A character you invent is a freehold asset; a celebrity is a rental. The evidence on fluent devices, the twelve points of share of voice most brands leave on the table, and the mascots that failed.
Twenty food adverts ranked on idea, craft, bravery and evidence, from the Gold Blend couple and Coca-Cola's Hilltop to Jaffa Cakes, PG Tips and Maltesers, with verified credits.
Distinctiveness, brand linkage, longevity and truth. Four tests that separate a slogan from a positioning statement, with the lines that passed and the famous ones that were thrown away.
71/100JWT put a membership rule on a chocolate wrapper on Easter Monday 2002. Yorkie grew 28.7 per cent while Mars fell, cleared 97 ASA complaints, and lasted a decade.
84/100Abbott Mead Vickers BBDO found that men policed the phone bill and women paid the social price. Bob Hoskins fixed it, and the IPA put the payback at £297 million.
80/100BBH sold a bitter as a luxury cream for eight years and took Boddingtons from 200,000 barrels to 850,000. Then the owners closed the brewery the advertising had romanticised.
77/100Mother's three letter press ad turned KFC's 2018 chicken shortage into the most copied corporate apology in Britain. We rate the idea, the craft and the evidence.
78/100Seven films, one ASA ruling and an agency change later, Nationwide's Dominic West campaign is the most effective piece of financial advertising in Britain. Here is the evidence and the verdict.
From Paddy Power's Pistorius ad to Iceland's orangutan and the 2026 HFSS cases: the UK's most complained-about and banned adverts, what the ASA ruled, and the rule behind each one.
From Krone's Beetle to Saatchi's dole queue: thirty advertising posters and print ads ranked by idea, craft, bravery, results and legs.
95/100DDB's 1959 Volkswagen Think Small campaign put a tiny Beetle on an empty page and admitted its faults. We review the idea, the craft and what it taught advertising.
72/100Heinz's 2024 advert The Wait, by Chilean agency 1984, never shows a bottle. We review the insight, the craft, the awards and why absence sells for a category leader.