History Main / AdvertisingCampaigns

* Carlton Draught's ads since the mid 2000s have been widely popular, mostly for their tongue-in-check parodying of other beer ads. Apparently, their beer is brewed in a big metal thing and driven around by horses. It also brought us, at the height of ''Film/TheLordOfTheRings'' mania, "It's a big ad! Very big ad!" (to the tune of "[[OminousLatinChanting O Fortuna]]")

** Famous actors, singers, and other well-known personalities being hired to tell the stories of normal customers, in their characteristic styles. The more memorable ads from this campaign feature Creator/PeterGraves, Music/LittleRichard, [[Film/AustinPowers Verne Troyer]], Creator/DonLaFontaine (Main/InAWorld where both of our cars were totally underwater...), James Lipton, Music/PeterFrampton, Creator/MichaelWinslow, and Mrs. Butterworth.

* On the subject of insurance companies: Advertising/{{Progressive}} Insurance has been running a series of ads featuring [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flo_(Progressive) Flo]], an adorkable {{Cloudcuckoolander}} with a '60s hairstyle and a big, tricked-out name tag. Unlike Erin's commercials, Flo's are still trucking, likely because her commercials contain much less blatant {{fanservice}} and more NarmCharm.

* The Advertising/GetAMac campaign: "Hello, I'm a [[UsefulNotes/AppleMacintosh Mac.]]" "And I'm a [[UsefulNotes/IBMPersonalComputer PC]]..."

* [[UsefulNotes/SegaGenesis Genesis]] [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k7nsBoqJ6s8 does]] [[CompetingProductPotshot what]] [[UsefulNotes/{{NES}} Nintendon't!]]

** The UsefulNotes/SegaSaturn launch ad, "Theater of the Eye". Famous for scaring people away from buying a Saturn rather than making people want to buy one.
** UsefulNotes/SegaDreamcast. ''Advertising/ItsThinking...''

* Sony [=PlayStation=]: [[Creator/{{Sony}} U]] [[UsefulNotes/PlayStation R]] Not [[color:red:E]][[note]]"You are not ready" (red E)[[/note]]

** The [[UsefulNotes/PlayStation3 PS3]] ads with Advertising/KevinButler.

* Wendy's "Advertising/WheresTheBeef" campaign became one of the most widely quoted {{catchphrase}}s in the 1984 US Presidential election campaign.

* The American Dairy Association once ran a series of ads with the {{catchphrase}} "Behold the power of cheese" (Later changed to "Ah, the power of cheese"). While the various ads varied wildly in effectiveness, one particularly brilliant one started out by showing multiple scenes of a city being destroyed by [[AlienInvasion aliens]] or {{Kaiju}} monsters. Halfway through one civilian mutters "Isn't it time for 'here I come to save the day'?!!" We then cut to a scene of WesternAnimation/MightyMouse calmly eating cheese while the city is being pummeled, and even at one point holding up a single finger while people pound on the window to get his attention. Cue the catchphrase.

* The television ad for the console version of the first ''VideoGame/MortalKombat1'' (involving teenage boys yelling in a deep voice for the game) was so well-known and famous for its deep-throated yell that it was sampled for the theme to Main/TheMovie.

* David Kelly's Brennan's bread ads. Inspired this parody: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-G9mionv_KE]

* Then there's Mortein's "Louie the fly" and all of its descendants, which like the Vegemite and Aeorplane Jelly jingles cited above date back to before television. And the Mortein ads are in Tv Tropes, ironicaly. As those male singers say: #More smart, more safe, MOOOOARTIIIEEN!!#

* Universal Mobile's mascot in France, Chico. A very sterotypical black man (so stereotypical ''[[UnfortunateImplications nobody found him racist]]'') and his memetic tagline : "Va chercher bonheur"[[note]]"Go find happiness"[[/note]].

** Now that Allstate owns Esurance, the call center commercials have been dropped in favor of a new campaign narrated by [[Series/TheOfficeUS John Krasinski]]. Erin is completely gone, and that fact is somewhat {{lampshaded}} in one commercial where Krasinski intones that Esurance [[TakeThat doesn't need a mascot to sell insurance.]]

