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Advertising Campaigns

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This campaign strove to achieve iconic status by, well, using icons.

No advertising campaign wants to be forgettable. That would defeat the purpose. The point is to stick in the mind, to of course make people remember the product. There are many ways to do this, but this trope is for when the campaign works exceptionally. It's when people quote it. It's when it's mentioned or parodied in various media. Then the advertising agency can pat themselves on the back.

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, or an iconic spokesperson, but even then it's hard to pin down exactly what makes either one work.

Regardless of what makes them work, they are memorable (even if viewers remember the ad more than the product).

See Advertising for campaigns with their own pages.

This list of examples keeps going, and going, and going, and going, and going...

    open/close all folders 

    Australia 
  • We See Your American Coca Cola Ads, and say that we can do one better. Bask in This.
  • Victoria Bitter had an ad campaign that began late-80s/early-90s that is still recognizable today.
  • Australian Yellow Pages has had a few memorable ads, including the Goggomobile Guy and "Not Happy, Jan!"
  • 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 The Lord of the Rings mania, "It's a big ad! Very big ad!" (to the tune of "O Fortuna")
  • And then there's the Telstra ad which teaches us that Emperor Nasi Goreng build the Great Wall of China to keep the rabbits out.
  • Qantas has run various versions over the years of their now iconic ads, involving a children's choir sing "I Still Call Australia Home" at various places around the world. Watch it here.
  • Parodied by the Chaser here.
  • Now, everybody: "We're happy little Vegemites, as bright as bright can be...!"

    Canada 
  • The Canada Heritage Minutes series of short vignettes, showing notable moments from Canada's history, and playing randomly on Canadian stations for more than 15 years.
  • The long-running Christmas "Give like Santa... Save like Scrooge" ads for Canadian Tire. More recent, but (much) more despised, are the ads with the smug superior bearded guy smugly rescuing his doofus neighbors with his superior MasterCraft gadgets (available only at Canadian Tire).
  • Concerned Children's Advertisers, a television monitoring group in Canada, did this with a anti-drug commercial where a man visits his incredibly sick brother in the hospital, set to The Hollies' "He Ain't Heavy, He's My Brother."
  • Labatt promoted its Ice and Maximum Ice brands by using Michael Ironside (in an ad that seemed to be influenced by Highlander II: The Quickening) and Alexander Godunov (Karl from Die Hard) to pimp the brand.
    • Also, great though Neil Diamond is, Labatt is single-handedly responsible for why "Sweet Caroline" remains popular to younger people.
    • A brief-but-popular mid-eighties campaign traded on both the brand name and Canada's multiculturalism: "So I go into La bar, and I order La beer..."
  • Molson Canadian's 'I Am Canadian' ad. Basically an average Canadian gets on a stage and systematically refutes pervasive stereotypes of Canadians.
  • "Mr. Christie, you make good cookies!" (like Oreos and Chips Ahoy, for instance...)
  • Oliver's Jewelry, a small trade-in shop in Toronto, influenced television in Ontario for the last 15+ years thanks to the efforts of its owner, Russell Oliver. He shoots commercials in one take, standing outside his store and throwing piles of money at the camera while telling the audience how they can bring in their jewelery for "COLD HARD CASH!", and finishes with a trademark, "OH YEAH!!!"
    • BECAUSE: I'm the Cash Man! I give you money for your- GOLD, oh yeah! Yes, I'm the Cash Man! I give you money for your- GOLD OOOOHHH YEEEAAAH!
  • When you eat your Smarties, do you eat the red ones last?
    Do you suck them very slowly, or crunch them very fast?
    Eat those candy-coated chocolates, but tell me when I ask:
    When you eat your Smarties, do you eat the red ones last?
  • Canada's iconic coffee'n'donut chain has equally pervasive taglines: "You've always got time for Tim Hortons!". Alternatively, "Always Fresh at Tim Hortons!" Not to mention the almost unbearably heartwarming campaign linking Tim's iconic status to warm family memories...
  • "Sleep Country Can-a-da! Why buy a mattress anywhere else?"
    • Bizarrely, that jingle is know widely outside of Canada; in the U.S. Pacific Northwest, that is (just replace the "Can-a-da!" part of the jingle with "U.S.A.!"). For some reason, Sleep Country decided to expand its brand.... but only into Washington and Oregon, where the jingle is very much a local in-joke, with one of Sleep Country's commercials being parodied by a Western Washington company who themselves are well known for their commercials.
  • "Who's better than Bad Boy?" "Noooooooooooooooooooo BODY!!" Became even more ubiquitious when the founder and president of this furniture-store chain — Mel Lastman — actually managed to become mayor of Toronto. We don't like to talk about it, thanks.
  • The War Amps commercial featuring the android running through the Death Course. "I can put my arm back on, you can't." The live action version is considered superior to the later CGI version.
  • Similar to the Canadian Heritage Minute are the Hinterland Who's Who vignettes. The original versions were a brief description of a notable Canadian animal, the more recent ones are more explicitly environmental.
  • In the last several years, there's been a campaign where a character is about to leave the house and starts having a hallucination giving the message "You are way too high to drive." Notable in that the message is not the simplistic "Don't use drugs", but "Don't toke up/snort/inject and drive."
  • We see your American and Australian Coke commercials and give you this.
  • Pepsi ran ads a few years ago in Quebec that used the slogan "Ici c'est Pepsi" ("It's Pepsi here"). They either featured oblivious English-Canadians in Quebec asking for a Coke and being handed a Pepsi with an angry look, or a bunch of young Quebecers listing seemingly awesome Quebecers stereotypes, finishing with shouting "Ici c'est Pepsi". Pepsi being blue - the color associated with the Quebec sovereignty movement, in opposition to Coke's red - helps a lot to boost the soft drink's popularity.
  • Canuck AT&T-analog Rogers Cable ran a series of ads featuring three French-Canadian friends in Montreal, having hilarious and often absurd adventures featuring Rogers Mobility features.
  • The Dairy Farmers of Ontario gave us the epic Milk Rap.
  • The Get A Load of Milk campaign. Short (5 seconds) clips showing what milk can do you for you. They always end with that cowbell sound.
  • The Grey Power auto insurance commercial featuring the slogan, "You don't drive like her, so why are you paying the same insurance premiums as her?" It ran for years in Ontario.
  • Back in the mid-2000s, Bell Canada ran a series of ads featuring Frank and Gordon, two CGI beavers, which were pretty popular.
    • One of who was voiced by Norm Macdonald
  • The MarineLand ads have been running every summer for years, advertising an amusement/marine park in Ontario. These most famous of these ads involves singing, that has the phrase 'Everyone loves MarineLand' at least once in the ad. It was a Repeating Ad in the 80's and 90's for any station within a 10-12 hour drive of the park, appearing multiple times in the same ad block, and it was only saved from being annoying by the fact the Jingle is catchy as heck.

