Collection
Politics & PSAs
Public service and political advertising whose techniques — fear, implication, mascots, melody — defined persuasion on screen, for better and worse.
2020s
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2022Backup Ukraine
Backup Ukraine gave people in Ukraine a way to save their heritage on a phone.
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2022The First Digital Nation
In November 2022 Tuvalu’s foreign minister, Simon Kofe, addressed the COP27 climate summit by video from what appeared to be a beach on Te Afualiku,…
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2021Long Live the Prince
On 18 May 2021, fifteen years after Kiyan Prince was stabbed at the gates of his north London school while trying to break up a fight, the former…
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2021The Lost Class
A graduation with no graduates.
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2020The Uncensored Library
A library of banned journalism, hidden inside a video game.
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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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2019Back-to-School Essentials
The most devastating bait-and-switch in PSA history.
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2019The Tampon Book
A tax loophole turned into a manifesto.
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2017The Most Eligible Bachelor in the World
In April 2017 Sudan, the last male northern white rhino, joined Tinder.
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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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2016Like My Addiction ("Louise Delage")
For about two months in 2016, Louise Delage looked like any rising Parisian Instagrammer: 25, stylish and always out, at after-work drinks, on…
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2016Meet Graham
A road-safety message you can walk around.
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2015Love Has No Labels
A technology demo that became the first PSA ever to win the commercial Emmy.
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2015Holograms for Freedom
The first protest made of holograms.
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2014Mistakes
Two cars are about to collide: one driven by a man in a shirt and tie, late for work and going a little too fast, the other by a father who has made…
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2014Most Shocking Second a Day
A 90-second film assembled from one-second clips, borrowing the “second a day” video-diary format then popular online.
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2014Eyes on the Road
A text message that crashed the car.
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2014Nazis Against Nazis ("Rechts gegen Rechts")
The march that paid for its own undoing.
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2013Only for Children
A street poster with a second, hidden audience.
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2013The Autocomplete Truth
Close-up portraits of women whose mouths are covered by a Google search box, filled with the search engine's own suggestions for phrases such as…
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2012Tips From Former Smokers ("Terrie")
Terrie, a former smoker, shows viewers how she gets ready for the day now that treatment for throat cancer has cost her her teeth, her hair and her…
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2012Radi-Aid: Africa for Norway
A spoof charity single in the style of USA for Africa and Band Aid, in which a choir of young South Africans sings about the plight of freezing…
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2012Smoking Kid
A hidden-camera film in which small children, cigarettes in hand, walk up to adult smokers outside office buildings and ask for a light.
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2012Dumb Ways to Die
A rail-safety message delivered as an earworm about adorable beans dying horribly.
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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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2011Legend ("Ghost Chips")
At a house party, a young man silently agonises over whether to stop his drunk mate George from driving, and imagines what staying quiet might cost,…
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2010Selinah
Selinah, a woman with AIDS, gets into bed looking healthy, and over a series of shots taken across 90 days she seems to waste away until she is skin…
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2010Embrace Life
A father sits in his living room pretending to drive while his wife and daughter watch.
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2010Operation Christmas
Advertising deployed behind the lines of a civil war.
2000s
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2009Xixi no Banho ("Pee in the Shower")
A cheerful animated film inviting absolutely everyone to take up a slightly naughty habit: weeing in the shower.
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2009COW ("Only Stwpd Cowz Txt N Drive")
Cassie, a 17-year-old driver, sends a text at the wheel, drifts into oncoming traffic and causes a three-car crash on the outskirts of Tredegar that…
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2009The Trillion Dollar Campaign
Zimbabwe's hyperinflation had made its banknotes worth less than the paper they were printed on, so TBWA\Hunt\Lascaris printed the ads on the money.
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2008Awareness Test ("Moonwalking Bear")
A minute-long film that asks viewers to count how many passes a team in white makes in a game of basketball, gives the answer, then asks whether…
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2008The Great Schlep
In 2008 some polls showed Barack Obama lagging with older Jewish voters, many of them in the swing state of Florida.
