Turn back time with the help of Runway AI

Wouldn’t we all like to turn back time?

To do things differently if we had a second chance, or to whizz forward to see what will be, and prepare ourselves for it?

Well, I think this little film is a great demonstration of that on quite a few levels. 

It’s a beautifully simple concept for Knight Watches where the customer can change the situation with a little twirl of the watch dial, and go forward or back in time, depending on the circumstances, all the while showing off the watches they offer in a delightful way. 

In one particular scene, we see a young boy walking home from school and being picked on by a group of cowardly older boys. In just a couple of ticks, he’s fast-forwarded himself to a grown lad and frightened the bejesus out of the bullies. 

Other moments involve advancing a few years so that he’s tall enough to ride that rollercoaster or young and fit enough to conquer the steep stairs. And I love the ending where an old lady wishes she were young again, and by fiddling with the watch, she becomes of an age where she can chase the young boy. 

And if we rewind our own watches a bit, you’ll find that this commercial couldn’t have been achieved without a large production budget and dozens of meetings. That’s because it’s all AI. 

"From idea to execution, it was all written by a single creative in just one afternoon and produced with Runway AI", a browser-based creative toolkit and applied AI research company. That blows my mind!

Knight Watches is, in fact, a fictional brand created entirely for Runway's Big Ad Contest for products that don't exist, which launched in March 2026. It was a challenge thrown out to creators to produce short ads for a cash prize. It's a pretty original way to illustrate the point that "Big ideas don't need big budgets. Just great storytelling."

It’s a fantastic tool, a revolutionary superpower. 

The ability to develop stories and put this lovely idea on screens everywhere for people to enjoy rather than languishing in a bottom drawer, that is the future. I don’t need to fast-forward my watch to see that happening.