    France 
  • The swedish company Krisprolls was made very famous in France by its late 90's advertising campaign, which told of one Swede's struggle to eat Krisprolls toasts behind his wife's back. The ads ended either with said wife catching him red-handed (uttering a suspicious "Ingmar...") or with her almost catching him, in which case he would pretend to totally not be eating toast by, say, acting like the toast is a bird, throwing it into the air and looking at the sky in awe while the toast falls down on the ground. It should be seen.
  • The Orangina commercials featuring a variety of anthropomorphic animals in what appears to be a juice fuelled orgy, and then there's the parody of the Gillette advert they did with the gay puma fur. It's all based on the fact the french word for "pulpy" can also mean "voluptuous", so it's a Stealth Pun as well.
  • Chocolate brand Milka became memetic in the nineties due to it's TV commercial, where we see a man discovering several moutain animals making Milka chocolate bars, with particuliar attention to a marmot putting the chocolate in tinfoil. The man is then seen explaining the marmot part to a woman, who looks crazy at him. It was so memorable that today, "La marmotte, elle met le chocolat dans le papier alu"note  became a common expression, used to reply to someone telling blatant lies.
  • French ISP Free always made humorous commercials to show their (then) unusual advantages over their competitors. Some examples include mall cops laughing at a woman shoplifting Internet access CDs (advertising their unlimited Internet access) or a man insulting himself every time he sees his reflection in a mirror because he could've gotten faster Internet for the same price with Free. The one who went memetic was the adventures of Rodolphe, a very geeky man who used the various services of Free to improve his life, such as teaching how to French kiss to tourists (he can call every country in the world for a pittance with his Internet access) or beating up a sensei (he can watch martial arts movies with Free's VOD offer), followed by Free's tagline : "Il a Free, il a tout compris"note .
  • Universal Mobile's mascot in France, Chico. A very stereotypical black man (so stereotypical nobody found him racist) and his memetic tagline : "Va chercher bonheur"note .

    Ireland 
  • The 1970s "pint of Harp" ads.
  • Guinness campaigns in general.
  • Miss Kennedy and the handsome French teacher sharing a bit of Kerrygold.
  • David Kelly's Brennan's bread ads. Inspired this parody.
  • The classic Financial Regulator ad: "I don't know what a tracker mortgage is!"
  • Maxol's "Free a Nipper" campaign, in which Brendan Grace would encourage motorists' children to convince their parents to take home one of the bunny-like Nipper puppets.

    Japan 

    Russia 
  • World History. Bank Imperial. Unsurpassed to this day epic masterpieces of storytelling each just one of one minute long, with characters and lines becoming part of the modern cultural background. The impact and quality of these ads look even more fantastic today considering when and where they were made (chaos of the middle 90s in Russia, and that was one of very first tv ads ex-soviet audience saw).
  • "- Ты где был? - Пиво пил." (- Where have you been? - I was drinking beer) was a series of commercials for Tolstyak (Fat Man, no kidding) beer starring a paunchy fella who takes his sweet time drinking beer with his friends and thus is casually late - not fashionably late, mind you, more like months or even years late. The commercials were incredibly popular, likewise the star of them, but they never helped the beer to overcome its terrible name (pretty sure no one has ever tried to name a cigarette "Phlegm").
  • 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 to 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 Samurai Champloo intro.

    Mexico 
  • The Telmex long distance ads, featuring a man saying "CALL HIM!" ("¡HABLELE!") in a ludicrously overblown Monterrey accent (which, for the record, is equivalent to Texan/Deep South).
  • The Saladitas salty crackers ad, featuring a Chinese boy in a Mexican family saying "People, I have to tell you something... I think I'm adopted", but everybody ignores him and keeps commenting on the crackers. In a sweet, awesome case of meta-advertising, the Beijing Olympics 2008 Special features the same commercial, but reversed, starring a Mexican boy in a Chinese family saying exactly the same lines in Mandarin.

    New Zealand 

    Sweden 
  • Back in the late nineties, a guy dressed up to look like a tablet sung a stupid little ditty on how the painkiller Ipren is intelligent enough to know which part of your body hurts. Everybody loved it except the government, who decided it was false advertisement to call a brand of painkillers "intelligent". Of course, this caused people to love it even more, and the melody of the ditty to appear in the background of that company's commercials for years. It was only the text that was banned, you see...
  • The commercials for the supermarket chain ICA, which portrays a franchise owner, his employees, and their regular trials in a regular supermarket (while the camera highlights this week's special offers). Has been going on since 2001, with over 300 episodes, and is currently considered one of the best dramedy shows on TV.