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2008Hope
The defining image of the 2008 US election was not made by the campaign.
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2007Pinkie ("Speeding. No One Thinks Big of You.")
Young men show off behind the wheel, and everyone they hope to impress, from young women by the road to an elderly woman and the mates riding with…
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2007Earth Hour
An ad that switched a city off.
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2005Not Even Once ("Just Once")
A teenage girl promises she will try meth "just once", then steals "just once", then sleeps with a man for the drug "just once", until her little…
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2002Do Boond Zindagi Ki ("Two Drops of Life")
Amitabh Bachchan, India's best-known film star, stands at a polio vaccination booth and rebukes the nation for how few parents have turned up.
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2000Body Bags
Outside a major tobacco company's headquarters in New York, a group of young people unload body bags onto the street and pile them up, 1,200 of…
1990s
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New Labour, New DangerThe Conservative Party (UK)1996
New Labour, New Danger ("Demon Eyes")
Demonic red eyes peer through a gap in red curtains above the line "New Labour, New Danger".
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1995Bob ("It's Party Time When Bob Drives")
Instead of frightening drivers, Belgium gave the sober driver a name.
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1991Heritage Minutes
Sixty-second dramas about moments in Canadian history, broadcast in the commercial breaks: the three Victoria Cross winners from one Winnipeg street…
1980s
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1989Girlfriend ("If You Drink, Then Drive, You're a Bloody Idiot")
A young woman, injured in a crash caused by her drunk boyfriend, is rushed through a hospital emergency department while a trauma team works on her.
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1989Supermarkt ("Tina, wat kosten die Kondome?")
A shy young man (Ingolf Lück) tries to buy condoms without anyone noticing, until the supermarket cashier (Hella von Sinnen) wrecks his discretion…
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1988Mile Sur Mera Tumhara
Pandit Bhimsen Joshi sings a phrase in Raga Bhairavi beside a waterfall, and the same melody travels through fourteen languages, landscapes and…
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1987The Grim Reaper
A hooded Death waits at the end of a bowling alley and rolls a ball into men, women and children standing in as pins, while a grave narrator warns…
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1987This Is Your Brain on Drugs ("Fried Egg")
Ten seconds of visual rhetoric that defined a decade: an egg ("this is your brain"), a hot pan ("this is drugs"), the sizzle ("this is your brain on…
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1986Don't Mess with Texas
An anti-litter campaign that never uses the word litter.
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1986Don't Die of Ignorance ("Monolith")
The most consequential public-health advertising Britain has produced.
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1985Vince and Larry, the Crash Test Dummies ("You Could Learn a Lot from a Dummy")
Two talking crash test dummies, the cynical veteran Vince and his eager young partner Larry, who take every collision so that viewers don't have to.
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1984Prouder, Stronger, Better ("Morning in America")
The most influential positive political ad ever made — the counterweight to "Daisy" in every politics-of-advertising syllabus.
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1983Friends Don't Let Friends Drive Drunk
The Ad Council and the U.S.
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1981Slip! Slop! Slap! (Sid the Seagull)
A cartoon seagull in board shorts, T-shirt and hat dances across the screen singing three verbs that became a national reflex: slip on a shirt, slop…
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1980Take a Bite Out of Crime ("McGruff the Crime Dog")
A world-weary cartoon bloodhound in a trench coat, modelled partly on the TV detective Columbo, who first appeared on American television in…
1970s
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Labour isn't working. Britain's better off with the Conservatives.The Conservative Party (UK)1978
Labour Isn't Working
The poster that brought modern advertising techniques to British politics.
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1973The 60-Year-Old Swede
Two men jog side by side at the same easy pace while a narrator explains that they are evenly matched, because the average 30-year-old Canadian is…
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Girl or boy, two is enough.Singapore Family Planning and Population Board1972
Stop at Two ("Girl or Boy, Two Is Enough")
Two little sisters, one visibly older than the other, share an apple under an umbrella.
