Some advertising campaigns don't just succeed - they change what advertising is for. Volkswagen's 'Think Small' invented the concept of honesty in advertising. Apple's '1984' showed that a commercial could be a cultural event. 'Just Do It' demonstrated that a brand platform could be a philosophy. These campaigns redrew the map. The agencies that made them weren't following best practices; they were establishing them. Understanding what was different about each - what convention they broke and what new convention they created - is the most direct route to understanding how advertising actually works.
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The Gettysburg Address
- Penguin Books Ltd · David Pearson · 2009
Cover for Lincoln's Gettysburg Address. Pouring the famous words into Lincoln's own silhouette fuses the man with his speech - the address inseparable from the figure who delivered it.
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Pass Thru Fire
- Stefan Sagmeister · 2010
Stefan Sagmeister's cover for Lou Reed's collected lyrics. Writing the words onto Reed's own face fuses the man and his language - the lyrics literally inseparable from the body that lived them.
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The Guggenheim
- Pentagram · 2009
Pentagram cover for a book on the Guggenheim. Coiling the title into Wright's famous spiral ramp makes the type itself draw the building - the museum's form instantly recognisable.
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Pass Thru Fire: The Collected Lyrics
- Da Capo Press · Stefan Sagmeister · 2010
Da Capo edition of Lou Reed's collected lyrics. Sagmeister's handwriting laid directly over Reed's face again binds the words to the man - this crop fixing on the eye, the witness behind the lyrics.
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The Legend
- Porsche
Porsche "The Legend". Porsche celebrates its legendary heritage and iconic models.
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Feel Patrol
- Nissan · TBWA\RAAD · 2024
Nissan stages the Patrol Y63's global launch in Abu Dhabi, its first-ever worldwide vehicle reveal in the region, under a #FeelPatrol theme built on emotion: feel iconic, powerful, elevated, connected. The insight: a 70-year regional icon deserves to debut where its heritage lives, so make the Middl
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The Original Gamechangers
- KFC · TBWA\RAAD · 2024
The Middle East is famed for gaming talent, yet the global stage spotlights men. KFC's Original Gamechangers, with the Saudi Esports Federation, champions female gamers in the Kingdom, giving Saudi women a path to the world esports stage via the KFCGaming.me microsite. The insight: inclusivity is pr
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Where's the Beef
- Wendy's · Dancer Fitzgerald Sample · 1984
Three elderly women inspect a competitor's burger: an enormous fluffy bun, which lifts to reveal a patty the size of a coin. Clara Peller looks up and demands to know where the beef is. The insight is that the Big Mac and the Whopper were sold on the bun - the architecture, the theatre, the height -
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The Unofficial Sound of F1
- Sting · Leo India · 2021
To tap into the high-octane hype of Formula 1 without a costly official sponsorship, PepsiCo's Sting Energy capitalized on the cultural observation that the frantic, high-pitched revving of local two-stroke auto-rickshaws sounds hilariously similar to a screaming F1 engine. The campaign hijacked the
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Could I Be Wrong
- Coca-Cola · 2023
A city where everyone is shouting about who is right, and the arguing is so violent that cracks open in the buildings themselves - until Natasha Lyonne stops and asks what would happen if each of us wondered whether we might be the one who is wrong. The insight is that disagreement is not what damag
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Eyebrows
- Cadbury · Fallon London · 2009
Two children sit in a photographer's studio waiting to be photographed. He steps out to take a call. The boy clicks his watch, Freestyle's 'Don't Stop The Rock' kicks in, and the pair perform an entire dance using only their eyebrows before he returns. The insight is that a moment of joy is somethin
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It Has To Be Heinz
- Heinz · rethink · 2022
Heinz's first global platform in 150 years dramatises real, absurd fan behaviour sourced from Reddit and TikTok - people ordering ketchup at restaurants that don't stock it, smuggling bottles into hotels, putting Heinz on sushi and ice cream, refusing every substitute. The insight is that devotion t
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The Epic Split
- Volvo Trucks · Forsman & Bodenfors · 2013
