy feed. It works best when it matches the brand’s personality, like Deliveroo being playful or youth brands being quirky. The important thing is to use it intentionally, not just to be different, but to tell a story that fits the brand.

The rise of personality

Ironically, as tech makes perfect visuals easier, audiences are craving imperfection. The Instagram aesthetic, which was once all about curated feeds and dreamy palettes, has been replaced by a rougher, realer vibe. And surrealism fits right in.

Kanojia says, “The old Instagram aesthetic pressure is off, but AI is making it easy to create good quality absurd storytelling.”

“Creators are using tools to push boundaries… experimenting with different techniques,” says Samantey, noting how platforms like TikTok, IG, and YouTube have trained audiences to digest surreal, fast-paced edits.

Even Madhvani sees a shift: “People now know how to stand for a photograph… self-correction is at its highest.”

Today, audiences want to feel something, even if that emotion is confusion. On one hand, where beautifully crafted sameness is thriving, surrealism can stand out, even when it does not make sense. 

In a world flooded with beautiful sameness, the surreal stands out simply by refusing to make sense.

Why is India not catching up? 

Despite being a country with deep visual traditions, mythological sagas, temple carvings, psychedelic Bollywood dream sequences, visual storytelling is where Indian advertising still mostly likes to play it safe. The aesthetic might be grand, but the storytelling remains literal.

While global advertising embraced the “unhinged” wave as early as 2019–2020 — with campaigns like Skittles' “Apologize the Rainbow” and Old Spice’s long-standing absurdist streak — India took longer to catch on. In Western markets, brands leaned into surrealism and absurd humour to cut through digital fatigue and fragmented attention.

By contrast, Indian advertising stayed grounded in emotion-led storytelling, cause marketing, and slice-of-life realism. It wasn’t until around 2022–2023 that Indian brands began tentatively experimenting with the offbeat. Fevicol's quirky visual metaphors, Zomato’s meme-native humour, and Cred's ironic casting of ‘unlikely’ endorsers signalled a shift — but these were still exceptions, not the norm.

Countries like Japan and Thailand treat surrealism not as an edgy experiment, but as part of mainstream advertising culture. Take, for example, Thailand’s Chaindrite Termite Commercial. The ad had humans dressed as termites, funnily taking a jab at competitor brands. 

Or this ice cream ad from Japan, where a giant head is walking on a random field. 

Even now, surreal or disorienting storytelling is mostly confined to digital-first, youth-facing campaigns or agency passion projects. The mainstream, especially big-budget TVCs, continues to favour clarity over chaos, and linear narratives over layered visual play.

“To play into this meaningless world needs bravery and a sophisticated understanding of their audiences… Indian brands are also being careful as current inflationary times have demanded them to utilise marketing dollars carefully,” says Kanojia. 

That caution is rooted in a fear of alienation. Many clients associate quirk or surreal visuals with elite, internet-first audiences. For mass appeal, they stick to stories grounded in family, emotions, or slice-of-life tropes.

“Clients are a bit weary,” says Samantey. “They feel a piece that is more organic will in some way resonate better with their audience. But what is often overseen is that surrealism can create a fresh world for the brand.”

Yet there have been moments when Indian advertising tried its hand with surrealism. The Happydent Palace ad with its glowing teeth that double as chandeliers in a grand palace, was a bizarre, poetic spectacle long before AI or meme culture came into the picture.

“Indian advertising has traditionally leaned toward clarity because we speak to such a vast and diverse audience,” notes Madhvani, the filmmaker behind the Happydent Palace ad. “Surrealism can be perceived as risky in a commercial setting.”

Still, the cracks are beginning to show. Platforms like YouTube India are testing the waters with offbeat content like Ganji Chudail, while challenger brands in fashion and music are borrowing from surreal aesthetics to break away from category clutter and capture Gen Z’s fragmented attention.

For Indian advertising to enter its surreal era, it needs to move beyond just replicating global trends. The answer lies in remixing local visual culture with new tools.

“We can encourage new talent with on-ground and online forums, programmes & events which can showcase and celebrate surrealism in art in all its forms,” adds Samantey.

Madhvani suggests looking back to move forward: “We are embracing songs again. A lot of our song picturizations — from Mani Ratnam films to earlier eras — are very poetic. Going back to that could help us embrace our visual culture again.”

Pranoy adds, “Advertisers need to understand the content appetite and play with it in a way that’s sharp and ownable. There’s a lot to learn from countries like Japan and Thailand — there are brave advertisers there.”

Thai Bank Krungsri ad, ‘Your Time’ is one such example of a surreal ad. According to the brand, the ad was created to target younger customers and was inspired by responses from real customers about the things they would do if they had more time. 

From flirting with boys, to spending time with their cat, cosplaying to chillaxing with loved ones, the campaign highlights how Krungsri brand’s message of ‘valuing their customers’ precious time, no matter how eccentrically they wish to spend it.

In other words, surrealism isn’t about being random. It’s about meaning made strange. Absurdity with intent. And in a chaotic adscape, that might just be the most logical step forward.

Surrealism in advertising is no longer the stuff of niche creators or edgy fashion films. It’s the creative language of the internet age, which is emotional, visual, and unexpected. 

“People don’t want perfect,” says Mukherjee. “They want people.”

And sometimes, people want to see flying parathas, talking utensils, and slow-dancing cabbages. Not because it makes sense, but because it feels oddly true.

 

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