Decade
2000s ads
The best ads of the 2000s, from BMW Films and Subservient Chicken to Honda's "Cog" and Cadbury's "Gorilla": the decade advertising went online.
Commercials
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2009Compare the Meerkat ("Simples")
Aleksandr Orlov, a self-important Russian meerkat in a smoking jacket, complains to camera that car-insurance shoppers keep turning up at his…
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2009Free Doritos
In an office break room, a worker insists his snow globe is a crystal ball, predicts free Doritos for everyone, then hurls it through the glass…
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2009Walk-In Fridge
At a housewarming, a woman proudly shows her friends the new walk-in closet and they shriek with delight, until even louder screams erupt from the…
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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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2009ZooZoos
Egg-headed white creatures with balloon bodies and stick-thin limbs gabble in a language nobody understands, giggle and fall in love through tiny…
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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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2008Baby
A baby at a computer keyboard, speaking in an adult man's voice, brushes off the idea that he is too young to invest.
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2007Believe ("Diorama")
No gameplay, no graphics, no product shots.
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2007Jaago Re (Politician)
A haughty politician is put on the spot in front of a crowd by a young man who questions his credentials and record.
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2007Picnic
A Thai family picnics in broad daylight while a procession of folk ghosts drifts past their mat.
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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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2007The Shirato Family (White Family)
The Shirato household looks ordinary until you notice two things: the father is a white Hokkaido dog who lectures his family in a human voice, and…
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2007Gorilla
Ninety seconds of a gorilla waiting, then drumming the fill of Phil Collins' "In the Air Tonight" — no chocolate on screen until the end card.
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2006Alien Jones (Earth Survey series)
In each episode Tommy Lee Jones, playing an alien sent to survey Earth, takes another Japanese job, from sumo referee to island doctor, watches the…
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2006Bienvenido a la república independiente de tu casa
A child's voice reads out the constitution of a home over shaky family camcorder footage: every republic needs an anthem and a flag, the inhabitants…
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2006Happiness Factory
A young man drops a coin into a Coca-Cola vending machine and the camera follows it into an animated kingdom inside: pig-helicopters ferry the…
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2006Get a Mac ("Mac vs. PC")
Sixty-six spots, one white void, two guys.
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2006The Most Interesting Man in the World
Beer advertising's rulebook said young, party, bikinis; Dos Equis cast a silver-bearded man in his sixties and made him a legend: "He once had an…
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2005Australia Day Lamb
Former AFL footballer Sam Kekovich sits at a desk in front of the Australian flag and delivers a deadpan, mock-statesmanlike rant against all things…
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2005Love Story
A four-episode soap opera that ran on Thai television for two months: Jum, a scruffy tomboy, blurts out her love for the school's handsome sepak…
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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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2005Big Ad
Advertising parodying its own megalomania.
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2005noitulovE
Three drinkers raise their pints — and time reverses.
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2005Balls (and "Paint")
The shortest script in the business — "we let 250,000 brightly coloured balls loose down the hills of San Francisco" — produced one of the most…
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2004Gandhi
Mahatma Gandhi walks into a bare hut, sits cross-legged, switches on a webcam and begins to speak, and his message of peace appears on a skyscraper…
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2004Grrr ("Hate Something, Change Something")
A diesel-engine ad built on hate.
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2003Boy and Pug (You and I)
A small boy wanders through a rain-washed Goan day, to school, the barber's, the bath, and a pug trots after him wherever he goes, to the song "You…
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2003Outfit (Identity Theft)
A middle-aged man sits in his wood-panelled den with a can of beer in front of the TV, and out of his mouth comes the giddy voice of a young woman…
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2003Terry Tate: Office Linebacker
A 300-pound linebacker levels office workers for leaving no coffee in the pot.
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2003Cog
Two minutes of Honda Accord parts toppling, rolling and swinging into each other in a flawless Rube Goldberg chain reaction — ending with a finished…
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2003What Happens Here, Stays Here
The most successful destination slogan ever written — and a masterclass in selling an emotional truth instead of attractions.
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2002Bus
A battered bus lurches across the Rajasthan desert so overloaded that villagers cling to every side and crowd the roof, swaying in eerie unison over…
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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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2002Lamp
A woman unplugs her old red desk lamp and leaves it on the curb.
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2002Metamorfosis
A young man drenches himself in Axe and is promptly swarmed by women.
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2002Para todos
Coca-Cola bottles and cans appear against a plain white background while a voice works through the people the drink is for: the fat and the thin,…
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2002Respect
Five months after September 11, the Budweiser Clydesdales leave their stables, travel through snowy countryside and over the Brooklyn Bridge, then…
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2002Thanda Matlab Coca-Cola
Bollywood star Aamir Khan, in a run of regional disguises from a Punjabi farmer who chills bottles in his well to a Bengali professor, insists that…
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2002The Sculptor
In India, a young man falls for the Peugeot 206 he has seen in a print ad and sets about turning his boxy Hindustan Ambassador into one.
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2002Odyssey
A man and a woman sprint through wall after wall of a building — plaster exploding around them — then out into a forest, up two trees, and into the…
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2001Bostezo (Yawn)
Not a word is spoken.
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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…
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2000Mano (¿Te gusta conducir?)
Filmed from inside the car, the spot never shows a BMW.
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2000Not Happy, Jan!
