Decade
1970s ads
The best ads of the 1970s, from Coca-Cola's "Hilltop" and "Mean Joe Greene" to the Pepsi Challenge and the Smash Martians.
Commercials
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1979Hey Kid, Catch! ("Mean Joe Greene")
The template for the heartwarming Super Bowl spot.
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1978Garoto Bombril (first spot)
A slight, shy young man looks straight at the viewer and introduces a Bombril detergent that promises to be gentler on the skin.
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1977Monks ("Brother Dominic")
The ad that proved the Super Bowl could launch a product story, seven years before Apple's "1984." Monk Brother Dominic, asked to produce 500 more…
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1976Football, Meat Pies, Kangaroos and Holden Cars
A quick-cut montage of beaches, yachting, cricket, Aussie Rules, koalas, kangaroos, meat pies and the flag, intercut with Kingswoods, Toranas and…
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1975Liril Girl (Waterfall)
A young woman plays, dives and splashes beneath a forest waterfall, the film cutting between the cascade and an ordinary bathroom shower to a "La,…
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1974Tough Under Fire
A marksman loads a .30-caliber rifle, aims at a padlock hanging on a bull's-eye target and, in slow motion, blows a half-inch hole clean through it.
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1974Refreshes the Parts Other Beers Cannot Reach
A pseudo-scientific absurdity that ran for three decades.
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1974Martians ("For Mash Get Smash")
A family of giggling robot Martians watch Earth people peel potatoes, boil them "for twenty of their minutes" and "smash them all to bits" — and…
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1974Tastes Great, Less Filling
The campaign that created the light-beer category.
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Let Noxzema cream your face.Noxzema1973
Let Noxzema Cream Your Face
Joe Namath, the Jets quarterback and Super Bowl III MVP, grins into the camera: "I'm so excited.
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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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1973The Bike Ride ("Boy on the Bike")
Forty-seven seconds of manufactured nostalgia so potent it rewired Britain's memory.
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1972Three Brothers ("Mikey Likes It")
Two boys refuse to try a cereal that's "supposed to be good for you," so they push it on their little brother Mikey, "who hates everything" — and he…
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1971Hilltop ("I'd Like to Buy the World a Coke")
The template for the brand anthem: no product demo, no claims — just a song, a hillside outside Rome, and young people from around the world holding…
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1971Because I'm Worth It
Four words, written in fury, that changed who beauty advertising talks to.
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1971You Deserve a Break Today
The jingle that turned fast food into permission.
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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.
Print & Outdoor
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Can West Wear East?Parco1979
Can West Wear East?
Faye Dunaway, in an Issey Miyake satin robe and headdress, spreads her arms around two small Japanese girls dressed in red, a band of red pigment…
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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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Surreal Gold Pack PostersBenson & Hedges (Gallaher)1977
Surreal Gold Pack Posters
Posters with no people, no slogan and almost no words, just a gold pack hidden inside a baffling picture.
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Chi mi ama mi segua.Jesus Jeans (Maglificio Calzificio Torinese)1973
Chi mi ama mi segua ("He who loves me, follows me")
A close-up of a model's behind in tiny denim shorts, with a line from the Gospels laid across it: "Chi mi ama mi segua", he who loves me, follows me.
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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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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.
Stunts & Experiences
Advertising in the 1970s
The 1970s belong to television, and the decade's big brands learned to sell a feeling with a song. Coca-Cola's Hilltop sold unity with no product claims at all, and McDonald's "You deserve a break today" recast a hamburger stop as a small act of self-kindness. L'Oréal's Because I'm Worth It changed who was speaking in beauty advertising: a woman, for herself.
The Super Bowl began to matter. Noxzema used the 1973 game for a suggestive celebrity spot built to be repeated the next morning, Master Lock had a marksman shoot a padlock that stayed shut, Xerox's monks proved the game could launch a product story, and Mean Joe Greene set the template for the heartwarming Super Bowl spot.
Demonstration became more direct, too. The Pepsi Challenge turned a blind taste test into the advertising, with the audience running the experiment.
The British entries lean on humour and nostalgia: the laughing robot Smash Martians, Heineken refreshing the parts other beers cannot reach, and Ridley Scott's Hovis boy pushing his bike up a cobbled hill. Persuasion beyond selling took bold forms as well. The Health Education Council's pregnant man asked men to share responsibility for contraception, and the Conservatives' Labour Isn't Working brought modern advertising techniques to British politics.