* Ad agency Doyle Dane Bernbach's ads for the original VW Beetle (print and TV) have become textbook examples (literally). Starting with "[[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Think_Small Think Small]]" in 1959, followed by "Lemon" in 1960 and a number of others in the following years, the ads featured simple, black-and-white photographs over a bit of copy, simple, clean Futura for a font, and a good bit of SelfDeprecation (unheard-of at the time), standing out by understatement. Not only did VW adopt the format for their ads worldwide, but they changed the ''entire look of print advertising'' in the course of five years or so. Incidentally, DDB was a Jewish-owned company known for "Yiddish wit", in a WASP-dominated industry. Applying that to a German product founded by the Nazi regime in an era when memories of UsefulNotes/WorldWarII were just beginning to fade removed a lot of UnfortunateImplications. These ads actually managed to coin THE catchphrase for the Beetle in Germany: "It runs and runs and runs..."

* NBC has a couple, such as: "Must See TV", "[[AndKnowingIsHalfTheBattle The More You Know]]", and the infamous "[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DsxW06anUPo Proud as a Peacock]]" (which in turn was [[TakeThatUs parodied]] by [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proud_as_a_Peacock#The_.22Loud.22_parody their own employees]] as "[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mN9wJ75DjdA We're Loud!]]"). And then there's this:

* The Marlboro Man, although that's loaded with UnfortunateImplications now. Especially after a couple of the models involved later sued the company whilst dying of lung cancer.

* [[UsefulNotes/SegaGenesis Genesis]] [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k7nsBoqJ6s8 does]] [[TakeThat what]] [[UsefulNotes/{{NES}} Nintendon't!]]

* [[BadassBaritone HO HO HO]]. Green Giant.

* Advertising/HeadOn. [[MemeticMutation Apply directly to the forehead.]] [[BrokenRecord HeadOn.]] [[DepartmentOfRedundancyDepartment Apply directly to the forehead.]] [[DisasterMovie HeadOn.]] [[WebAnimation/YouTubePoop Apply directly to the forehead.]] Advertising/HeadOn. Available at Walgreens.

* [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cqm-s6h8l1I You Know When You've Been Tango'd]] ran in from the left in 1991 and gave Great Britain a good old slapping. People mostly remember the first one in the series, which sparked a craze on school playgrounds where kids tried to recreate the slap with their unsuspecting friends, often with damaging results. Contrary to popular belief, it wasn't banned, but was rather withdrawn voluntarily and refilmed with big smooch in place of the slap (and another one where the Tango drinker just run away as soon as he sees Orange Man). The campaign carried on into the 2000s, although with less slapstick and more leaning into WhatWereTheySellingAgain territory (are even more controversy).

* [[https://youtu.be/u_SWjjYAoPY?t=92 Ovip Lokos - In the name of goodness]] (the first two words are ''Falcon'' beer spelled backwards) commercials tried to work around the restrictions on late 00s Russian TV beer advertisements - no humans, animals or human-like objects were allowed the be in the shot at any time, later additionally hardened by forbidding background dialogs, POV shots or any implication of human presence whatsoever. Many Russians in comments agree it worked alright and stood well amid the crowd of bland ads with bottles pouring beer into glasses by themselves... until Russia banned beer adverts on TV completely. Apparently the song from the original ad even works with Anime/SamuraiChamploo [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6O3eTOnbsDE intro]].

* The [=MarineLand=] ads have been running every summer for ''years'', advertising an amusement/marine park in Ontario. These ads often involve singing, and will have the phrase 'Everyone loves [=MarineLand=]' at least once in the ad.

It's of course hard to tell exactly what makes a campaign stand out. A catchy slogan or a mascot are the most common forms, but even then it's hard to pin down exactly what makes either one work.

* Scotch brand videotapes were sold by an UncannyValley animated skeleton.

* The OXO stock cube adds involving Lynda Bellingham are so well known, she's become known as the "OXO cube mum", despite a considerable career with other roles.

* R. White's Lemonade introduced its "secret lemonade drinker" campaign in the early 1970s. The second ad, which featured a man sneaking downstairs to raid the fridge in an (unsuccessful) attempt to prevent his wife from discovering his secret habit, was so successful that it was still running more than a decade later. The actor playing the 'secret lemonade drinker' was Elvis Costello's father, musician Ross MacManus.

** In 2019, Gilette turned towards politics with their "The Best a Man Can Be" ads calling out toxic masculinity, which led to positive coverage of the brand, but a drop in sales.

* P. G. Tips Tea had a very long-running campaign featuring [[EverythingsBetterWithMonkeys "talking" chimpanzees]], until the concept became politically incorrect. The best-remembered ad (possibly inspired by a Creator/LaurelAndHardy short) featured two chimps as removal men trying to push a piano upstairs.

* Parodied by the Chaser [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6WSJop5sG2c here]].