    United Kingdom 
  • Guinness ads are particularly well known, with "Surfer" ("he waits, that's what he does"), "Noitulove" (which features three men backwards evolving to the tune of "The Rhythm of Life") and a long chain of dominoes ad. "You don't pour a Guinness, you bring it to life." The ad itself is pretty awesome though.
  • Halifax has achieved some notability in recent years with its rewritten pop songs featuring real staff from the company. Most Halifax ads traditionally feature a large crowd of people forming an X in the middle of a wide open area.
  • Honda's "Cog" ad- a 2-minute long Rube Goldberg machine constructed from car parts. It was actually two sequences spliced together, but otherwise used no tricks. They're known as a 'Heath Robinson' contraption, in the UK.
    • "Cog" was also notable because all the parts came from one Civic - a pre-production prototype that was precisely-engineered, hand-crafted, and worth a few million dollars before the ad company took it apart.
  • Hovis bread had a campaign featuring nostalgic reconstructions of Britain in the 1920s and '30s, with the tagline "still as good for you today as it's always been". Ironically they were accompanied by a brass band playing Dvorak's New World Symphony, a piece of music which had been inspired by the American West.
    • The irony is that the adverts have turned a piece of music written by a Czech about America into the unofficial Yorkshire national anthem.
      • Even more ironic as the best-known of these depicted a boy pushing a bicycle up a steep hill in Shaftesbury, Dorset.
    • An anniversary advert had a boy go to pick up a loaf in the nineteenth century, then pass through every era since then as he brings it home.
  • Fairy Liquid detergent used the same jingle for decades: "Now hands that do dishes can feel soft as your face, with mild green Fairy Liquid".
  • 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.
  • Another long running campaign was for Cadbury's Flake bars, which featured various young ladies enjoying the sensual pleasure of crumbly chocolate in private. "Only the crumbliest, flakiest chocolate, tastes like chocolate never tasted before." Recently brought back, with Joss Stone.
  • P. G. Tips Tea had a very long-running campaign featuring "talking" chimpanzees, until the concept became politically incorrect. The best-remembered ad (possibly inspired by a Laurel and Hardy short) featured two chimps as removal men trying to push a piano upstairs.
    Son: Dad, do you know the piano's on my foot?
    Dad: You hum it, son - I'll play it.
    • These days, they use Monkey, a cuddly tiny sock monkey who was earlier on the (now-defunct) ITV Digital adverts. Strangely the 'Al and Monkey' adverts (Al being played by comedian Johnny Vegas) managed to be incredibly popular while at the same time apparently managing not to sell any ITV Digiboxes at all.
  • The BBC's own digital adverts from the Turn of the Millennium featured celebrities ripping their faces off via CGI to become other celebrities. These were widely criticised—the BBC briefly obtained rights to ITV's "Monkey" after ITV Digital went bust and combined the two, featuring monkeys ripping their faces off and turning into celebrities.
  • Later the BBC had another criticised set of adverts in a similar mode, advertising digital radio using people who did idiotic things like not getting dressed in the morning 'to make time for digital radio'.
  • However, the BBC (to say they don't carry other people's adverts at all) have also made some of the best of all time, such as "Small People", which goes through almost every children's programme the BBC made in fifty years.
  • Cadbury's "Milk Tray Man" adverts.
    • And "Eveeryone's A Fruit And Nutcase" - the Nutcracker Suite with Flanders and Swann-ish lyrics used to sell fruit and nut chocolate.
  • I bet he drinks Carling black Label.
  • The "Happiness is a cigar called Hamlet's" commercials that featured people in awkward situations (such as a Dalek that can't go up a flight of stairs) before taking a Hamlet cigar to forget the situation. The ads are still remembered even after 20 years after the UK banned tobacco advertising on TV.
  • 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.
  • The eSure adverts with Michael Winner, best known for their copious Memetic Mutation - "calm down, dear", "Hello, Mum!" and "It's only a commercial".
  • Cillit Bang managed to make an extremely well-known advert on practically zero budget. How? HI! I'M BARRY SCOTT! LIP-SYNCED SHOUTING AND CHEESY FORCED DIALOGUE! LOOK HOW IT GETS THIS PENNY! Hey, it's notable, I never said it was good.
  • Directory Enquiries service 118 118 have done some memorable ones, but the one where they re-wrote the lyrics to the Theme Tune to Ghostbusters and got Ray Parker Jr. to sing the modified lyrics tops the lot. The relevant ads included many a pun on "I ain't afraid of no ghosts!":
    • "I ain't afraid of no goats!"
    • "I ain't afraid of no coast!"
  • The Coca Cola Christmas adverts aired over here that featured branded lorries travelling throughout a snowy landscape causing Christmas lights to magically light up as they drove by (complete with "holidays are coming" jingle).
    • One version emphasised Coca-Cola's long history by having Father Christmas (who never ages) drinking it with a little girl every Christmas as she grows up and lives her life.
    • These Adverts are so part of British culture that many people believe Christmas begins when this advert turns up on TV each year.
      • So some time in August then.
  • The "Whooaah Bodyform" advert.
  • "For Mash Get Smash!"
  • The Alliance & Leicester bank used to run commercials where Hugh Laurie acted like his bank, Sproggit and Sylvester, was superior to A&L, until Stephen Fry deflated his ego. It usually ended with the slogan "You get a wiser investor at Alliance & Leicester" although it was once changed to "You get a dafter investor at Sproggit and Sylvester".
  • "Compare the Meerkat Dot Com; Compare The Market Dot Com. Simples!"
  • You do the shake and vac, and put the freshness back.
  • Vic's Sinex "Course you can, Malcolm!" adverts became Memetic Mutation in The '70s.
  • Churchill Car Insurance, after years of fairly straightforward adverts, became notable after they adopted a Winston Churchill-like bulldog asked questions about insurance by an unseen narrator (originally voiced by Vic Reeves and Bob Mortimer) who replies "Oh, yes!"
    • A later variation featured an ordinary person asking the questions, while another tells them not to believe Churchill because he said he was doing something unlikely at the weekend—Gilligan Cut to him, of course, doing just that.
  • Like America above and Japan below, Britain had its share of crazy Sega adverts, most notably the completely demented Sega Pirate TV campaign.
  • Scotch brand videotapes were sold by an unnerving animated skeleton.
  • Walker's Crisps, which feature former footballer Gary Lineker belying his nice-guy image by portraying an arch-villain who will stop at nothing to get his hands on the product. The campaign began with this one in 1995, when Lineker returned to the UK after playing in Japan. It was such a success that new ones are still being produced in 2011.
  • A series of Levi's Jeans commercials in the late 90's followed the adventures of Flat Eric, a yellow, monkey-like puppet who liked techno music, and Angel, his human partner, who always seemed to have a bored look on his face. The two drove around California, the audience never really knowing what it was they were up to (although it was confirmed at one point that they were wanted for something or other). Despite this, the character of Flat Eric became quite popular in the late 90's, and the song that he dances to in this ad became a hit.
  • "Love Over Gold", the Nescafe originals of the US Tasters Choice ad series (with Anthony Head and Sharon Maughan), which became so big that newspapers used to advertise the adverts.
  • John Smith's No Nonsense featuring Peter Kay. "Ave It" is still almost guaranteed to pop up whenever anyone hoofs it on the football pitch, and it was reported that Royal Air Force had beed putting "Top Bombing" on bombs they had been dropping on Afghanistan during the war in early 2000s.
  • 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 runs away as soon as he sees Orange Man). The campaign carried on into the 2000s, although with less slapstick and more leaning into What Were They Selling Again? territory (are even more controversy).
    "Detention for anyone tango slapping. Shouting oranges acceptable so long as it's outside during playtime. "
    — someone who's been in British school in 90s recalling the rules of the time