A businesswoman discovers that her employee, Jan, has forgotten to book the company's advertisement in the new Yellow Pages, so the business will…
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2000The Rant ("I Am Canadian")
A polite young man in a flannel shirt steps up to a cinema microphone and, building from a bashful murmur to a roar over "Land of Hope and Glory",…
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2000Cat Herders
How to make an invisible IT company famous in sixty seconds: take the management cliché "it's like herding cats" literally.
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2000Bear
A nature documentary ambushed by slapstick: a fisherman kung-fu fights a grizzly bear for a salmon — crotch-kick included — to prove John West…
Made for the Internet
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2009Carousel
A cops-and-robbers shootout frozen in a single instant, explored in one continuous tracking shot that runs two minutes and 19 seconds and loops back…
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2009Chalkbot
Fans at the Tour de France have long painted messages on the road for the riders.
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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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Fiesta MovementFord2009
Fiesta Movement
Before the new Fiesta had even been unveiled in America, Ford handed 100 European-spec cars to 100 social-media-savvy 'agents' for six months, set…
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2009Roller Babies
Special-effects babies perform old-school roller-skating tricks to a remix of 'Rapper's Delight', bringing back the babies Evian had last used more…
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2009The Fun Theory ("Piano Stairs")
Volkswagen Sweden turned the stairs at Stockholm's Odenplan subway station into working piano keys, filmed commuters abandoning the escalator, and…
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Whopper SacrificeBurger King2009
Whopper Sacrifice
A Facebook app that put a price on friendship: delete ten friends and get a coupon for a free Whopper.
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2008eco:Drive
Rather than advertise fuel economy, Fiat and AKQA built a tool that taught people to use less fuel.
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2008Hotel 626
To bring two discontinued flavours back for Halloween 2008, Doritos and Goodby Silverstein & Partners built a haunted hotel that existed only online…
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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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UniqlockUniqlo2007
Uniqlock
A clock that doubled as a fashion show.
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2007Why So Serious? (The Dark Knight alternate reality game)
Fifteen months before The Dark Knight reached cinemas, Warner Bros. and 42 Entertainment started letting fans dig the film out for themselves.
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2006Elf Yourself
Upload a photo of your face, and watch yourself, your boss or your grandmother dance as a holiday elf.
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2006Still Free (Air Force One)
A grainy two-minute video that surfaced online in April 2006 appeared to show hooded figures climbing the fence at Andrews Air Force Base at night,…
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2006Will It Blend?
Fifty dollars, a lab coat, and a CEO who already destroyed things for quality control.
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2006Evolution
The film that made the ad industry take the internet seriously.
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2005Crossbar ("Ronaldinho: Touch of Gold")
Ronaldinho laces up a pair of white-and-gold Nike Tiempo boots, juggles a ball towards the box and strikes the crossbar four times in a row without…
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I Love BeesMicrosoft / Bungie (Halo 2)2004
I Love Bees
A game disguised as a honey company's website.
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Get chicken just the way you like it.Burger King2004
Subservient Chicken
The weirdest literal brand idea ever to work: "Have It Your Way" became a man in a chicken suit who obeys typed commands.
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2003ecotonoha
A website on which a single virtual tree grew one leaf at a time.
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2001BMW Films: The Hire
The campaign that invented branded entertainment as a discipline.
Print & Outdoor
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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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2008Hope
The defining image of the 2008 US election was not made by the campaign.
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2006Sundial
A billboard that tells the time.
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ImagineLEGO2005
Imagine (Periscope)
Two bricks and one word.
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2004Lightbulb
The Economist made its name in outdoor with witty copy; this poster dropped the words altogether.
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Small but tough. Polo.Volkswagen2003
Cops
A squad of American cops is pinned down in a street shoot-out, and every one of them has picked the same cover: not their own patrol car but a…
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2003iPod Silhouettes
Black silhouettes dancing against vivid flat colour, with only one detail picked out: a white iPod and its white earphone cord.
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Beach, Bar, PoolClub 18-302002
Beach, Bar, Pool
Three crowded, sun-drenched holiday scenes, on a beach, at a bar and around a pool, look like ordinary package-tour snapshots.
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Let's Motor.MINI USA (BMW Group)2002
Let's Motor (MINI USA launch)
How do you launch a tiny British car in the land of the SUV without a television budget?
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PiercingOslo Piercing Studio2001
Piercing
A small Oslo piercing studio with almost no budget won the first Outdoor Grand Prix ever awarded at Cannes.
Stunts & Experiences
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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.
Advertising in the 2000s
The internet arrives in the 2000s entries. Television commercials still matter, but work made for the internet takes off, and participation becomes a defining technique.
BMW Films hired A-list directors to make short films released only online, before YouTube existed, and won the first-ever Titanium Lion. Burger King's Subservient Chicken turned "Have It Your Way" into a man in a chicken suit obeying typed commands and made viral marketing a mainstream discipline. Dove's Evolution made the industry take the internet seriously and became the first work to win both the Film and Cyber Grands Prix at Cannes, while Blendtec showed that a $50 budget could outperform a Super Bowl buy.
Television answered with spectacle. Honda's Cog built a chain reaction from car parts and Sony let coloured balls loose down the hills of San Francisco, both shot for real, while Cadbury's Gorilla sold nothing but the feeling of joy, against the advice of the client's own research. People sought these films out and passed them on. Outdoor changed too: Oslo Piercing Studio won the first Outdoor Grand Prix at Cannes with posters that let nails in the wall stand in for jewellery.
By the end of the decade the audience had become the ad. A Doritos spot made by two unemployed brothers for a contest beat the professionals on USA Today's Ad Meter, and Tourism Queensland's Best Job in the World turned every job application into user-made tourism advertising.