The Creatives Room

Best Copywriting in Advertising

Great advertising copy is among the most underappreciated forms of writing. The constraint - communicate one thing clearly and memorably in as few words as possible - is more demanding than almost any literary form. 'Just Do It'. 'Think Different'. 'Good things come to those who wait'. 'Does she... or doesn't she?' These lines are remembered decades after the campaigns that spawned them because they are, at their core, perfect small pieces of writing. This collection brings together the work where the words did the most essential work.

The campaigns in this collection

  1. Rise and Sugar - AWAKE Chocolate · 2026

    AWAKE makes caffeinated chocolate, so it competes with the alarm clock rather than with confectionery. The work replaces the thing you slap to silence with something you reach for and eat, turning the wake-up into a treat instead of a confrontation.

  2. Made You Look, You Dirty Chook - bishopp · Rumble Creative & Media · 2015

    Bishopp, one of Australia's largest regional outdoor media owners, rebranded around the country saying made you look, dirty chook. The insight: an outdoor media company's whole product is making people look, so it built a cast of literal dirty chooks, shifty, roguish cartoon chickens, to prove its o

  3. Stop Guessing. - mitsubishi · 2015

    Mitsubishi's campaign for the Outlander's rearview camera targets the blind anxiety of reversing. The insight: without a camera, backing up is guesswork about what's behind you, so Stop Guessing frames the feature as the end of a small daily gamble, replacing uncertainty with certainty.

  4. Don't Play With Fire - Burger King · Buzzman Paris · 2019

    When McDonald's Belgium put a taunting panel beside Burger King's new Brussels restaurant, BK fired back on its own storefront. The insight: BK's whole identity is flame-grilling, a fight McDonald's can't win, so why try to roast when you can't even flame grill turns the rivalry's own language again

  5. They can't pretend to be what they have never seen. Donate your eyes. - fortaleza city hall · Propeg · 2015

    Fortaleza City Hall's organ-donation line: "They can't pretend to be what they have never seen. Donate your eyes." The whole argument lives in one sentence - children born blind cannot even play at being the things sighted children imitate, so a cornea is not just sight, it is imagination and play.

  6. #StayHome - Brands taglines during lockdown - Miami Ad School · 2020

    A student project reworked the world's most recognisable brand taglines to carry a single COVID-era instruction: stay home. The insight: an iconic slogan already lives in people's heads, so bending it toward social distancing borrows that familiarity to make the public-health message land instantly,

  7. What is your time worth? - Rolex · Miami Ad School · 2015

    This print campaign addresses the brand dilution caused by counterfeit luxury goods by playing on the double meaning of the word copy. The strategic move reframes the replica problem by using elegant, long-form advertising copy to metaphorically recreate the physical and emotional weight of wearing

  8. Unfiltered 30 - Snickers · bbdo new york · 2015

    An evolution of "You're not you when you're hungry": hunger does not turn you into a celebrity, it strips away your social filter, so inappropriate things slip out of your mouth. In the spot two couples on a board-game night misread a woman's offer to "do a little swap," and the room tips into excru

  9. Do what the clients say. Or else be doomed - BeeWits · 2019

    BeeWits, a service that turns dull copy witty, promotes itself by turning the agency world's private frustration into the product demo. The insight: the funniest material is the absurd stuff clients actually say, so the campaign illustrates real client demands literally, staging them as doom-laden s

  10. Never Get Bored - ContentFly · Madison BMB · 2019

    ContentFly built its positioning on a generational pattern the agency spotted well beyond entertainment: shorter novels, shorter movies, and now, shorter relationships, all driven by the same restlessness. The insight: a content studio isn't fighting short attention spans, it's designing for them, s

  11. How to Fire an Oscar-Winning Actor - 21Grams · 21Grams · 2019

    An agency's self-promotional ad, written as pure long copy, describing in exhaustive detail the process of firing an Oscar-winning actor from a spot that no longer needs him - and thereby saving a fortune. The insight is that the craft the industry has abandoned, long copy, is the most persuasive po

  12. Lets ____ well - Taikoo Li · OgilvyOne Shanghai · 2015

    Ad for the Taikoo Li retail destination. The fill-in-the-blank "Let's ___ well" line, here "Play well," pitches the mall as a place to live well - play, shop and gather in one bright space.

  13. Earth is 71% water, we cover the rest - Emirates · impact bbdo · 2015

    Emirates sought to reinforce its position as the premier global carrier by dramatizing the unmatched scale of its international route network. Capitalizing on the consumer truth that people struggle to grasp the sheer scope of global connectivity, the campaign hijacked a well-known geographical fact

  14. Turns The Everyday Dash Into A Reminder To Take A Break - KitKat · wunderman thompson · 2026

    KitKat Canada noticed the dash - the little line in 9-5, in YYZ-JFK, in a scoreline - and replaced it with a KitKat bar wherever it appears, running the swap across out-of-home, social and streaming. The insight is that the dash is the typographic symbol for the gap between two things, which is exac

  15. Never interrupt your enemy - The Economist · abbott mead vickers bbd · 2026

    A cover published while the US was deep in conflict with Iran: Xi Jinping in sharp focus, Trump blurred behind him, under Napoleon's maxim - never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake. The insight is that China's non-intervention had been read everywhere as passivity, and the line refram

  16. Your Place - Ziyaz · Leo Burnett · 2023

    To position office and home furniture brand Ziyaz during International Women's Day, the campaign reframes the passive metaphor of women needing to "earn a seat at the table." It taps into the cultural insight that sitting down is actually an active statement of power, referencing historical moments

  17. Can't Touch This - Cheetos · Goodby Silverstein · 2021

    A man discovers that once his fingers are coated in Cheetle - the orange dust Cheetos leaves behind - he cannot be asked to do anything: move a sofa, hold a baby, take on a chore. MC Hammer appears to supply the alibi, and 'U Can't Touch This', thirty years old that year, becomes a licence rather th

Why this collection is worth studying

The best copywriting in advertising doesn't sound like advertising. It sounds like the brand speaking to a single specific person at exactly the right moment. Understanding how that effect is achieved - the word choice, the rhythm, the perspective, the tense - is an education in writing more broadly. Every copywriter should spend time with this archive not to copy the lines but to understand the thinking behind each one.

See also

Best Copywriting in Advertising History - The Creatives Room