Polaroid takes a view on analogue culture

Polaroid’s latest billboard, telling you to put your phone down, taps into a growing analogue backlash against the AI age.

Like Blockbuster or Nokia, it’s easy to imagine an alternate timeline where Polaroid faded away. Instead, ‘The Best of Summer Is Analog’ shows a brand that still knows exactly what it stands for.

Shot by Keith Montero, the campaign positions Polaroid’s analogue worldview in direct opposition to modern culture. The executions are deceptively simple but location-specific. The one on Coney Island Beach, for example, becomes a prompt to take in the sun, sea and spectacle in real time.

It builds on the brand’s recent OOH celebrating imperfection, doubling down on Polaroid as an anti-digital force in a digital world. A natural stance for a brand built on capturing fleeting moments before they disappear.

Our take

In 2026, AI and digital excess have become a go-to creative foil.

Lenovo x Shout!’s ‘Meet Your Digital Self’ dramatised the divide between online and offline lives. 

Plan International’s ‘The Fine Print’ reframed inequality as unavoidable “terms and conditions.” 

Save the Children’s ‘Fragility of Childhood’ visualised online vulnerability through delicate porcelain figures. 

And Dove’s anti‑AI work extended its Real Beauty platform into a more explicit cultural stance.

What makes Polaroid’s effort land among these is its restraint. It’s not asking for anything new, just a return to something familiar.