Category
Stunts & Experiences
Statues, space jumps, store closures and real jobs: advertising as an act in the world rather than a message about it.
2020s
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2025Expedition Impossible
In late 2025 Columbia Sportswear's chief executive, Tim Boyle, issued a dare to flat-earthers: find the edge of the Earth, photograph it, and you…
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2025Three Words
Three words added to an insurance contract gave people a way out of an abusive home.
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2024All the Ads
One Super Bowl ad that turned everybody else's into prizes.
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2023The First Edible Mascot
A sponsorship that ate its own mascot.
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2022Bring Home the Bud
Two days before the 2022 World Cup in Qatar, organisers banned beer sales at the stadiums, leaving official sponsor Budweiser with a warehouse of…
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2022Plug Inn
Renault wanted to reassure French electric-car buyers that they could charge on long trips, beyond the thin public network.
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2022Runner 321
A race number became a standing place at the start line.
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2021The Breakaway
A prison cycling team that raced the outside world without leaving the prison.
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2021The Lost Class
A graduation with no graduates.
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2021The Unfiltered History Tour
An unofficial guided tour, running inside the British Museum without its permission.
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2020The Bread Exam
Tradition kept many Lebanese women from talking openly about their bodies, which made teaching breast self-examination hard.
2010s
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2019The Tampon Book
A tax loophole turned into a manifesto.
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2019ThisAbles
Accessibility shipped as a download.
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2019True Name
A product change that did the work of a campaign.
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2018Paving for Pizza
A pizza chain that went into road repair.
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2018Save Our Species
For the first time in its 85 years, the Lacoste crocodile left the shirt.
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2018The Ticket Shoe
A pair of trainers that doubled as a season ticket.
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2017Black Supermarket (Le Marché Interdit)
A supermarket chain that staged its own black market.
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2017The Palau Pledge
An ad that every visitor has to sign.
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2017Trash Isles
A garbage patch that applied to become a country.
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Know the power of women in leadership. SHE makes a difference.State Street Global Advisors2017
Fearless Girl
A piece of advertising with no media buy that became a permanent landmark.
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2016Meet Graham
A road-safety message you can walk around.
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2016The Field Trip to Mars
A school bus that drove to Mars.
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2016The Swedish Number
A country that picked up the phone.
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2016Unlimited Stadium
A running track where the opponent was your own last lap.
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2015Brewtroleum
A beer that came with its own petrol.
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2015Holograms for Freedom
The first protest made of holograms.
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2015LifePaint
A car maker that built something for the people outside its cars.
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2015The Safety Truck
A truck you can see through.
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On Black Friday, we're closing. Opt outside.REI2015
#OptOutside
The anti-promotion: on Black Friday 2015, the biggest shopping day of the year, outdoor retailer REI closed all 143 stores, paid its 12,000…
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2014Eyes on the Road
A text message that crashed the car.
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2014Inglorious Fruits & Vegetables
A supermarket that put the rejects on the shelf.
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2014Nazis Against Nazis ("Rechts gegen Rechts")
The march that paid for its own undoing.
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2013Immortal Fans
A football club that asked its supporters to keep cheering after death.
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2013Kan Khajura Tesan
In the 'media dark' villages of Bihar, Jharkhand and Uttar Pradesh, power cuts meant traditional media reached no more than a fifth of people, yet…
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2013Roti Reminder
At the 2013 Maha Kumbh Mela in Allahabad, billed as the largest gathering of people on the planet, Lifebuoy made the bread itself the reminder to…
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2013Small World Machines
In March 2013 Coca-Cola put two custom vending machines in shopping malls in Lahore and New Delhi and joined them with a live video link.
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2013Sorry, I Spent It On Myself
For Christmas 2013 the luxury department store Harvey Nichols put a real range of deliberately cheap presents on sale: the Sorry, I Spent It On…
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2012A Dramatic Surprise on a Quiet Square ("Push to Add Drama")
The big red button that started a genre.
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2012Bridge of Life
In September 2012 Seoul's city government and Samsung Life Insurance relaunched Mapo Bridge, a Han River crossing notorious for suicides, as the…
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2012The Invisible Drive
A car that seemed to vanish in traffic.
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2012Red Bull Stratos
The logical endpoint of "Red Bull gives you wings": the brand funded an actual edge-of-space program.
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2011Be the Coach
Carling Black Label created a new pre-season derby between Soweto rivals Kaizer Chiefs and Orlando Pirates, then handed the fans the coach's job.
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2011Break Up
Australians tend to see their four big banks as one cosy club, so when National Australia Bank cut fees and paid rivals' exit fees for switching…
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2011Subway Virtual Store
The supermarket that came to the commuters.