    United States 
  • Apple Computer's "1984" ad, directed by Ridley Scott and broadcast exactly once in 1984 during the Super Bowl, is widely considered one of the greatest television advertisements of all time.
    • In order to qualify for advertising awards, it had to be shown in 1983, so Apple ran it beforehand locally on some tiny local outlets on the last commercial break before the new year so almost no one would see it except a few hundred to a few thousand who lived within the broadcast area of that one small station.
  • Budweiser had the famous Budweiser Frogs ("Bud..." "...weis..." "...er.") and their brief rivalry with a pair of talking lizards.
    • Before that, it was a series of ads about the Budweiser Clydesdales (horses) that pull the cart.
    • Wassup.
  • More famous are the series of "Less filling! Tastes great!" commercials for Lite Beer from Miller (now Miller Lite), whose tagline is still referenced over twenty years after their airing. You know you've earned your place in pop culture when even Cookie Monster quotes your commercial. And you're not even aiming at the same demographic. The line has also recently been used in a series of Subway ads.
  • "Only the rich meaty sauce of Chef Boyardee can Tame The Beast"
  • GEICO, an automobile insurance company, has several memorable series:
    • One 'Bad News, Irrelevant News' parody; the bad news was always something horrible like "You have cancer", "but I've got good news: I just saved a bunch of money on my car insurance by Switching To GEICO!"
    • A series of Commercial Switcheroo ads. It slices, it dices, it regrows hair, it grates cheese, "but it won't save you any money on car insurance."
    • One fictional series with the tagline "So easy a caveman could do it," with the real series following the cavemen offended by it. They somehow got their own sitcom, though it was quickly cancelled. Notably, the caveman has been in GEICO commercials for years, but without re-telling the original joke or using the slogan. Unless one were familiar with the original ad, they'd have no idea why a hairy guy keeps getting offended at the mere mention of GEICO.
    • 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 Peter Graves, Little Richard, Verne Troyer, Don LaFontaine (In a World… where both of our cars were totally underwater...), James Lipton, Peter Frampton, Michael Winslow, and Mrs. Butterworth.
      YEAH, BABEE! YOUCANDOIIIIT!!
    • Fictional exposes on well-known TV characters, such as revealing that Jed really made his fortune from the money he saved on his car insurance.
    • And of course, the Geico gecko, who would originally complain about people mistaking the word "gecko" for the word "Geico", but has since become a more amiable mascot, talking intelligently about the virtues of Geico. They're different geckos. How can you tell? The new gecko has a Cockney accent; the old one's accent was more upper-class. When the gecko became a real mascot rather than a one off joke, they eventually changed the accent from "refined" to a more common accent, so that he would sound more appealing...replacing Kelsey Grammer in the process.
    • Also, before even the gecko, there was a crudely drawn cartoon character who takes some kind of Schmuck Bait, and gets slapsticked for it. Geico logo comes up; "We all do dumb things. Paying too much for car insurance shouldn't be one of them."
    • A car drives along a twisty mountain road. A squirrel darts into its path and the car swerves to miss it, careening off the road. A second squirrel appears and slaps paws with the first one as if to say, "You da squirrel!"
    • "I just want to make an omelette!"
    • A stack of bills with plastic googly eyes sitting on top, representing "the money you could be saving with Geico." Hey, nobody bats a thousand.
    • Michael McGlone asking "Could switching to GEICO really save you 15% or more on car insurance?" followed by a random question: "Is Ed "Too Tall" Jones too tall? Does Elmer Fudd have trouble with the letter R?"... "Did the cavemen invent fire?" *cuts to the GEICO caveman on a couch, who uses a remote to 'turn on' the flame in his fireplace after looking at the camera and making a 'goddammit leave me alone' face*
    • The "Get Happier, Get GEICO" commercials, which indicate that people who save money with GEICO are happier than a humorous example:
      • The Pillsbury Doughboy goes through airport security but can't resist being tickled when the security guard tries to pat him down
      • Dikembe Mutumbo blocks random things that people throw, like coins for the toll or a box of cereal.note 
      • Gallagher runs amok at a farmer's market, smashing watermelons with a giant mallet and cackling maniacally.
      • A Camel on Wednesday asking people what day it is and responding with "Hump-DAY!" which on its own has become very popular. The camel even started appearing in movie theater "turn off your phones" previews chanting "Movie-DAY", taking away the original pun, but still amusing, nonetheless.
      • A Witch Classic laughing happily as she flies around on assorted brooms in a broom factory.
  • Esurance had ads featuring the animated adventures of Erin Esurance, a secret agent who fights both crime and the expense and red tape of other car insurance companies, and featured slick Flash animation by Ghostbot. Esurance had to retire Erin once it became glaringly clear that people were watching the commercials really for her, not because they wanted to quote, print, or buy.
  • On the subject of insurance companies: Progressive Insurance has been running a series of ads featuring 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 Narm Charm.
  • Allstate's "Mayhem" ads, featuring a guy in a suit describing himself as a person or object that then causes something to be damaged or destroyed, with the note that a low-grade insurance policy might not cover the damage and the tagline "Get Allstate, and be better protected from mayhem...like me."
    • And, more recently, commercial line where one person's voice suddenly changes to that of Dennis Haysbert, Allstate's spokesman.
  • Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there! ♪
    • The State Farm campaign where agents materialize out of nowhere to help their clients. Not recommended for losers with other insurers.
      "I have blah blah insurance, please come and help! ♪"
  • Ernest P. Worrell got his start as a spokesman for practically everything under the sun.
  • From a 1970s ad for Calgon water softener: "How do you get shirts so clean, Mr. Lee?" "Ancient Chinese secret!" (Cue the questioner discovering his Calgon bottle: "Ancient Chinese secret, huh?")
  • There's also Calgon's bath products, also from the 1970s and 1980s: "Calgon, take me away!" (Cue woman in bathtub)
  • "Mom, do you ever feel, um, not so fresh?" Only in The '70s...
  • HO HO HO. Green Giant.
  • Pardon me, do you have any Grey Poupon?
  • Taco Bell is still remembered for the Taco Bell Chihuahua, a tan short-hair with a Mexican accent, voiced by Carlos Alazraqui, extolling the virtues of Taco Bell. Though wildly popular, when a small regional Mexican restaurant insisted they had come up with a similar ad campaign with a chihuahua mascot, sued and won, the chain took the opportunity to drop the little guy like a hot chalupa. It eventually emerged that the Chihuahua had to say adios chiefly because it was determined that people really only cared about the character, not so much the brand he was representing (similar to what happened with Erin Esurance).
    • This didn't stop him from making a cameo appearance in a Geico commercial.
    "Oh, great... a talking gecko."
  • Alka-Seltzer: "Plop, plop, fizz, fizz, oh, what a relief it is..."
