Please don’tskip the ads.

A gorilla waits for a drum fill. That is almost the entire proposal. Cadbury’s film treats the pleasure of anticipation as something worth sharing before it shows you the chocolate. Garon Michael performed inside the gorilla suit. Somebody had to take this very silly idea very seriously.

Fallon; directed by Juan Cabral

The calm narration and river scenery establish one kind of film. Then a fisherman gets involved. The History of Advertising Trust credits BBH and records the spot at just 30 seconds. An exceptionally economical disagreement over lunch.

BBH; directed by Daniel Kleinman

The address to camera never loses its composure while the surroundings become ridiculous. The product demonstration is really a demonstration of confidence. The later response campaign let Mustafa answer people online, turning a monologue into a conversation.

Wieden+Kennedy; directed by Tom Kuntz

The split demonstrates the precision of Volvo Dynamic Steering, with two trucks reversing beneath Van Damme. Volvo describes a closed-off airfield shoot in Spain. A real product capability becomes a sight that hardly needs a technical explanation. Please leave reproducing it to a professional stunt crew.

Forsman & Bodenfors; directed by Andreas Nilsson

IKEA borrowed the solemn language of technology launches to introduce its printed catalogue. Paper suddenly had features. The joke works because the designers noticed what a book actually does well, then described those ordinary things with an entirely inappropriate amount of ceremony.

BBH Singapore

A boy buys two Coca-Colas before reaching for a Pepsi. The rival product becomes a prop in the demonstration. You can understand the argument with the sound off, and without either brand having to explain who the other one is.

A small boy; a very pointed purchase

A Coke driver and a Pepsi driver meet at a diner. Their employers’ rivalry becomes a tiny story about hospitality, curiosity and the limits of sharing. This is the 1995 film, not the later Pepsi Max and Coke Zero reprise.

BBDO New York

Cindy Crawford arrives at a roadside stop. Two onlookers appear to be having one conversation, and the film lets that assumption do its work. The ad was introducing a redesigned Pepsi can. Packaging gets the last word.

BBDO

A tired football player and a young fan meet in a stadium tunnel. The famous exchange is small enough to feel personal. First aired in 1979, the spot returned for the 1980 Super Bowl. Coca-Cola becomes the thing somebody offers, rather than the thing somebody tells you to buy.

McCann-Erickson

The commercial gathered singers on an Italian hillside. Its song later became a hit with the product references removed. An unusually literal case of an advertisement giving people something they wanted independently of the bottle. Coke’s own history tells the story of the shoot.

McCann-Erickson; art direction by Harvey Gabor

Psyop imagined what happens inside a vending machine. An ordinary wait for a drink becomes a miniature factory full of creatures with very specific jobs. The detail is the gift: someone invented much more of this world than the transaction required.

Wieden+Kennedy Amsterdam; Psyop

A chicken’s head stays surprisingly steady while its body moves. Mercedes used that sight to explain the feeling of its Magic Body Control suspension. Watch this one before Jaguar’s reply. The linked Mercedes upload now notes a refreshed soundtrack; the campaign itself dates to 2013.

Jung von Matt/Neckar

Jaguar’s own newsroom explicitly introduced this as a response to Mercedes’ film. The joke relies on your remembering the previous ad, then takes the demonstration somewhere else. A genuine brand-to-brand reply, unlike the unofficial Coke caption elsewhere in this collection.

Spark44 / Mindshare Entertainment

Clara Peller inspects the competition’s priorities. The line escaped the commercial and became shorthand for asking whether a grand claim contained any substance. The linked archive includes several spots from the campaign. Even the follow-ups know that Peller is the main event.

Dancer Fitzgerald Sample; directed by Joe Sedelmaier

The Macintosh launch film borrowed the imagery of Orwell’s novel to make a promise about personal computing. It shows almost nothing of the machine. The much repeated claim that it aired only once is misleading: its broadcast history includes an earlier local showing in 1983.

Chiat/Day; directed by Ridley Scott

FKA twigs dances through an apartment that stretches with the music. The HomePod film makes listening feel spatial: a room becomes as expansive as the person inside it wants it to be. The choreography and transforming set carry the product argument together.