Jean-Claude Van Damme performs a slow splits suspended between two reversing articulated trucks, and the entire point is that the stunt is only survivable if Volvo Dynamic Steering is as precise as claimed. The insight is that truck engineering is invisible and dull to everyone outside a fleet-buyin
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Original Forever
- adidas · droga5 · 2026
adidas Originals and Oasis launched Original Forever around a real 26-piece collection tied to the band's 2025 reunion, anchored by a three-minute film set to a new arrangement of 'Live Forever' in which a crowd surfer rides through time across the band's defining moments, from early-90s clubs to Kn
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The Economist
- The Economist · abbott mead vickers bbdo · 2026
To increase circulation among ambitious professionals, the brand needed to transition from a niche publication to an essential badge of professional competence. Capitalizing on the insight that corporate ladder-climbers are driven by a fear of stagnation and a desire to appear highly informed, the c
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I Am Canadian: The Rant
- Molson Canadian · Bensimon Byrne · 2000
An ordinary man walks onto a stage and, with rising fury, lists what Canadians are not - not a lumberjack, not a fur trader, does not live in an igloo - before roaring that he is Canadian. The insight is that Canadian identity is largely defined in the negative, as everything American culture assume
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Points of view
- The Guardian · Boase Massimi Pollitt · 1986
A skinhead sprints toward a well-dressed man. The first angle reads as a mugging. The second, closer, shows him grabbing the man violently. The wide shot reveals the truth: he is hauling him clear of a falling pallet of bricks. The insight is that the same event yields opposite meanings depending en
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The Crying Indian
- Keep America Beautiful · Marsteller Inc. · 1971
A Native American man paddles a canoe through polluted water, walks to a highway, is hit by a bag of litter thrown from a car, and turns to the camera with a single tear: people start pollution, people can stop it. The insight the film exploits is that guilt is more actionable than blame - it hands
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Maybe It's My Fault
- Jordan Brand · wieden+kennedy · 2008
Michael Jordan takes the blame directly: maybe it is my fault, he says - maybe I made you believe it was easy, that greatness was a gift rather than a decision, that my dreams had to be your dreams. The insight is that the myth around a superstar becomes an excuse for everyone else, because talent y
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McDonald's?
- McDonald's · Cossette · 2013
To deepen McDonald's cultural relevance in Canada, the brand moved away from functional product messaging to celebrate its place in daily routines. The strategy taps into the insight that McDonald's is so deeply embedded in everyday life that the brand name itself serves as a conversational shorthan
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Holidays Are Coming
- The Coca-Cola Company · Wieden+Kennedy · 1995
Illuminated red trucks roll through a snowy night to a jingle, and arrive - and that arrival, repeated every year, becomes the thing that starts Christmas. The insight is that seasons in culture do not begin on a date, they begin when a signal appears, and a brand can appoint itself that signal. The
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The New Yorker
- the new yorker
New Yorker cover celebrating the New York Knicks. Placing today's star amid the franchise's greats links present triumph to team history - a city's basketball hopes carried forward.
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The Cage
- Nike · weiden + kennedy · 2002
Twenty-four of the world's best footballers are taken to a caged pitch inside a ship for a secret three-a-side tournament refereed by Eric Cantona, where goals are worthless and the only way to win is to humiliate your opponent - the nutmeg, the scorpion - all cut to Elvis. The insight is that the p
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World Cup 1998 Brazil at the Airport
- Nike · wieden+kennedy · 1998
The Brazilian national team, stuck in an airport terminal, simply start playing - off pillars, past check-in desks, over luggage - with no stadium and no tournament anywhere in sight. The insight is that Brazilian football is understood worldwide as a way of playing rather than a record of results,
The campaigns in this collection are sometimes called 'game-changers', which undersells what they did. They didn't change the game; they changed the rules. That distinction matters because it implies intention - these weren't happy accidents, they were the result of people choosing to think about their medium differently. That choice is available to every creative, in every brief, in every era.