    • Their later "I can't believe I ate the whole thing" ad is still remembered nearly 50 years after its creation. (It was remade in 2005 with actors from Everybody Loves Raymond.)
    • Similarly, an Alka-Seltzer commercial featuring an Italian man repeatedly screwing up a "Spicy Meat-a-ball" commercial and requiring the product after a number of takes, usually finds its way near the top of "best commercials" lists. Unfortunately, though hilarious, most viewers thought it was an advertisement for the meatballs. This ad was parodied in the movie The Mask when Jim Carrey (wearing The Mask, so he was able to do this) swallows a bomb, which explodes in his stomach, he then blows a smoke ring and announces "Now that's a spicy meat-a-ball!".
  • WHOA, Robert Loggia!... technically, at least, for Minute Maid juice.
  • The television ad for the console version of the first Mortal Kombat (1992) (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 The Movie.
  • The "Hi, I'm Joe Isuzu" campaign with David Leisure. While wildly successful at making fun of sleazy car salesmen, the ads were unpopular with Isuzu dealers for obvious reasons, and didn't work very well at selling Isuzus, either.
  • Guinness's US ads:
    • "Thirty-second reels promoting our product? Brilliant!"
    • My Goodness, My Guinness! "That animal is choking on a zookeeper's beer!"
  • The original Commercial Switcheroo-based Energizer Bunny commercials where they did fake commercials for nonexistent products, then interrupted them with their character. Though that particular campaign is dead, it propelled to prominence a mascot who keeps going, and going, and going, and...
    • Of note was that Eveready could dish it out, but they couldn't take it. When Coors Beer decided to hire Leslie Nielsen to wear a pink bunny outfit in order to satirize the Energizer Bunny campaign, Eveready sued Coors to stop the ad. The judge in the case ruled Coors' ad was a valid parody, in part saying in his decision, "Mr. Nielsen is not a toy, and does not run on batteries."
    • Also interestingly, the Energizer Bunny was a direct spoof of a series of ads for competitor Duracell which featured a toy bunny. This has led to an interesting situation where Energizer is associated with bunnies in the US and Canada, but Duracell has that distinction in most other countries.
    • Saturday Night Live did a parody where someone holds up a picture of his son who was killed by a Drunk Driver...and then the bunny crosses the screen.
  • In the realm of print ads, Eva Herzigov's "Sex Sells" ad for Wonderbra a few years ago. A lot of people thought it would cause car accidents.
  • Ad agency Doyle Dane Bernbach's ads for the original VW Beetle (print and TV) have become textbook examples (literally). Starting with "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 Self-Deprecation (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 World War II were just beginning to fade removed a lot of the potential problematic undertones. These ads actually managed to coin THE catchphrase for the Beetle in Germany: "It runs and runs and runs..."
    • They even capitalized on the US landing on the Moon. The entire ad consisted of a black-and-white picture of the Apollo 11 Lunar Lander (explicitly not aerodynamic or sleek looking in any way) with the caption "It's ugly, but it gets you there". They didn't even show the Volkswagen Beetle in the ad, but because the tag line was so well known, people connected it with the product automatically.
    • They also produced a tv version..
  • DeBeers developed the slogan "A diamond is forever", specifically to reduce the diamond after-market. If a diamond really is "forever", then obviously you can't pawn it or resell it. And certainly you can't give your love a used "forever".
  • There's a Heineken beer ad that involves a live lobster, a naked woman and a bath full of salty water...
  • Fosters: Australian for beer... and translated it means "beer that we sell the tourists so we can keep the good stuff for ourselves". Within Australia, Fosters is barely even advertised much at all, because it is widely considered to be a low quality beer compared to the other Australian brands. Indeed, pubs in Australia that even sell the stuff are now few and far between, and it's nigh-on impossible to find a place that has it on tap.
    • How to speak Australian:
    [guy is crushed by boulder] "ow."
    CRYBABY.
  • Coca-Cola spends big time on ad campaigns and has hit home runs multiple times:
    • The "I'd Like to Teach the World to Sing" commercial that was so popular that a partially rewritten pop song version was released for radio.
    • The Mean Joe Greene ad, in which a little kid shyly offers the surly NFL superstar a post-game bottle after a loss. Was so popular that a TV Movie was made to expand on it. Also a Coke Zero-supporting remake for the 2009 Super Bowl, featuring Troy Polamalu.
    • The Polar Bear campaign, famous as an early — thus strikingly unique — mainstream use of CGI.
    • Coke even popularized the modern appearance of Santa Claus with their advertisements. How's that for a lasting ad campaign?
    • One of the most memorable commercials of the 2007 Super Bowl was a Coke ad that started like a Grand Theft Auto style game. Car swerves through the streets, stops, badass gets out, walks into a convenience store, takes a Coke out of the cooler, and takes a drink. It turns heartwarming pretty quickly; link here.
    • The catchy 'Always Coca-Cola' campaign of the early 90's, which — for reasons probably not entirely unrelated to the then-recent New Coke debacle — traded on the sheer iconic-ness of the brand:
    "Whenever there's a pool, there's always a flirt
    Whenever there is school, there'll always be homework
    Whenever there's a beat, there's always a drum
    And whenever there's fun, there's always Coca-Cola!"
  • A late '80s Taster's Choice commercial campaign made a soap opera-style Will They or Won't They? plot out of a couple flirting over instant coffee. It ran for twelve ads and featured a pre-Buffy Anthony Head.
  • In a similar vein, Teri Hatcher and Howie Long (?) flirted in a series of ads for Radio Shack.
  • Electronic Data Systems' 2000 Super Bowl commercial. Herding Cats
  • Arrow Shirts' classic commercial. The perfect way to smash a stogy image with a joyful, colorful noise Youtube
  • "Got Milk?" — developed in 1993 by ad agency Goodby, Silverstein & Partners for the California Milk Processor Board. "Got Milk?" was just the latest of a string of campaigns the CMPB commissioned in hopes to stop the slow but steady decline in milk sales that had plagued CMPB dairies for decades. It worked. By 2000, sales figures had leveled off, but sales increases were almost non-existent. In an interview regarding the campaign, a CMPB spokesman said the group was thrilled with flat sales figures after so many years of losses. GS&P and the CMPB later licensed the ad campaign to other state milk boards.note 
    • The first commercial was the "Awwon Buww", ad by Michael Bay. And starring Rob Paulsen.
    • Nintendo even took a part in the ad for a short time during the Nintendo 64 days. Mario would be trying to jump up to a high platform in his game world and then get exhausted from hitting his head repeatedly on the side of it. He then jumped out of the TV screen and walk into the kitchen to drink some milk, which made him huge! Mario then went back into the TV and continued the game as a giant, being able to climb up said platform.
      • This became Hilarious in Hindsight after a few games (including the DS version of Super Mario 64, the game featured in the ad) that gave Mario the ability to grow super-large, though usually through some sort of mushroom rather than drinking milk. Got mushrooms?
