Louie the Fly

Why it works

A gravel-voiced cartoon gangster fly boasts about spreading disease and fears no one except the man with the can of Mortein. Bryce Courtenay, then a copywriter at McCann Erickson and later a best-selling novelist, devised Louie for the insecticide in 1957, a year after Australian television began, with animation by Geoff Pike; the jingle by Jimmy White arrived in 1962, and actor Ross Higgins voiced the character for more than five decades. It is studied as a masterclass in the villain mascot: instead of a hero, the brand personified the pest it kills, so every ad carried its own punchline and every outing ended with the product winning. The Sydney Morning Herald called it Australia's longest-running campaign, the Advertising Federation of Australia ranked it fifth among the country's 50 best ads in 2006, and the National Film and Sound Archive added the jingle to its Sounds of Australia registry.