Toys ‘R’ Us is the first retail brand to use OpenAI’s text-to-video platform, Sora, for its advertising.
WHP Global, the current owner of Toys ‘R’ Us, collaborated with the Emmy-nominated creative agency Native Foreign, which had alpha access to Sora, to produce a short brand film titled “The Origin of Toys ‘R’ Us.” The video features how the young Charles Lazarus, the toy store chain’s founder, came up with the idea for the brand and its iconic Geoffrey the Giraffe mascot.
“We are thrilled to partner with Native Foreign to push the boundaries of Sora, a groundbreaking new technology from OpenAI that’s gaining global attention. Sora can create up to one-minute-long videos featuring realistic scenes and multiple characters, all generated from text instruction. Imagine the excitement of creating a young Charles Lazarus, the founder of Toys ‘R’ Us, and envisioning his dreams for our iconic brand and beloved mascot, Geoffrey the Giraffe, in the early 1930s,” Toys ‘R’ Us wrote on its website.
In the video, young Charles hangs out in a bicycle shop owned by his father. As he falls asleep, Charles is shown walking through a dream where he encounters different kinds of generic toys and meets Geoffrey the giraffe.
The one-minute film debuted at the 2024 Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity and is now available for viewing on the toy retailer’s website.
“We’re in the 2.0 of what I call ‘same magic, new method’ era,” said Miller Olko, CMO of Toys ‘R’ Us Global and president of Toys ‘R’ Us Studios. “Where we want the emotion and all the excitement that everybody has always felt for Toys ‘R’ Us and all the millennial parents, remember from childhood and now share with their kids.”
Reactions to Toys ‘R’ Us’ use of OpenAI’s Sora text-to-video technology in their new ad have been varied. While some are amazed that “generative AI in commercial work has officially begun,” others remain unimpressed. “Love this commercial is like, ‘Toys R Us started with the dream of a little boy who wanted to share his imagination with the world. And to show how, we fired our artists and dried Lake Superior using a server farm to generate what that would look like in Stephen King’s nightmares,” writer Mike Drucker shared on X.
Toys ‘R’ Us, once a dominant force in the toy retail industry, filed for bankruptcy in 2018. However, the iconic brand has been acquired by WHP Global, a private equity firm that also owns other well-known brands such as Express, Bonobos, and Rag & Bone. Today, Toys ‘R’ Us generates more than $2 billion in annual retail sales through 1,400 stores and e-commerce sites.