The 18 Best Advertisements & Ad Campaigns of All Time

 I've always been a little leery of proclaiming anything "the best." I never declared anyone my best friend as a kid because I was afraid my other friends might assume I thought less of them.

So it was a little difficult for me to come up with just one "best" advertisement of all time — which is why there are 18 in this post instead.

What makes these some of the best ads of all time?

Because of the impact they had on the growth of the brand, and because they manage to hit on some universal truth that allows us to remember these campaigns years after they first began. In fact, some of us might not have even been alive when these campaigns first aired.

But to know what makes an advertisement great, you first need to know how an advertisement is defined.


Advertisements

Advertisements are written or visual messages dedicated to promoting a specific product, service, or campaign. Businesses can pay the owner of a channel or platform that reaches a similar audience to broadcast this message. Two of the biggest challenges in advertising are measuring the value of the advertisement and ensuring it resonates with the right people.

As you can imagine, there are numerous types of advertisements — all of which run in different mediums, on different channels, and have different goals in mind for their business. People can advertise anywhere, and today's best type of ad might not be the best type tomorrow. 

Types of Advertisements

Here are four basic examples of advertising from the past few centuries (yikes), from earliest to latest.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Emotional Advertising: How Brands Use Feelings to Get People to Buy

Image
  This post originally appeared on HubSpot's Agency Post. To read more content like this, subscribe to Agency Post.   Ads that make people share and buy can usually be summed up in one word: emotional. That should be no surprise. Studies show that people rely on emotions, rather than information, to make brand decisions -- and that emotional responses to ads are more influential on a person’s intent to buy than the content of an ad. As Douglas Van Praet, author of  Unconscious Branding: How Neuroscience Can Empower (and Inspire) Marketing , wrote in  Fast Company , “The most startling truth is we don’t even think our way to logical solutions. We feel our way to reason. Emotions are the substrate, the base layer of neural circuitry underpinning even rational deliberation. Emotions don’t hinder decisions. They constitute the foundation on which they’re made!” Unruly, which ranks the most viral ads each year, found that the   most-shared ads of 2015   relied heavily on emotional conte
Read more

8 Inclusive Advertising Tips for 2021, According to Microsoft's Head of Inclusive Marketing

Image
  Advertising can help create a direct connection between consumers and your brand, and is a critical component of marketing. And  inclusive  advertising can yield dramatic results and increase brand trust, loyalty, and better overall brand perception. In fact, 64% of people said they are more trusting of brands that represent diversity in ads, and 85% of consumers said they will only consider a brand they trust. Advertising that works hard for your company has never been more important as we come off the heels of a challenging year affecting all businesses. However, there is one concept that rang true for us all that can inform our approach in advertising for 2021 and beyond – that is, we are all interconnected and interdependent, both as consumers and as advertisers.   In this post, we'll provide eight tips curated from Microsoft's Marketing with Purpose Playbook to help you create more inclusive advertising, reach more customers, and grow your business. Download Now: Free Ad
Read more

17 Video Marketing & Advertising Campaigns You'll Actually Enjoy Watching

  Riddle me this: Why do people buy quarter-inch drill bits? There are a million possible answers to this question, but Leo McGinneva offers an interesting explanation: "They don’t want quarter-inch bits. They want quarter-inch holes." This is exactly what drives today's best marketing videos. This notion suggests that as consumers, we aren't after all the bells and whistles as much as the solutions they provide. In other words, we don't want to know what brands are selling -- we want to hear, read, and watch  stories  of people who have the same challenges we do. → Access Now: Free Video Marketing Starter Pack Not only has this mentality led to the demise of many traditional marketing practices, but it has also set the stage for more human interactions between brands and consumers. Why do these interactions work so well? Because they don't feel like marketing. What better medium to propel this new wave of humanized marketing than video? It’s one of the most e
Read more