The chef who cooks with fire

Chad Colby spent a decade in Nancy Silverton's kitchens and made his name at Chi Spacca, where he became known as a master of charcuterie. Antico Nuovo in Larchmont is his own place: a ten-foot almond-wood hearth, a hand-cranked rotisserie, golden focaccia, house-made pasta, and whole-animal salumi.

We shot it as a portrait, not a promo. The hands, the heat, and the patience behind a plate. The restaurant has since been listed in the Michelin Guide and on the LA Times 101 Best Restaurants, and in 2026 it earned a James Beard nomination for Outstanding Restaurant.

Three companies. Nine episodes.

Amazon Ads wanted the human side of the marketplace: real founders solving real problems on the platform. We answered with a documentary series. KAZI, BINIBI, and CRBN, each told across three episodes with the pacing and craft of a short film rather than an ad.

One visual language holds the whole run together. Every company also got a full social matrix of two versions, three durations, and three aspect ratios, with captioned and ProRes masters delivered alongside the web cuts.

KAZI · San Diego

Handwoven baskets, bowls, and placemats made by more than 8,000 artisans in Uganda, Rwanda, and Ghana, most of them women. Kazi means work in Swahili, and fair employment for those weavers is the whole point of the company Alicia Wallace runs out of San Diego.

Episode one is about telling that story through Amazon Ads. In episode two an inventory crisis pushes the team to invent a new hero product. In episode three that product, a cattail placemat, becomes a surprise hit and sells out, and the challenge turns into shipping handmade goods from Africa to the US fast enough to keep up.

BINIBI · Miami

Bilingual sound books for babies and toddlers, in Spanish and English, created by Miami moms Ana Guzmán and Luciana Yarhi and made with Salvadoran illustrators and musicians. Nine titles teach first words, numbers, colors, and opposites through original songs.

The three episodes run from the founders' story and a new book collection, through a year in which both founders were expecting babies of their own, to new titles and a Hispanic Heritage Month launch. Amazon Ads credits the brand with twenty times the sales in eighteen months.

CRBN · Costa Mesa

Pickleball paddles and gear from Costa Mesa, California, built for one of the fastest-growing sports in the country.

Episode one is about speed, product innovation, and branding in a crowded market as Prime Day approaches. Episode two follows the launch of the Pivot glasses and the run-up to a major tournament. Episode three is the launch itself, the tournament, Prime Day, and whether the numbers came in.

Three founders, one series

Each film is a feature in miniature: a founder, a product, and the reason it had to exist. The series was named a finalist for Best Branded Content Series at the 2024 Digiday Content Marketing Awards.

EQUO · Vietnam

Marina Tran-Vu founded EQUO in Vietnam in 2020 after finding a grass straw in her drink. The company now makes plastic-free straws, utensils, and food containers from grass, rice, coconut, sugarcane, and coffee. Shot on location in Vietnam with the texture of a travel documentary: lush, alive, and close to the ground.

IYA Foods · Chicago

Toyin Kolawole grew up in Nigeria helping her mother run small businesses, and in 2015 founded Iya Foods outside Chicago to bring the flavors she grew up with into American kitchens: one-pot meal mixes, baking mixes, vegetable powders, spices, and seasonings. Iya means mother in Yoruba. The ingredients are grown and processed in Nigeria, where the company puts local pickers and processors to work.

NYSSA · Women's Health

Chicago mothers Eden Laurin, Aubrey Howard, and Mia Clarke went home from the hospital with an ice pack and a few pads and decided postpartum recovery deserved better. NYSSA's FourthWear underwear holds an ice or heat pack for the weeks after birth, and the line has since grown into period care. The kind of work we take on when a brand is trying to change how people talk about something that matters.

The secret is in the soil

In the guise of an Apple documentary we meet Ken Yamamoto, an 83-year-old reclusive botanist and self-described sound gardener who has quietly cultivated Apple's headphones since the first iPod in 2001. Straight-faced, lovingly shot, completely absurd.

Directed by Ben Fischinger and Ryan Westra and starring Ken Takemoto, it went out as a Funny or Die original on April 1, 2019.

Built vertical, built for the feed

Five spots framed 9:16 so the car and Drew Brees never leave the frame on a phone. Brees at a Mercedes-EQ event, behind the wheel, and on the dealership floor, cut as a set of aligned vertical films that play as a wall.

When the drones delivered

For the December 2023 release of Migration, Amazon Ads and Universal tied the film's theme of expanding your horizons to Prime Air. A fourth-grade class from Texas took a field trip to Amazon's drone facility in College Station, where drones wrapped in Migration livery, a first for Prime Air, delivered letters announcing classroom supplies and an all-expenses-paid trip to Jamaica for their teacher, echoing the ducks' own journey in the film. A national sweepstakes gave audiences the chance to win a Jamaican getaway of their own.

IEHP is one of the largest nonprofit public health plans in the country, serving roughly 1.5 million Medi-Cal and Medicare members across Riverside and San Bernardino counties. The film leans on real feeling over feature lists, with the Inland Empire's own faces, so members see a reflection of themselves.

PIH Health runs hospitals, physician groups, and urgent care across Whittier, Downey, and greater Los Angeles. Two spots, one idea: the reassurance of care that is genuinely close by. A brand film and an urgent-care cut.