Decade
1980s ads
The best ads of the 1980s, from Apple's "1984" and Wendy's "Where's the Beef?" to Levi's "Launderette" and Nike's "Just Do It".
Commercials
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1989Bud Bowl
Anheuser-Busch turned Super Bowl XXIII, on January 22, 1989, into a game within the game.
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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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1989Hamara Bajaj
Ordinary Indians go about their day with their Bajaj scooters, polishing them, checking their hair in the mirror, haggling over fish; a woman rides…
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1989Jeong
Since 1989 Orion has sold its chocolate-coated marshmallow cake not simply as a snack but as a token of jeong, the Korean sense of warm, unspoken…
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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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1989Face
Thousands of schoolchildren in coloured costumes, filmed from helicopters over Utah, assemble into a winking eye, an ear, lips — and finally a…
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Still going. Nothing outlasts the Energizer.Energizer (Eveready)1989
The Energizer Bunny
A parody that outlived everything it parodied.
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1989Bo Knows
A product launch disguised as a tall tale.
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1988Christmas Express (Hometown Express X'mas)
On a Shinkansen platform at night, a dressed-up teenage girl waits for her long-distance boyfriend; the passengers disperse, he seems not to have…
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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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1988Just Do It (launch spot, "Walt Stack")
Three words that outgrew sport.
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1987Hitler
A single black dot appears on screen, then dozens, then hundreds, slowly assembling a face while Ferreira Martins' measured voiceover lists the…
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1987Monkey (Walk Man '87)
For thirty seconds a Japanese macaque named Choromatsu stands upright on two legs, Walkman in hand and headphones on, eyes closed as if lost in the…
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1987O Primeiro Sutiã (My First Bra)
Ninety seconds, no sales pitch: 11-year-old Patrícia Lucchesi lives through a girl's first bra, including the moment she first sees herself in it,…
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1987Spuds MacKenzie: The Original Party Animal
A limousine pulls up outside a club and the guest of honor appears: a bull terrier with a black patch over one eye who, by the end, is strutting…
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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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1987Photo Booth ("Happiness is a cigar called Hamlet")
The finest execution of one of advertising's longest-running comic formulas: life goes wrong, a Hamlet is lit, Bach plays, dignity is restored.
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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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1986The California Raisins ("I Heard It Through the Grapevine")
A commodity board with a boring product — dried grapes — created pop stars out of clay.
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1986Don't Die of Ignorance ("Monolith")
The most consequential public-health advertising Britain has produced.
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1985Even Apeldoorn bellen
Something goes absurdly wrong, and the fix arrives in three words: "Even Apeldoorn bellen," just call Apeldoorn, the town where insurer Centraal…
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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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1985Launderette
The ad that relaunched a fading product as the most desired object in Britain.
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1984Come and Say G'day (Shrimp on the Barbie)
Paul Hogan, a television star at home but unknown in the United States, speaks straight to Americans: they look like they need a "fair dinkum"…
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1984Lalitaji
In a busy market a housewife in a crisp white sari haggles with a vegetable seller over a few rupees.
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19841984
A product launch staged as dystopian cinema.
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1984Fluffy Bun ("Where's the Beef?")
Three elderly women inspect an absurdly fluffy competitor's bun until 81-year-old Clara Peller barks the question that ate American culture:…
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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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1983J.R. Hartley ("Fly Fishing")
An elderly man trudges from bookshop to bookshop seeking a copy of "Fly Fishing by J.R.
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1981Fast Paced World ("Fast Talker")
A frantic executive, played by John Moschitta, fires through a working day without drawing breath: hiring a candidate in seconds, putting Pete in…
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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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1981Be All You Can Be
The line that rebuilt an institution's self-image.
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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…
Print & Outdoor
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Smooth character.Camel (R.J. Reynolds Tobacco)1988
Joe Camel ("Smooth Character")
A smirking cartoon camel in sunglasses.
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"I never read The Economist." Management trainee. Aged 42.The Economist1988
"I never read The Economist." Management trainee. Aged 42.
Nine words that flatter the reader by threatening them.
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Perception. Reality.Rolling Stone1985
Perception. Reality.
The cleanest two-word argument in print advertising.
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It also sticks handles to teapots.Araldite1983
It Also Sticks Handles to Teapots
The ultimate product demonstration: a real yellow Ford Cortina glued to a billboard on London's Cromwell Road, with the understated line "It also…
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(No copy — a slash in purple silk, plus the government health warning.)Silk Cut (Gallaher)1983
Silk Cut (the purple silk)
Advertising stripped to a pure visual pun.
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Reassuringly expensive.Stella Artois1982
Reassuringly Expensive
Most brands hide a premium price; Stella Artois made it the selling point.
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1981Myriam ("Le 2 septembre, j'enlève le haut")
France's most famous teaser, and an advertisement for advertising itself.
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Absolut Perfection.Absolut Vodka1980
Absolut Perfection
One bottle, two words, twenty-five years.
Stunts & Experiences
Advertising in the 1980s
Television led the 1980s, and the decade turned some commercials into national events. 1984 aired nationally only once, during the Super Bowl, and the coverage that followed effectively invented the Super Bowl ad as an annual cultural event. Comedy travelled just as fast: Clara Peller's question in Wendy's Where's the Beef? was being quoted in a presidential debate within weeks.
Lines became brand philosophies. The bottle-and-pun format that began with Absolut Perfection ran for 25 years, and Wieden+Kennedy launched Nike's Just Do It with an 80-year-old runner rather than a star.
Public campaigns adopted the full craft of commercial advertising, often through fear. Britain's Don't Die of Ignorance put a granite tombstone on television, Australia's Grim Reaper bowled down men, women and children, and "This Is Your Brain on Drugs" needed only an egg and a hot pan. In American politics, Morning in America went the other way, attacking without an attack through warmth and nostalgia.
British craft is well represented: Launderette relaunched Levi's 501s as the most desired object in Britain, Silk Cut's posters carried no words beyond the health warning, and J.R. Hartley gave Yellow Pages warmth. The entries also reach well beyond Britain and America, from Folha de S.Paulo's "Hitler" in Brazil to Surf's Lalitaji in India and JR Central's Christmas Express in Japan.