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Share a Coke with...Coca-Cola2011
Share a Coke
The campaign where the medium was the can.
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2010Dutch Dress
Dutch brewer Bavaria was not a World Cup sponsor; Budweiser was the official beer in 2010.
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2010Operation Christmas
Advertising deployed behind the lines of a civil war.
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Shop Small.American Express2010
Small Business Saturday
A brand that added a day to the calendar.
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2010The American Takeover
In October 2010 Rom, a chocolate bar sold in Romania since 1964 and always wrapped in the national flag, appeared on shelves in a Stars and Stripes…
2000s
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2009Dance (Life's for Sharing)
On the morning of 15 January 2009, music came over the loudspeakers at London's Liverpool Street station, a single commuter started to dance, and…
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Kitto, sakura saku yo.Kit Kat (Nestlé Japan)2009
Kit Kat Mail
A chocolate bar that became a postcard.
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2009Singles' Day (11.11)
November 11, written 11.11, is widely believed to have started in the 1990s as a joke holiday among Chinese university students: a day for single…
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2009Teletransporter
In late 2009 Andes, the leading beer in Mendoza, Argentina, installed soundproof booths in local bars for men whose girlfriends phoned while they…
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Island caretaker wanted. The best job in the world.Tourism Queensland2009
The Best Job in the World
A tourism campaign disguised as a job listing.
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2008Coke Studio Pakistan
In 2008 Coca-Cola in Pakistan funded a studio music show, adapted from a promotional project the company had run in Brazil, and gave it to the pop…
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2007Earth Hour
An ad that switched a city off.
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2007No Money, but Love (Yubari Fusai)
Yubari, a former coal-mining city in Hokkaido, had gone broke with around $353 million of debt when Beacon Communications offered it a cheerfully…
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2006Bonded by Blood
Every year adidas issued a commemorative All Blacks team poster.
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Vertical Footballadidas2003
Vertical Football
In late summer 2003, TBWA\Japan turned an adidas billboard in Tokyo into a football pitch stood on its end.
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2000Autostadt
Volkswagen opened Autostadt beside its Wolfsburg plant on 1 June 2000, timed to Expo 2000 in nearby Hanover.
1990s
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Taco Bell Buys the Liberty BellTaco Bell1996
Taco Liberty Bell
On April Fools' Day 1996, readers of The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Philadelphia Inquirer and other major papers found a full-page ad…
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1992Free Flights Promotion
In August 1992 Hoover's British business, trying to shift vacuum cleaners and washing machines in a recession, promised two free return flights to…
1980s
1970s
1960s
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Legoland BillundLEGO1968
Legoland Billund
By the mid-1960s about 20,000 people a year were turning up at the LEGO factory in Billund, a small town in Jutland, to look at its model displays,…
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1964The Pirelli Calendar
In 1964 Pirelli's British subsidiary, looking for a way to stand out from local tyre rivals, hired art director Derek Forsyth and Beatles…
1950s
1930s
1920s
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Torches of FreedomLucky Strike (American Tobacco Company)1929
Torches of Freedom
At New York's Easter Parade in 1929 a handful of young women lit cigarettes on Fifth Avenue and called them "torches of freedom", a gesture for…
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1925Citroën on the Eiffel Tower
On 4 July 1925, during the Paris decorative-arts exposition, the Eiffel Tower came alive with an animated light show that ended by spelling CITROËN…
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1925The Goodyear Blimp
An airship built for a different dream became one of advertising's most recognisable media.
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1924Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade
A department store's Christmas sales push that became a national holiday ritual.
1900s
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An epoch making eventSelfridges1909
Blériot's monoplane at Selfridges
On 25 July 1909 Louis Blériot became the first person to fly across the English Channel.
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1903The Tour de France
In 1903 the French sports daily L'Auto, losing a circulation war with its rival Le Vélo, launched a bicycle race around the whole of France.
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1900The Michelin Guide
The world's most powerful restaurant rating began as a tyre promotion.
1890s
About Stunts & Experiences
The best advertising stunts and experiential marketing examples: statues, space jumps, store closures, festivals, new products and even an immigration pledge, where a brand did something in the world instead of buying space to talk about it.
Experiential work is hard to judge from a screen, so each entry explains what actually happened, who it reached and what changed as a result, citing the press coverage and award records that documented it.
What to look for
- A real action, not a message: the brand changes something, gives something away or builds something.
- News value: the stunt is designed to be reported on, so the coverage becomes the media.
- Proof: the stunt demonstrates the product, as Red Bull Stratos did, or the brand's values, as REI's #OptOutside did.
Many of these won Cannes Lions in the Titanium, PR and Outdoor categories.