Celebrity advertising is the oldest trick in the book - and one of the most frequently misused. Most celebrity campaigns simply rent fame without earning it. The campaigns in this collection did something different: they found a genuine connection between the celebrity's identity and the brand's truth, and built creative work that used that connection to say something more interesting than either could say alone. Michael Jordan for Nike wasn't endorsement advertising - it was a collaboration between two entities trying to become something bigger than themselves.
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The American Civil War
- Knopf · Barbara deWilde · 2009
Cover for John Keegan's The American Civil War. The dense, clashing red-and-blue lettering evokes Union and Confederacy colliding - the conflict fought out in the typography itself.
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Winchell
- Vintage · Barbara deWilde · 2011
Cover for Neal Gabler's Winchell. The cut-and-paste newspaper lettering evokes the gossip columns Winchell ruled - a biography dressed as the scandal-sheet type he made famous.
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NFL Inspired
- Bose
"NFL Inspired" for Bose: an Atlanta Falcons player roaring mid-effort in Bose earbuds ties the audio brand to elite focus - sound that gets athletes in the zone.
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Lebron A Kia Full Length
- Stinger
Kia Stinger "LeBron". A Kia Stinger spot fronted by a sports star, framing power and presence.
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Rugby Japan Competition
- Mitsubishi
Mitsubishi "Rugby Japan Competition". A sponsorship spot built around a Japan rugby competition.
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Gigi Buffon
- Wish · 180 Kingsday · 2018
Wish "Gigi Buffon". A Wish spot fronted by a football legend to build credibility and reach.
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Socks
- Pornhub · Officer & Gentleman · 2018
"Socks" is a deadpan spoof of heroic sportswear commercials, made to launch a Pornhub line of socks. It borrows every athletic-ad trope - the lone athlete grinding at night, sweat, discipline, pushing past limits - and turns the earnest voiceover into a stream of double entendres, so the motivationa
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The Perfetto Instructions for Use
- De’Longhi · Lola MullenLowe · 2025
De'Longhi's global 'Perfetto' campaign, directed by Taika Waititi and starring Brad Pitt, is built as a mock user manual for enjoying coffee. Actor Riccardo Scamarcio narrates the instructions as Pitt makes and savours a cup, shifting focus from the machine's one-touch technology to the daily ritual
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Stop dreaming. Start doing.
- Optus · 2016
Optus x Usain Bolt: 'Stop Dreaming. Start Doing.' - the fastest man alive retelling his making, with his family, as a discipline story rather than a talent story. The insight: inspiration sells when the legend hands over the method, not the myth.
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Ryan Reynolds' Vasectomy
- aviation gin · 2021
For Father's Day, Ryan Reynolds tends bar and mixes a cocktail called The Vasectomy, explaining the joys of fatherhood in a tone of barely-contained exhaustion, the film left full of bloopers and the director shouting at him. The insight is that Father's Day advertising is uniformly reverent, and th
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Scary House
- Nike · Wieden+Kennedy Portland · 2000
To stand out during the highly earnest 2000 Sydney Olympics, Nike sought to inject irreverent, pop-culture humor into the athletic wear category. The strategy taps into the classic slasher-film trope where victims inexplicably fail to outrun slow-moving killers. Directed by Spike Jonze, the commerci
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Courtside
- Michelob ULTRA · 2020
When COVID-19 forced the NBA to play in a fan-less "bubble," it created an experience problem for the league and its sponsors. Michelob Ultra’s "Courtside" idea was built on the insight that the crowd is an irreplaceable part of the game's energy for players and viewers. The execution used Microsoft
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Build Your Own Super Bowl Commercial
- Uber Eats · internal creative team · 2026
Uber Eats shot far more Super Bowl footage than it aired - 36-plus hours of unused scenes and dozens of celebrity cameos - then opened the offcuts inside its own app, letting users assemble their own version of the commercial from the parts, yielding over a thousand possible cuts. The insight is tha
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Warmer Together feat. Al Pacino & Robert De Niro
- Moncler · Wieden+Kennedy · 2026
This campaign's creative idea uses the legendary relationship of Al Pacino and Robert De Niro as a metaphor for enduring warmth and connection. The work taps into the cultural insight that certain iconic pairings represent a timeless, unbreakable bond, much like a quality jacket. The strategy was to
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Everyone but Jon Hamm
- Apple TV+ · tbwa\chymedia · 2022
Jon Hamm scrolls Apple TV+ and finds everyone - Hanks, Holland, Eilish, Sudeikis - except himself, and complains about it to camera. TBWA\Media Arts Lab turned a service's best asset, its star roster, into a running joke told by the one star not on it. The insight: a celebrity list read out loud is
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Zlatan is ready for the 2026 FIFA World Cup
- Fox Sports · Wieden+Kennedy · 2026
To generate early hype for its 2026 FIFA World Cup broadcast, Fox Sports leveraged the tension between Zlatan Ibrahimović's advanced age and his god-like public persona. The creative idea was to have Zlatan humorously announce his readiness for the 2026 tournament, an absurd proposition that is perf
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Go World "Dan Jansen"
- Visa · bbdo · 1994
To shift its Olympic sponsorship from functional payment-exclusivity messaging to a deeper brand bond, Visa launched a global platform celebrating the triumph of the human spirit. The strategy taps into the insight that Olympic viewers care far more about stories of resilience and redemption than ef
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Grant Hill drinks Sprite
- Sprite · Lowe & Partners/SMS · 1994
This campaign sought to differentiate Sprite from its image-obsessed cola rivals by tapping into youth cynicism towards slick, celebrity-driven marketing. The core idea was to satirize the very nature of advertising by creating a disarmingly honest anti-ad. This inaugural "Image is Nothing. Thirst i
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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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You Love Me
- Beats by Dre · Translation · 2020
A monologue addressed straight to America: you love Black culture - the music, the style, the athletes, the language - but do you love the people who make it. The insight is that Black culture is simultaneously the most imitated and the least protected thing in American life, and the gap between con
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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
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Val
- Amazon Studios · 2021
The strategic challenge was how to tell the story of actor Val Kilmer, who had lost his voice to throat cancer. The creative idea was built on the insight that Kilmer had obsessively documented his own life for decades, creating a massive personal film archive. The film is constructed almost entirel
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Brad Is Single
- Norwegian Airlines · mccann stockholm · 2016
Hours after the Jolie-Pitt divorce broke, Norwegian ran a press ad reading 'Brad is single' beside a fare to Los Angeles. The insight is that a cheap fare is only interesting if the audience is handed a reason to go today. The strategic problem is that budget airlines compete on prices nobody rememb
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José +10
- Adidas · 180heartbeats + JvM · 2006
Two boys pick teams from the world's greatest footballers on a dusty pitch - and the legends actually turn up to play. The insight is that the universal childhood ritual of picking sides is where football fandom is formed, and every fan has mentally drafted their dream XI. The strategic problem was
The question every creative should ask before recommending a celebrity is: what does this person know about this product that no-one else does? If the answer is 'nothing', the work will feel like nothing. If the answer is specific and true - Jordan's obsessive competitiveness, Idris Elba's precision - the campaign has a starting point for genuine creative work. Start with that question and the rest follows.