Decade
1990s ads
The best ads of the 1990s, from "got milk?" and Tango's Orange Man to Mastercard's "Priceless" and Budweiser's "Whassup?".
Commercials
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1999Bugger
A farmer tries out his new Hilux around the property and keeps underestimating its power: a fence goes down, a tractor tips over, a tree stump flies…
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1999Michael Power
Michael Power, an impeccably dressed action hero of no specified African nationality, foils villains and saves the day in mini-adventures several…
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1999Whassup?
Proof that advertising can borrow culture honestly instead of manufacturing it.
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1999When I Grow Up
The dot-com era's one unarguably great Super Bowl ad.
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1999Surfer
A beer's pour time turned into myth.
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1999Flat Eric (Sta-Prest)
A scruffy yellow glove puppet nodding to a techno bassline in a beat-up American car sold sharply creased trousers — and nobody could explain why it…
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1997Think Different ("The Crazy Ones")
A manifesto in place of a product.
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1997Priceless
A financial company admitting money isn't everything — and building the longest-running campaign formula in modern advertising on the admission.
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1996Mamíferos
Three- and four-year-olds dressed as baby mammals play in front of the camera while an adult voice slowly sings "O elefante é fã de Parmalat" (the…
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1995Frogs
Three frogs on a swamp log croak one syllable each — "Bud," "weis," "er" — until the croaks sync into the brand name.
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1994Cricket (Kuch Khaas Hai)
A young woman in a patterned dress nibbles Dairy Milk in the stands; when her batsman hits the winning six, she slips past security and dances,…
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1994Yebo Gogo (Windmills)
A white yuppie and his girlfriend stop at a roadside stall where an older Black man sells wire windmills.
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1993The Showdown (Jordan vs. Bird)
Michael Jordan and Larry Bird play an escalating game of H-O-R-S-E for a Big Mac — "off the expressway, over the river, off the billboard, through…
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1993Tested for the Unexpected
A tyre ad as art film.
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1993Aaron Burr (got milk?)
The campaign that sold a product through its absence.
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1992Hare Jordan
Michael Jordan and Bugs Bunny team up in a gym to outwit a gang of basketball bullies, mixing live action with hand-drawn Looney Tunes slapstick…
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1992Hungry? (Moa / Synthetoceras)
Starving cavemen chase dinner across a prehistoric plain, first a towering moa bird, then a Synthetoceras that wears the tribe out by popping up…
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1992New Can
A red Lamborghini pulls into a dusty roadside café, Cindy Crawford steps out in a white tank top and cut-offs, and two small boys stare as she buys…
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1992Orange Man ("You Know When You've Been Tango'd")
The anti-ad that out-punched Coca-Cola's budgets.
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1991Glug Glug
A small boy playing in his bedroom fills a toy red Ferrari with Sasol Super 100, the fuel going in with a "glug glug".
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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…
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1991Não é assim uma Brastemp
In a series of mock-confessional films, ordinary people settled in armchairs describe an appliance from another brand with embarrassed hesitation:…
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1991Uh-Huh (You Got the Right One, Baby)
Ray Charles sits at a grand piano with a big band behind him, while three backing singers in black minidresses and wigs answer each line with a…
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1991Be Like Mike
The jingle that defined athlete aspiration — written on a tablecloth in a crisis.
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1990Le Lion (La Lionne)
A woman and a lion meet nose to nose on an African hilltop, both desperate for the same bottle of Perrier, and she wins it with a cry so primal it…
Print & Outdoor
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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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1995Eat Mor Chikin
Two renegade cows, one standing on the other's back with a paintbrush, vandalising a billboard in the name of self-preservation: "EAT MOR CHIKIN".
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Milk. What a surprise!National Fluid Milk Processor Promotion Board (MilkPEP)1995
The Milk Mustache ("Milk. What a Surprise!")
Famous faces with a white film on the upper lip, lit and posed like magazine covers.
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Power is nothing without control.Pirelli1994
Power Is Nothing Without Control (Carl Lewis)
The fastest man in the world, crouched in the starting blocks, wearing red stiletto heels.
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Hello Boys.Wonderbra (Playtex)1994
Hello Boys
The poster that proved outdoor could out-punch television on a fraction of the budget.
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United Colors of Benetton.United Colors of Benetton1991
New Born Baby ("Giusy")
The photograph that forced advertising to ask what it is allowed to show.
Stunts & Experiences
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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…
Advertising in the 1990s
Humour runs through the 1990s entries, and much of it rests on a sharp strategy. Goodby, Silverstein & Partners built got milk? on the insight that people only notice milk when they run out of it, and Tango's Orange Man, which slapped a drinker across the face, became a founding text of British "anti-advertising".
Michael Jordan recurs through the decade. Gatorade's jingle told fans to Be Like Mike, Nike teamed him with Bugs Bunny, and McDonald's had him trade ever more absurd shots with Larry Bird for a Big Mac.
Some brands chose provocation. Benetton's New Born Baby set nothing but its logo beside a newborn seconds old, Wonderbra's "Hello Boys" earned far more in free press than its media cost, and the Conservatives' "Demon Eyes" posters were the high-water mark of British attack advertising.
Others sold feelings and values rather than features. Mastercard's Priceless gave a financial brand an emotional, endlessly writable format, and Apple's Think Different showed no computers at all at a time when the company had nothing new to sell. The decade closed with Whassup?, a catchphrase that spread around the world before "viral" had infrastructure, and Guinness's "Surfer", voted the best ad of all time in a Channel 4 and Sunday Times poll.