    • Other pictorial Got Milk? ads featured various Ms. Fanservices from various industries (movie, music, video games) with rather... suggestive appearances involving milk.
    • A particularly memorable ad featured the Trix rabbit, in a live-action and realistic setting, claiming victory in buying Trix (which the cashier recognizes is for kids) from a grocery store (in a human costume), an emotion which soon turned to sadness as he forgot to buy milk.
  • "Don't. Squeeze. The. Charmin!!" ...or Mr. Whipple [1] will come and get you in your sleep.
  • Quiznos' commercials featuring the Spongmonkeys are notable in that it's the first time that an Internet meme was commercially exploited. You either loved or hated the commercials that resulted; the Modern Humorist commented that they are "what you see before you die." On the other hand, "they've got a pepper bar!"
  • MasterCard's oft-parodied "Priceless" commercials.
  • American Express' "do you know me?" campaign in the 1980's, which was parodied by a Whammy on Press Your Luck, as well as in the movie Major League. "Hi! Do you know us? We're a Major League Baseball team!"
  • There was Nissan's briefly notorious 1989 series of Infiniti commercials, which slowly faded through a series of beautifully photograph landscape shots while never showing the car or even telling the viewers what an "Infiniti" was. Gorgeous but fundamentally content-free car advertisements have a long and respected history... sales of the Infiniti didn't increase much, though. "I guess the advertising isn't working," quipped Jay Leno on the Tonight Show, "although I understand the sales of rocks and trees are up 300%".
  • The Get a Mac campaign: "Hello, I'm a Mac." "And I'm a PC..."
    • One of the most memorable ads in this campaign features PC stuffed up with lotsa programs and he's running slow. Somehow, this means when he's a human, he's super fat.
    • It got a bit morbid in one ad, with virus-ridden PCs being led away on a cabinet (re: morgue slab).
    • An antivirus program resembles an MIB, preempting everything PC says or does with a command Yes/No prompt.
      Antivirus: You are coming to a crushing realization. Allow?
      PC: [sigh] Allow.
    • In fact, this campaign is so successful, it's spawned a Livejournal community dedicated to slashing the guys playing PC/Mac.
    • Lampshaded by John Hodgman (the 'PC'); when he discussed the "Net Neutrality: act on The Daily Show, Jon coerced him into saying, "I'm a PC."
    • Microsoft later responded with their "I'm a PC" ads.
    • "...and Windows 7 was my idea."
    • T-Mobile used the campaign against Apple and AT&T while debuting their new spokesmodel, Carly Foulkes, who was replacing Catherine Zeta-Jones.
  • M&Ms candy-coated chocolate: "Melts in Your Mouth, Not in Your Hand."
    • And the commercials with the talking, walking M&Ms.
  • "Silly rabbit, Trix are for kids!"
    • For awhile there in the late 20th-century, it was impossible to sell cereal to American children except via wacky mascot. Other iconic examples included Cap'n Crunch, Frankenberry, Count Chocula, a little bird who was perpetually 'Cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs' and a harassed leprechaun who instead of gold hoarded delicious marshmallows from devious kids: "They're always after me Lucky Charms!"
  • Wendy's "Where's the Beef?" campaign became one of the most widely quoted taglines in the 1984 US Presidential election campaign.
    • Also Wendy's "Russian (Soviet) Fashion Show" wherein a brawny woman presenter (actually played by a man) announces the next item: "Is next...dayvear!" and then a plump woman wearing an utterly plain, drab dress strolls the runway in slight fast-motion; followed by "Is next...evening vear!", with the same model wearing the exact same dress while holding a flashlight; and third, "Is next...svimvear!", with the same model and dress yet again, but her also carrying a beach ball. This was contrasted with the new variety of menu options at Wendy's.
    • And don't forget all those commercials with company founder Dave Thomas... more than 800 of them, including every single one that aired in the 1990s.
    • Recently, Wendy's has gained notoriety for leading the way in developing a sassy Twitter presence, which has since been copied by numerous other companies.
  • "I've fallen, and I can't get up!" For all the serious nature of the product, the Life Alert call button, it was an unforgettable line.
    • The line was so memorable, it actually survived the original company's demise. Life Alert is actually the second company to use the trademarked line (after buying the trademark from the now defunct LifeCall.
  • NBC has a couple, such as: "Must See TV", "The More You Know", and the infamous "Proud as a Peacock" (which in turn was parodied by their own employees as "We're Loud!"). And then there's this:
    "The world of
    NBC, let's all be there
    NBC, let's all be there
    People come together in the moments that they share
    Ooon NBC, let's all be there!"
  • "I dreamed I wrote this example in my Maidenform Bra."
  • The Marlboro Man, although he's looked back upon pretty harshly now, especially after a couple of the models involved later sued the company whilst dying of lung cancer.
  • The very, very lonely Maytag (appliance) Repairman.
  • Oddly enough, this doesn't often overlap with Celebrity Endorsements. Usually it's just an individual ad that becomes iconic. "What Becomes a Legend Most?" for Blackglama Mink is an example of a whole campaign, because the very premise of the campaign was celebrities selling the product. And as the slogan states, these were the legends (like Audrey Hepburn in the picture), not any up-and-comers.
  • The Pets.com sock puppet dog. Most notable for claiming copyright infringement on Conan O'Brien's "Triumph, the insult comic dog", then subsequently going out of business.
  • "Riiiii-co-laaaaa!"
  • Nike reminds you to "Just do it".
  • "Beef. It's what's for dinner." You now have Aaron Copland's "Hoedown" playing in your head.
  • The wannabe Foster Farms chickens.
  • The American Dairy Association once ran a series of ads with the tagline "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 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 Mighty Mouse 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.
    Voiceover: (Picture of Moon) "In 1969, man landed on the moon and discovered it was not made of cheese. We haven't been back since." (text) "Behold the power of cheese."
  • The ESPN "This is SportsCenter" campaign.
  • Dost thou love Life? Well, "Mikey likes it". (Something of a Beam Me Up, Scotty! — the actual line is "He likes it! Hey, Mikey!!")
    • The other Beam Me Up, Scotty! line in that ad is “Give it to Mikey, he’ll eat anything!”(It’s actually “He won’t eat it, he *hates* everything.”)
  • We've secretly replaced this TV Tropes page with Folgers Crystals. Let's see if anyone can tell the difference.
  • The Discovery Channel thinks the world is just so awesome, it deserves its own theme song. ("Boom-de-yada!")
  • McDonaldland [2].
    • Also: "Two all beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles, onions on a sesame seed bun" for McDonald's Big Mac.
    • In the same vein, the "Menu Song" from the late 1980s, to the tune of Reunion's "Life is a Rock (But the Radio Rolled Me)".
    • McWORLD~!♪ (Hey, it could happen.)
    • "You deserve a break today...", which premiered around 1981 but has come back a few times since.
    • "It's a good time for the great taste of McDonald's."
    • Bah bah bah bah BAH! I'm lovin' it.
  • Domino's Pizza introduced the 'Noid, an odd claymation goblin in a red rabbit costume who makes it his business to stomp on pizzas.
  • "My bologna has a first name/ It's O-S-C-A-R. My bologna has a second name/ It's M-A-Y-E-R." Couple that with the iconic Weinermobile (for Oscar Meyer's hot dogs).
