The Creatives Room

Comedy in Advertising

Funny advertising is harder to make than emotional advertising, and rarer. Genuine comedy - the kind that makes someone laugh out loud rather than smile politely - requires precision, restraint, and a willingness to sacrifice the brand message in service of the joke. The campaigns in this collection have that quality. Cadbury's 'Gorilla'. Old Spice's 'The Man Your Man Could Smell Like'. Insurance ads that found surrealism in the world of premiums. These are films that people quote, re-watch, and share years after they stopped airing.

The campaigns in this collection

  1. Can I get uhhhhh - McDonald's · 2022

    The creative taps into the universal, highly relatable human truth of pulling up to a fast-food drive-thru speaker and pausing indecisively with 'Can I get uhhhhh...' Tapping into this ubiquitous cultural moment, the brand uses environmental design to turn a mundane parking lot into a humorous, self

  2. Liberty Biberty - Liberty Mutual · Goodby Silverstein & Partners · 2019

    The campaign pokes fun at the polished stiffness of traditional insurance advertising through behind-the-scenes meta-humor. Tapping into the insight that consumers are exhausted by repetitive insurance jargon and hyper-earnest spokespeople, the creative embraces self-deprecating parody featuring an

  3. Olly Brown, God of Hamsters - Scholastic · Jack Noel · 2024

    Cover for Bethany Walker's Olly Brown, God of Hamsters. The boy engulfed by his multiplying pets sets up the comic premise instantly - one kid hilariously in over his head with hamsters.

  4. Strong Female Character - Brazen · Melissa Four · 2025

    Cover for Fern Brady's memoir Strong Female Character. Making the book look like a well-thumbed old library copy nods to the comedian's clever, literary voice and the "character" the title dissects.

  5. Me Funny - Peter Cocking · 2009

    Cover for Drew Hayden Taylor's anthology on First Nations humour. The kitschy old "Indian" trade-label imagery is reclaimed with a wink - the very stereotype the essays subvert, played for sly comedy.

  6. Raising the Perfect Child Through Guilt and Manipulation - Jeff Miller · 2010

    Cover for Elizabeth Beckwith's comic parenting memoir. The sunny mid-century family imagery played against the deadpan title lands the joke - wholesome nostalgia hiding the guilt-trip underneath.

  7. The White Guy - Peter Cocking · 2009

    Cover for Stephen Hunt's satirical The White Guy: A Field Guide. Presenting a generic suited everyman like a specimen in a nature guide sets up the book's tongue-in-cheek anthropology of a type.

  8. The Twelfth Night - Manuja Waldia · 2015

    Pelican Shakespeare edition of Twelfth Night. The shipwreck, the twin-hinting crowned figure and scattered hearts fold the comedy's storm, disguise and tangled love into one graceful emblem.

  9. Can I Get Uhhhhhhhhhhhh - McDonald's · Wieden+Kennedy · 2022

    Wieden+Kennedy built this Super Bowl campaign on a fan truth everyone recognises: the split second at the counter or the drive-thru speaker when May I take your order lands and the mind goes completely blank. The result is the involuntary Can I get uhhhhhhhh, and the film runs that same freeze throu

  10. ULTRA SMOOTH BALLS - Manscaped · 2021

    The setup is snooker: those balls are smooth, but the joke is that sometimes smooth is not smooth enough. Manscaped uses the game as an extended innuendo for its Ultra Smooth grooming package, letting the double meaning of a very ordinary sporting term carry the whole spot.

  11. Approved by Italians - Pizza Hut · Publicis Middle East, Dubai, UAE

    Pizza Hut launched pasta, which left an American chain that does not trade in Italy speaking with no authority on the subject. So the campaign went for the only endorsement that counts and asked Italians. The catch is that the pasta breaks tradition and traditional Italians would never sign it off,

  12. Ruin Your Resolutions - BURGER KING Belgium · Happiness Brussels · 2022

    About twenty minutes into the new year, Burger King Belgium was already flyposting streets where people were still out. The posters show young people eating a Whopper 12 or 23 minutes after midnight, on the observation that resolutions survive right up until the brain suggests otherwise.

  13. SORRY MY FRIEND - BURGER KING® France · Buzzman · 2026

    Burger King France ran the Paris metro with an apology to actual friends, because Baby Burgers turn up more reliably than they do. Boxes of 3 or 9 cover the binge-watch, the big match, the energy slump and the end of the month, so the product is cast as the more dependable relationship.

  14. Tax Season - Mastermind · Getzy, New York

    Billboard ad for a tax/finance firm. The plain promise to help you "keep your money" cuts straight to the anxiety of tax season - competence pitched without gimmick.

  15. Because Eww. - Purell

    A hand sanitiser campaign that skips the hygiene lecture and works purely on the flinch. It dwells on the specific things that are genuinely revolting to touch, letting disgust do the persuading rather than any claim about germs killed.

  16. Just Fine - OtterBox

    A phone is treated as an extension of its owner, so protecting it feels like protecting yourself. OtterBox puts phones into precisely the situations the case is engineered to survive and lets the outcome speak, with the understatement in the line doing the rest.

  17. Dad’s Manual - Cochez · Star5 Ogilvy · 2026

    The insight is that fathers rarely wait for the right moment to give advice; it comes out while they are fixing or assembling something with their children. For Father's Day, Cochez turned flat-pack assembly instructions into Dad's Manuals, where each numbered step of a bicycle, skateboard or dresse

  18. Crecer es tener juguetes nuevos - Marcimex · BBA · 2026

    Children's Day is normally saturated with toys, sweets and theme parks aimed at children. The appliance chain Marcimex aimed at the adults instead, drawing visual parallels between a child's toys and the grown-up equivalents that replace them, shot with warm domestic lighting so growing up is framed

  19. Christmas - Clas Ohlson

    A Christmas film for Clas Ohlson: a hapless, half-collapsed gingerbread man plays for warm humour - the Scandinavian home-and-hardware brand as the fixer that saves the festive day.

  20. Parking - Euromillions · 2018

    Euromillions "Parking". A wry everyday scenario imagines how a lottery win could transform even the smallest daily frustrations.

  21. Life Happens - Bupa · 2020

    Health insurance is typically treated as a grudge purchase reserved for rare, worst-case medical crises, causing consumers to doubt its regular value. To build brand affinity, Bupa reframed health insurance from passive crisis coverage into active support for the unpredictable, everyday moments of l

  22. Fixing Your Finances, Unleashing New Shenanigans - Trevi · 2025

    Trevi "Fixing Your Finances, Unleashing New Shenanigans". A playful finance spot pairing sorting your money with fresh fun.

  23. Expecting - FIBER ONE · 2015

    Saatchi & Saatchi New York persuaded Fiber One to fund a power ballad about constipation, and then persuaded Michael Bolton to sing it. Treating the least discussable subject with total musical sincerity is the joke, and the sincerity is what made it travel. Directed by Augusto Gimenez Zapiola; a 20

  24. Gamer x Toothbrush - Duracell · 2019

    "Gamer x Toothbrush - Extra Power" for Duracell: an everyday device going strong makes the case for the battery's long-lasting power - the reliable charge behind daily gadgets.

Why this collection is worth studying

Comedy works in advertising when it emerges from a genuine brand truth rather than being imported to make a dull brief more bearable. The funniest campaigns in this collection aren't funny despite being about their product - they're funny because they found the genuinely absurd thing about their product and committed to it completely. That commitment is what distinguishes advertising comedy from advertising that attempts comedy.

See also

Funniest Ads of All Time - The Creatives Room