TBWA / Media Arts Lab; directed by Spike Jonze

Google uploaded the film in November 2009 and aired it during the 2010 Super Bowl. Searches provide the visible action, while sound suggests the life outside the browser. A familiar interface becomes a story without needing to pretend it is something else.

Google Creative Lab

The film races from football to the futures a moment might produce: headlines, reputations, jokes and statues. Its lavish scale comes from a tiny sporting uncertainty. Notice how quickly the edit lets one decision become an entire imagined biography.

Wieden+Kennedy; directed by Alejandro González Iñárritu

Young athletes trade increasingly ambitious claims about what it takes to train in their city. The competitive rhythm is the structure. Specific places, accents and inconveniences give the film something a generic speech about determination could not supply.

Wieden+Kennedy London; directed by Megaforce

Brazil’s football team turns an airport into a playground. The film uses real sporting skill inside an impossible permission structure: what if the players could keep playing here? The setting provides an obstacle course that viewers already understand.

Wieden+Kennedy Amsterdam; directed by John Woo

The close-ups make an ordinary kitchen feel like a landscape worth exploring. Preparation becomes the spectacle. It is a useful reminder that making something look extraordinary can begin with looking very carefully at the ordinary thing.

Wieden+Kennedy London; directed by Dougal Wilson

Two children waiting for their photograph discover a better use for their faces. Following Gorilla, Cadbury again offered an absurd performance instead of a tour of the ingredients. The small physical gesture becomes big enough to fill the whole film.

Fallon; directed by Tom Kuntz

Bakers construct a full-sized Fabia from cake and confectionery over a support structure. The making is the entertainment. A familiar industrial process becomes delightful when every material is wrong for the job and just right for the film.

Fallon; directed by Chris Palmer

The film sells milk by arranging for it to be absent at exactly the wrong moment. A history enthusiast knows the answer to a radio question but has trouble getting it out. Michael Bay directed this first television spot of the Got Milk? campaign before his feature-film career.

Goodby Silverstein & Partners; directed by Michael Bay

Betty White’s performance turns hunger into a change of identity. The idea behind the campaign travels well because it describes something recognisable: people can become less like themselves when they need to eat. The casting supplies the wonderfully unreasonable part.

BBDO New York

The campaign grew from Charles Stone III’s short film True. Friends greeting one another became an ad, then a greeting people repeated outside the ad. There is hardly a sales argument here. The recognisable pleasure of having your own ridiculous language does the work.

DDB Chicago; directed by Charles Stone III

White horses emerge from the surf as a man waits for his wave. The film turns the waiting associated with a pint of Guinness into a story worth waiting through. Its black-and-white imagery also makes the whole screen feel related to the drink.

AMV BBDO; directed by Jonathan Glazer

Three drinkers travel backwards through the history of life. The title is evolution in reverse. An established idea about waiting is stretched to an absurd geological scale, while the film remains short enough to make the final small joke land.

AMV BBDO; directed by Daniel Kleinman

After Balls, Sony’s colour campaign moved to a Glasgow tower block and eruptions of paint. This linked upload is a director’s cut, with a different soundtrack from the familiar television version. The visual idea stays wonderfully literal: give colour enough room to happen.

Fallon; directed by Jonathan Glazer

Animated creatures inhabit a bright world disturbed by dirty, noisy engines. The film turns dislike into a motive for improving something. It is an unusually happy way to introduce a diesel engine, with Garrison Keillor providing the voice.

Wieden+Kennedy London; directed by Smith & Foulkes

Objects from Honda’s engineering history transform in the hands of a curious maker. The hands give a changing catalogue a constant human scale. What could have been a chronology of products becomes a demonstration of curiosity.

Wieden+Kennedy London; directed by Smith & Foulkes

The original interactive film let viewers hold R to switch between two parallel lives, matched shot for shot. That original experience is not recreated here. The agency’s short case film shows how it worked, and why an interaction can be the idea rather than an extra button.

