Unforgettable Advertisement

Category: Funny Ads

Commercials that made us laugh and sold something anyway. Gorillas playing drums, a hungry Betty White in the mud and an actor who turned a beer into a meme: the humor behind the most memorable funny ads.

  • IKEA’s “Lamp”: The Ad That Made Us Feel Sorry for a Lamp, Then Told Us Not To

    IKEA’s “Lamp”: The Ad That Made Us Feel Sorry for a Lamp, Then Told Us Not To

    A woman throws out a red table lamp, and it is left abandoned in the rain. The camera shows the lamp’s view while its former owner enjoys a brand new IKEA lamp indoors. Then a man walks into the frame, turns to the camera and tells us that many of us feel bad for this lamp.

    The man was Jonas Fornander, a Swede who had never acted before. Director Spike Jonze wanted someone who looked like an IKEA worker who had walked out of the store and onto the street. The 60-second ad was released on September 15, 2002, made by the agency Crispin Porter + Bogusky as part of IKEA’s “Unboring” campaign, and its message was blunt: the old lamp has no feelings, and the new one is much better.

    It worked. IKEA’s sales rose 8 percent while the campaign ran, and the ad won a Film Grand Prix at Cannes Lions, a Grand Clio and gold awards from several other festivals. In 2009, Boards magazine voted it one of the top ten television ads of the decade.

    Not everyone liked it. Critic Rob Walker noted that the campaign could link IKEA to landfill and to following trends. In 2018 IKEA answered with a sequel, “Lamp 2,” with the same actor, this time promoting reuse and recycling.

  • Dos Equis’s “Most Interesting Man in the World”: The Beer Ad That Became a Meme

    Dos Equis’s “Most Interesting Man in the World”: The Beer Ad That Became a Meme

    A bearded, silver-haired man appears in short scenes that go from a party to an adventure to something completely impossible, while a narrator lists facts about him that grow more absurd with each one. At the end he holds a bottle of Dos Equis and says the line that defined the campaign: “I don’t always drink beer, but when I do, I prefer Dos Equis. Stay thirsty, my friends.”

    The campaign started in 2006, created by Euro RSCG, later Havas Worldwide, for the Cuauhtémoc Moctezuma Brewery. The character was played by Jonathan Goldsmith, who won the role with an unusual audition: he began by taking off one sock and then improvised for thirty minutes. He went on to play the role from 2006 to 2016.

    The results were strong. Sales of the beer rose every year between 2006 and 2010, Canadian sales tripled in 2008, and at one point U.S. sales grew 22% while other imported beer fell 4%. The character escaped the ads too. The format “I don’t always [X], but when I do, [Y]” became one of the internet’s best-known memes, and the character was featured in a Saturday Night Live sketch in 2012.

    Goldsmith retired in March 2016, with a final ad that sent him to Mars, and a French actor replaced him that September. The original campaign ended in 2018 and was replaced by “Keep It Interesante.” In January 2026 the brand brought Goldsmith back, which shows how strongly people still remember a character who never had to sell the beer directly.

  • Wendy’s “Where’s the Beef?”: The Ad That Followed Its Own Catchphrase Into the Presidential Race

    Wendy’s “Where’s the Beef?”: The Ad That Followed Its Own Catchphrase Into the Presidential Race

    Three older women sit at a counter and are served an enormous hamburger bun from a fictional fast-food chain called “Big Bun.” Inside is a tiny patty. One of them, played by Clara Peller, lifts the top, peers in and asks the question that made her famous: “Where’s the beef?”

    The commercial first aired on January 10, 1984. It was created for Wendy’s by the agency Dancer Fitzgerald Sample and directed by Joe Sedelmaier, who cast Peller, a manicurist from Chicago who had been appearing in regional commercials for 13 years. She stood only 4 feet 10 inches tall, and her gravelly delivery of the line sounded like real annoyance rather than a script.

    The phrase escaped the commercial almost immediately. During the 1984 presidential campaign, Democratic candidate Walter Mondale used it to question a proposal from his rival Gary Hart, which showed how far a fast-food slogan had travelled. It also made money: Wendy’s business reportedly grew by about a third, and its annual revenue rose 31 percent to $945 million worldwide in 1985.

    The story ended awkwardly. In 1985 Peller appeared in a Prego spaghetti sauce commercial saying “I found it. I really found it,” and Wendy’s dropped her, saying the ad undermined her as its spokesperson. She died in 1987. Even so, the spot remains one of the clearest examples of an ad that turns a complaint into a catchphrase, and it still helps to explain why a small, funny, human idea beats a big promise.