    • Hilariously parodied on The Simpsons with an commercial starring a young Rainer Wolfcastle.
      Rainer Wolfcastle: [singing] Mein bratwurst has a first name, it's F-R-I-T-Z / Mein bratwurst has a second name, it's S-C-H-N-A-C-K-E-N-P-F-E-F-F-E-R-H-A-U-S-E-N.
  • The "most interesting man in the world" commercials by Dos Equis. See for yourself.
  • Bartles & Jaymes wine coolers: "...and thank you for your support."
  • Star-Kist Tuna's Charlie the Tuna, and his hilarious if vaguely disturbing obsession with being classy enough to be put in a can. "Sorry Charlie, Star-Kist doesn't want tuna with good taste... Star-Kist wants tuna that tastes good!"
  • This cooling shave
    Will never fail
    To stamp
    Its user
    First class male
    Burma-Shave
  • Yoshi's Island is crammed with features, enemies, and levels up the wazoo. Thus the question, "When is too much too much?"note 
  • Genesis does what Nintendon't!
    W E L C O
    M E T O T
    H E N E X
    T LE V EL
  • Sony PlayStation: U R Not Enote 
    • For its launch date, there was also ENOS LIVESnote 
    • The Japanese tagline at the end of some of the early PlayStation ads ("pureisuteishon!"), which gets used in later PS3 and PS4 ads and since.
    • Live in your world, play in ours.
    • The PS3 ads with Kevin Butler.
  • "Mr. Owl, how many licks does it take to get to the Tootsie Roll center of a Tootsie Pop?" At one point, counters were sold so that you could find out.
  • "Hey, this picante sauce was made in New York City!"
  • The This is Your Brain on Drugs PSA, which used a frying egg to make its point, has been widely parodied in other media. E.g. "And this is your brain with a side of bacon and hash browns." Any questions?
    • Over a decade later, a second ad was made starring Rachel Leigh Cook, which started similarly, but then continues with her swinging the frying pan around and destroying the kitchen ("And this is what your family goes through! And your friends! And your money!"). This ad was also widely parodied, including one segment on Robot Chicken, with Rachel Leigh Cook herself voicing the role.
  • Who are you calling a cootie queen, you lint licker?!
  • Old Spice's The Man Your Man Could Smell Like ad campaign. OK, look back to those other commercials. Now, back to me. Sadly, those other commercials don't feature me. Also, I'm on a horse.
    • "Moo." "Cow."
    • Which replaced this long-running campaign: "Old Spice means quality, said the Captain to the Bosun, So look for the package with the ship that sails the ocean. Yo ho, yo ho."
    • A couple of years after the campaign with Isaiah Mustafa ended, Old Spice (now firmly in the realm of bizarre advertising) released a new absurdist, hyper-macho series directed by Tim & Eric and featuring Terry Crews as the perpetually yelling spokesman. To promote two new "dueling" fragrances, a new set of commercials has since debuted with the debonair Mustafa and pumped-up Crews clashing to sell their own different scents.
  • HI, BILLY MAYS HERE!!...for miracle stain remover OxiClean, among many other things.
    • Hilariously parodied on, of all things, UK children's series Horrible Histories: "HI, I'M A SHOUTY MAN!!"
  • Another Billy promises you that Colt 45 works every time. That actor actually caught some heat for these ads, to which he retorted, "Hell, if marijuana was legal, I'd appear in a commercial for that too."
  • The Piels Bros. beer commercials of the late 50's, featuring animated Odd Couple siblings Bert and Harry Piel, as voiced by then-hot comics Bob & Ray. Widely conceded to be far superior to the product itself; at the campaign's peak, upcoming spots were actually listed in TVGuide.
  • The Pepsi 'Forever Young' adverts. Pretty much sweet dreams fuel.
    • Before which, they would like to invite you to become part of the hip, young Pepsi Generation.
    • And before that... "Pepsi-Cola hits the spot/Twelve full ounces, that's a lot!"
  • Samsonite demonstrates the durability of its luggage by literally locking it into a cage with an alpha male gorilla and filming the results.
  • Timex watches spawned a mid-20th century Memetic Mutation: "Takes a licking and keeps on ticking!"
  • "Hey, dude, you're gettin' a Dell!" Though Dell Computer denies it, and says they were ready to retire that line of commercials, most still think that that guy shot himself in the foot when he was arrested for drug possession.
  • The FreeCreditReport.com band.
    • And their successors, the FreeCreditScore.com band. They, in turn, were replaced by... the FreeCreditReport.com band... as the new FreeCreditScore.com band.
  • Jack Gilford for Cracker Jack, and the jingle: Lip-smacking Whip-crackin Paddywhackin Knickaknackin Silabawhackin Scalawhackin Crackerjackin ... Cracker Jack!
  • Gillette razor blades: "Look sharp, feel sharp, be sharp", "Gillette, the best a man can get", "How are you fixed for blades?"
    • 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 and a firestorm of culture war controversy. This was one of the main subjects of YouTuber H Bomber Guy's video Woke Brands, discussing how corporations may deliberately court controversy by taking overtly left-leaning, progressive stances as a form of marketing. Ultimately, however, the ad backfired and lead to a drop in sales.
  • Arthur Godfrey for Creamo Cigars.
  • bob-white bird call Rinso White and Rinso bright.
  • "I want my Maypo!"
  • Choo Choo Charlie for Good'n'Plenty candies.
  • "It walks the stairs, without a care, and shoots so high in the sky..." for Slinky. Parodied in The Ren & Stimpy Show with an ad for "Log".
  • "Call for Philip Morr-eee-yis...!"
  • "You can trust your car to the man who wears the star" for Texaco gas stations.
  • "The bigger the burger, the better the burger, the burgers are bigger at Burger King."
    • In the same vein: "Have it your way, have it your way, have it your way at Burger King"
    • There's also the campaign starring 'Herb, the one man in America who has never eaten at a Burger King', which is memorable for just how spectacularly it failed.
    • More recent campaigns have focused simply on The Burger King. Don't go to bed before he does.
  • "We love baseball, hot dogs, apple pie and Chevrolet."
    • This one was semi-exported to two other countries: South Africa got "Braaivleis, rugby, sunny skies, and Chevrolet" and Australia got "football, meat pies, kangaroos, and Holden Cars" (Holden being the Australian marque of General Motors corresponding to Chevy).
  • Coors Light has a series of commercials in which two fans would ask football coaches questions and the "responses" would be spliced in, usually from an infamous or memetic press conference. Jim Mora's "Playoffs?" rant came into play, as did one of Bill Parcells'.
  • The old commercials where Fred Flintstone and Barney Rubble promoted smoking cigarettes. Mitigated somewhat when you realise The Flintstones was considered an adult sitcom at the time (it aired in prime-time, not Saturday morning), but still...
    • What cigarette brand were these modern Stone Age families advertising? "Winston tastes good like a cigarette should."
  • HeadOn. Apply directly to the forehead. HeadOn. Apply directly to the forehead. HeadOn. Apply directly to the forehead. HeadOn. Available at Walgreens.
  • Reebok introduced a mascot called "Terry Tate, Office Linebacker", a man who would lay out vicious tackles on his office mates for minor infractions. His character became so popular that Epic basically made him a playable character in Gears of War.
    (Man takes last cup of coffee, Terry tackles him) Terry Tate: You can't break that weak-ass *** up in this humpty-bumpty! You kill the joe, you make some mo'! WOOOOOOOOOOO!