Wieden+Kennedy London; directed by Daniel Wolfe

Aardman’s tiny stop-motion world was filmed using a Nokia N8 with a microscope attachment. The phone camera is part of the making, not just the object at the end. The result offers a practical answer to the question of what the product could help somebody do.

Wieden+Kennedy London; Aardman

A very demanding director takes us through his process. BETC built a film about loving cinema that also has the confidence to laugh at filmmaking. Leave the explanation closed until you have watched it; the final perspective is the point.

BETC; directed by Matthijs van Heijningen

Digitally animated babies perform a roller-skating routine. The product promise is taken somewhere entirely unreasonable, with choreography convincing enough to keep the joke moving. This is fantasy, of course, not a claim about what bottled water does to a baby.

BETC; directed by Michael Gracey

Everything a man touches turns into Skittles. The film treats a children’s-story premise with workplace seriousness, then follows the consequences further than a cheerful product fantasy normally would. A small warning: this is one of the darker jokes in the collection.

TBWA / Chiat / Day

The series transfers the aggression of American football into office administration. Tiny breaches of etiquette meet a completely disproportionate response. The mismatch carries an entire character, not merely one punchline. Includes comic violence and strong language.

Rawson Marshall Thurber; starring Lester Speight

When Alexa goes quiet, famous voices fill in. Their familiar personalities make them spectacularly unsuitable for an assistant’s ordinary jobs. The film demonstrates why the product is useful by imagining the alternatives doing those jobs badly.

Lucky Generals; directed by Wayne McClammy

P&G’s Olympic campaign connected sporting achievement with the everyday work of raising children. The shift in attention is the idea: look away from the medal for a moment and notice who made the journey possible. The agency’s page includes films from the campaign.

Wieden+Kennedy

Children stage a gloriously ambitious performance while parents watch. The pleasure moves between spectacle and the very ordinary faces in the audience. A particular electrical costume deserves your attention. The film knows that a tiny part can steal a huge production.

Wieden+Kennedy London; directed by Michael Gracey

Camera placement, rain and music give an abandoned object a point of view. Then the ad changes its mind about the feelings it has carefully made. Admire the storytelling and still question the invitation to replace things. Enjoying an ad need not mean agreeing with its argument.

Crispin Porter + Bogusky; directed by Spike Jonze

Words accelerate across the screen and challenge the viewer to keep reading. The experience supplies the feeling of being pushed. It is an example of a product idea becoming a physical task for the audience, rather than a claim made at them.

Wieden+Kennedy London

A hamster in a wheel helps demonstrate light steering on a truck. A professional driver remains involved; the animal is not independently navigating the vehicle. The scale difference makes an engineering claim visible before a spec sheet has entered the conversation.

Forsman & Bodenfors

Clive Owen drives through a short film with a very difficult passenger. BMW’s The Hire series was made for the internet in 2001 and 2002, before YouTube existed. The car gets to perform inside a film somebody might choose to watch. Includes strong language.

BMW Films; directed by Guy Ritchie

Give a cat an opposable thumb and follow the implications. A small anatomical change becomes an entire household threat. The film makes its product the object of a ridiculous desire, while letting the cats remain recognisably, suspiciously catlike.

Wieden+Kennedy London; directed by Tom Kuntz

Cooking is treated as a process of invention. Ingredients, hands, heat and motion do more than a finished plate could. The film gives the person making dinner a larger role than simply following instructions.

Wieden+Kennedy London

The agency filmed people dancing in their own kitchens around the UK. Ordinary rooms and personal moves supply the texture. Instead of making cooking look more expensive, the film notices that people already find little ways to enjoy it.

Wieden+Kennedy London

Storyboards, production stages and finished images share the screen. The film makes the work of filmmaking visible rather than hiding it behind the result. A good companion to Cog: quite different spectacles, both interested in how things are made.

Wieden+Kennedy London

A monkey dances while two men clap. The ad then makes the cost of the ad its subject. In a break full of expensive persuasion, acknowledging the expense becomes the persuasion. We are admiring the joke, not offering financial advice.

Goodby Silverstein & Partners; directed by Bryan Buckley