  • Volkswagen’s “The Force”: The Super Bowl Ad Starring a Six-Year-Old Darth Vader

    Volkswagen’s “The Force”: The Super Bowl Ad Starring a Six-Year-Old Darth Vader

    A small boy in a Darth Vader costume marches around the house trying to use the Force on everyday objects, and nothing happens. Then his father arrives in a new Volkswagen Passat, and the boy raises his hand at the car. The engine starts, because his father has used the car’s remote keyless system, and the boy is stunned at what he thinks he has done.

    The ad ran during Super Bowl XLV on February 6, 2011. Its agency was Deutsch, and the boy was six-year-old Max Page, who reportedly had never seen Star Wars. He never takes off the mask, yet his tiny gestures and disbelief carry the whole story.

    Volkswagen took a risk that was unusual at the time and put the film on YouTube four days before the game. The gamble worked: it had about 1.8 million views by the next morning and millions more before kickoff, and it became the most-shared Super Bowl ad of all time. Then it played to the huge TV audience anyway, so viewers already knew and loved it.

    That release plan changed how brands treat the Super Bowl. Advertisers now tease and post their ads early instead of saving the reveal for the broadcast, and “The Force” is the reason. It also shows what makes a great ad: one simple joke, a memorable character, and a product feature explained without a single spec sheet.

  • Snickers’ “You’re Not You When You’re Hungry”: The Ad That Put Betty White in the Mud

    Snickers’ “You’re Not You When You’re Hungry”: The Ad That Put Betty White in the Mud

    Betty White, then 88 years old, gets tackled face-first into the mud during a backyard football game — and it’s the funniest thing on television that night. The line that sells it isn’t even about White. It’s what a friend says right before: “You’re playing like Betty White out there.”

    For Super Bowl XLIV in February 2010, Snickers and agency BBDO New York built a simple sketch: a grumpy, clumsy teammate named Mike is dragging down his friends’ pickup football game, so badly they compare him to the elderly actress currently getting flattened in the mud beside him. One bite of a Snickers bar later, Mike is back to his younger, competent self — and his girlfriend on the sidelines just sighs, “Mike! Come on.”

    The ad was an immediate sensation, dominating morning shows and Super Bowl ad rankings the next day and reintroducing Betty White to a generation that barely knew her — momentum that helped fuel her surprise casting on Saturday Night Live weeks later. Snickers turned the one-off joke into a permanent tagline, running “You’re Not You When You’re Hungry” spots with a rotating cast of celebrities for more than a decade after.

    The campaign drove nearly 16% global sales growth in its first year and an estimated $376 million in incremental sales within two years, making it one of the most commercially successful Super Bowl campaigns ever run. Betty White, for her part, spent the rest of her career as one of America’s most beloved comedic actresses — mud and all.

  • Cadbury’s “Gorilla”: The Chocolate Ad With No Chocolate In It

    Cadbury’s “Gorilla”: The Chocolate Ad With No Chocolate In It

    A gorilla in a purple silk shirt sits behind a drum kit, stares into the middle distance for eleven long seconds, then launches into Phil Collins’ “In the Air Tonight” — one of the most-quoted drum fills in music history. Ninety seconds later, the ad ends. Nobody has said a single word about chocolate.

    Cadbury and agency Fallon London released “Gorilla” in August 2007, less than a year after a salmonella contamination scare had forced a nationwide product recall and put the company’s reputation on the line. Director Juan Cabral built the ad around a single line in Cadbury’s brief: a joyful expression of the brand. There’s no dialogue, no tagline until the final frame, and no attempt to explain what a drumming gorilla has to do with a chocolate bar.

    Audiences didn’t need it explained. The ad became one of the most talked-about commercials in British advertising history, racking up views and press coverage for weeks and spawning a wave of parodies and tribute performances. At the 2008 Cannes Lions festival it won the Film Grand Prix, the industry’s top prize, and it’s still regularly ranked among the best commercials ever made.

    Dairy Milk sales rose roughly 9% in the months after the campaign launched, and Cadbury credited “Gorilla” with restoring the affection the salmonella scandal had cost it. Two decades later, marketers still cite it as the textbook example of an ad that sells a feeling instead of a feature — and gets remembered for it.