  • The adventures of Jack Box, mascot CEO of the Jack In The Box fast-food chain, the longest-running campaign in television history.
  • The current generation will never, ever, ever forget the Empire phone number. 800 588 2300. IT WILL NEVER LEAVE.
    • There was a local variant, ask anyone from Northern Ohio about the phone number "Garfield 1-2323, Garfield 1-2323," and they'll finish the tune for you, even if no one can recall the product — supposedly aluminum siding.
  • Back in the 1980s, when they were still Federal Express (and the very idea of cross-country, overnight delivery was still pretty novel), FedEx briefly vaulted John Moschitta, the World's Fastest Talker, to bonafide celebrity status. Later on, he also showed up in commercials for Galoob's Micro Machines toys.
  • If you watched any television at all in the 1970s, you may remember the commercials for Wisk. One of the very first mass-marketed liquid laundry detergents, Wisk's advertising executives built nearly a decade of commercials around being able to pretreat collar stains with it — with a side dose of horror and looming insanity. The initial run of ads seemed innocuous enough: housewives being embarrassed by children dancing around their drying laundry and chanting "Ring around the collar! Ring around the collar!" at the white dress shirts hanging there. But within a couple of years, the shirts themselves, fresh from the laundry, would taunt increasingly distressed homemakers over their inability to remove the grey line from inside collars using "ordinary" powder detergents. Eventually the campaign escalated to the point where the shirts would hurl themselves out of the dryer or laundry basket, flailing through the air as though demonically possessed while shrieking "Ring around the collar! Ring around the collar!" at the poor women while they cowered, fearing for both life and sanity. Naturally, the campaign was ripe for parody, and eventually it seemed the advertising agency realized this; by 1980, the commercials had abandoned the possessed shirts and had ramped the hysteria down into a much more low-key approach, while still staying rather psychotically fixated on the horrors of collar stains. (A problem which, more than one satirist pointed out, could be solved much easier by making the wearer of the shirts wash his neck better.)
  • The Norelco Christmas ad has been running annually since at least the late 1960s. Animated in Stop Motion, it features a Santa gliding smoothly over snow-covered hills and dales in a giant Norelco razor, and ends with the announcer declaring, "Even our name says 'Merry Christmas'", while "Norelco" appears on the screen.
  • Pizza Hut's Pizza Head - Mr. Bill if he were a slice of pizza (a pizza cutter assumes the role of Mr. Sluggo).
  • This pantyhose commercial is even funnier if you know that Joe Namath got a lot of flak for having long hair which was considered extremely girly by older people in The '60s. By making this commercial, he was intentionally invoking Stupid Sexy Flanders as a Take That!.
  • "Here. Diagonally." "Pretty sneaky, sis!"
  • "Get Met. It Pays."
  • CALL J.G. WENTWORTH! 877-CASH-NOW!
  • "Beep! Troper's phone here. Troper doesn't have AT&T .. "
  • Anita Bryant's mid-70s orange juice commercials are notable not for the content of the ads themselves, but because her anti-gay stance at the time resulted in a massive backlash and a boycott of Florida oranges forcing the Florida Orange Growers Association to pull the ads.
  • Irish Spring deodorant soap: gets you fresh and (wolf whistle) clean as a whistle!
  • Pepsodent: gets your teeth their whitest.
  • Brad Pitt for Chanel No. 5, to the point where Conan regularly mocked it for a while:
    Brad: It's not a journey; every journey ends, but we go on. The world turns and we turn with it. Plans disappear, dreams take over. But wherever I go, there you are. My luck, my fate, my fortune. Chanel No. 5. Inevitable.
  • Ever seen advertising copy, for a Jewish-themed work, that says "You don't have to be Jewish to love X?" You can thank the 1960s Levy's rye bread campaign for this still frequently-referenced slogan.
  • Polaroid had a long-running campaign for its cameras featuring James Garner and Mariette Hartley. Their banter was so good that many people thought they were married (they weren't). Inevitably, Hartley was given a guest shot on The Rockford Files.
  • In the 1950s, Wilkins Coffee happened to hire a recent college graduate who'd taken an interest in puppetry to do a series of ads for them. He came up with a campaign called "Wilkins and Wontkins," where one puppet's dislike of the coffee results in some horrible punishment from the other one. This creator's name: Jim Henson, who used the opportunity to hone the writing and puppetry styles he would go on to use with the Muppets.
  • And speaking of puppets in the 1950's...
    • "N-E-S-T-L-E-S/Nestle's makes the very best..." Whoever drawls "CHAWWWWW-KLIT" and does a jaw-snap first to finish it is either a ventriloquist or grew up in the 50's/60's. Or both.
  • hhgregg did a series of ads featuring hh, a sentient rolled-up hhgregg ad.
  • ITT Technical Institute heavily ran various ad campaigns during the 90's and 2000's, the most notable ones being the early "Jobs of Tomorrow" and the later ones featuring testimonials of graduates stuck in difficult positions in their lives and improving after graduating. They ran less and less frequently until ITT Tech finally shut down in 2016 after several lawsuits alleging fraud and the U.S. Department of Education intervening.
  • Liberty Mutual, in recent years, have one in their LiMu Emu and Doug commercials.
  • Don't forget the Chick-fil-A Cows... "EAT MOR CHIKIN".
  • "If ever you're not satisfied with one of our tires, please feel free to bring it back." Cue an old lady throwing her tire into the window of a Discount Tire shop ("Thank you!"). The commercial has been running since 1975 and is the world's longest running commercial according to The Guinness Book of World Records.
  • In the 1980s, electronics superstore The Federated Group hired Shadoe Stevens to produce advertisements for them. Stevens went on to star as "Fred R. Rated" in over 1000 of the comically surreal commercials between 1982 and 1987. The commercials were so popular that after one such commercial, sales went up by 30 percent.
  • Dimension X was caught up in the "National Wheaties Week" advertising campaign during the month of August 1950. Act Breaks were inserted as well as The Stinger to advertise for Americans to go buy cereal.
  • In 2014, Lincoln released their first set of commercials starring Matthew McConaughey, usually featuring him waxing philosophical while driving a Lincoln, most famously one where he talks about a bull he comes across. The commercials were a big success, giving the brand a big boost in sales, and became famous enough to get parodied on Saturday Night Live, among other places.
  • "You could learn a lot from a dummy. (click) Buckle your safety belt."

    International 
Also known as Homogenous Multinational Ad Campaign.
...and going, and going, and going, and going, and going, and going, and going, and going, and going, and going, and going, and going, and going, and going, and going, and going, and going, and going, and going, and going, and going, and going, and going, and going, and going, and going, and going, and going, and going, and going, and going, and going, and going, and going, and going, and going, and going, and going, and going, and going, and going, and going, and going, and going, and going, and going, and going................................................................ LEGO

Alternative Title(s): Notable Commercial Campaigns, Advertisement Campaigns

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