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1971The Crying Indian ("People Start Pollution. People Can Stop It.")
One of the most effective — and most re-examined — PSAs ever aired.
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Would you be more careful if it was you that got pregnant?Health Education Council (UK)1970
Pregnant Man ("Would you be more careful if it was you that got pregnant?")
A man, hand resting on a heavily pregnant belly, and a question aimed squarely at his half of the population.
1960s
1940s
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1944Smokey Bear ("Only You Can Prevent Forest Fires")
The longest-running public service advertising campaign in United States history — more than 80 years and counting.
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1943Use It Up – Wear It Out – Make It Do!
The American home front's thrift ethic in one domestic scene.
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1943We Can Do It!
One of the most famous images of the Second World War began as a staff notice.
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1943When You Ride Alone You Ride with Hitler!
A government request to share car journeys, turned into a ghost story in a single frame.
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1942Is Your Journey Really Necessary?
Britain's wartime railways were needed for troops and supplies, and coal and petrol were needed for the war effort, so the public had to be…
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1942Loose Lips Might Sink Ships
"Loose lips might sink ships" belonged to the security-of-information campaign that the War Advertising Council, forerunner of today's Ad Council,…
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1942Someone Talked!
A drowning sailor, only his head and one huge outstretched forearm above black water, points straight out of the poster at whoever let the secret…
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1941Coughs and Sneezes Spread Diseases
In October 1941 the Ministry of Health opened an autumn campaign against colds and flu built on one rhyming line: "Coughs and sneezes spread…
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1941Join the ATS ("The Blonde Bombshell")
Abram Games, then a corporal in the Royal Engineers, set out in 1941 to fix the dowdy image of the Auxiliary Territorial Service, the women's branch…
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Careless talk costs livesMinistry of Information (UK)1940
Careless Talk Costs Lives
When the Ministry of Information set out to stop wartime gossip, the Punch cartoonist Cyril Kenneth Bird, who signed himself Fougasse, convinced…
1930s
1910s
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1918If Ye Break Faith – We Shall Not Sleep (Buy Victory Bonds)
Canada's 1918 Victory Loan poster turned a war poem into a sales line.
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1917Fate tutti il vostro dovere! (Fourth National War Loan)
Italy's fourth National War Loan of 1917 borrowed Britain's most famous recruiting gesture and pointed it at savers.
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1917Food Will Win the War
Herbert Hoover's new U.S.
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1917I Want You for the Navy
Howard Chandler Christy took the most imitated line in recruiting and changed who was saying it.
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1917I Want You for U.S. Army
Uncle Sam's stare and outstretched finger first appeared on the cover of Leslie's Weekly in July 1916, above the question "What Are You Doing for…
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1917It Is Nice in the Surf, but What About the Men in the Trenches?
Australia relied entirely on volunteers for its First World War army, so its recruiting posters had to persuade and shame rather than order, and…
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1917Wake Up, America! Civilization Calls Every Man, Woman and Child!
The United States declared war on 6 April 1917, and thirteen days later New York staged "Wake Up, America" Day with this poster by James Montgomery…
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1916On les aura! (Second National Defence Loan)
France paid for much of the First World War by borrowing from its citizens, and this poster sold the second National Defence Loan, launched in…
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1915Daddy, what did YOU do in the Great War?
A British recruitment poster that sells enlistment by staging a moment from the future.
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1915Women of Britain Say – ‘Go!’
Instead of addressing men, this 1915 recruitment poster recruits the people closest to them to do the persuading.
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1914Lord Kitchener Wants You ("Your Country Needs You")
The pointing finger every recruitment ad since has borrowed.
About Politics & PSAs
Famous political ads and public service announcements (PSAs): campaigns that set out to change votes or behaviour rather than sell a product. They use the full range of persuasion techniques, from fear and implication to mascots and memorable slogans, and several changed how all advertising works.
Use them as PSA examples and as case studies in persuasion: each entry explains the technique and what is documented about its effect.