In an age of ad blockers, skippable pre-rolls, and infinite scrolling, it‘s harder than ever for ads to make an impact. With millions of marketing messages bombarding consumers every day, brands need to bring their A-game creativity to earn precious attention and engagement.
The bar for ad creativity has never been higher. To break through the clutter, ads need to tell original stories, hack new technologies, and spark conversations. They need to be as compelling as the content they interrupt.
But when advertising is at its best, it doesn‘t feel like advertising at all – it feels like entertainment, like art, like a shared moment in culture. And the past year has given us shining examples of campaigns that transcended "ads" to become pop culture touchstones.
To showcase advertising at its most ambitious and impactful, we‘ve rounded up 21 of the most innovative and creative ads of the past year. Culled from the winners‘ lists of top industry awards like the Cannes Lions and Clios, as well as the year‘s most viral success stories, these campaigns represent the leading edge of advertising innovation.
Whether tapping new tech, taking bold stances, or crafting unforgettable stories, they‘ve each raised the bar for the field. But most importantly, as the results show, they‘ve delivered remarkable business impact for the brands behind them.
Here are the 21 most groundbreaking ads of the year, and the creative lessons they offer for marketers looking to produce work that resonates and inspires.
1. Nike‘s "Dream Crazy" with Colin Kaepernick
In September 2018, Nike threw its weight behind Colin Kaepernick, the former NFL quarterback who sparked controversy for kneeling during the national anthem to protest racial injustice. Despite Kaepernick being unsigned to a team and facing a lawsuit against the NFL, Nike made him the face of the 30th anniversary of its iconic "Just Do It" slogan.
The black-and-white closeup of Kaepernick, overlaid with the caption "Believe in something. Even if it means sacrificing everything." immediately ignited a firestorm. Some consumers publicly burned their Nike gear and called for boycotts. But Nike‘s core audience, particularly younger and more diverse consumers, applauded the move.
Within 24 hours, the campaign earned Nike $43 million in free media exposure. The accompanying "Dream Crazy" short film, narrated by Kaepernick, was viewed over 80 million times on YouTube and Instagram. In the week following the ad, Nike saw a 31% boost in online sales.
Most powerfully, Nike‘s campaign sparked a national dialogue about the role of brands in taking stances on social issues. By making a bold statement that resonated with its values and customer base, Nike showed the risks of courting controversy can be outweighed by the rewards of deepening loyalty and cultural relevance.
2. Burger King‘s "Whopper Detour"
To promote mobile ordering on its app, Burger King cooked up a deviously clever stunt, offering 1 cent Whoppers – but only to customers ordering from within or directly near a McDonald‘s.
Using geofencing around all 14,000 McDonald‘s locations in the US, the "Whopper Detour" promotion unlocked the 1 cent deal for anyone within a 600-foot radius of the Golden Arches. Once customers placed their 1 cent mobile order, the app navigated them away from McDonald‘s to the nearest Burger King to pick it up.
Over 1 million people downloaded the Burger King app during the nine-day promotion, catapulting it to #1 in the app store charts. Location analytics from the campaign showed a 54% increase in visits to Burger King restaurants.
The campaign was a masterclass in creative trolling, using a huge fast food rivalry to drive app downloads and foot traffic. By gamifying the ordering experience and incentivizing customers to "turn away" from their biggest competitor, Burger King showed how creative tech can drive real business results.
3. HBO‘s "Westworld: The Maze"
To promote the second season of Westworld, HBO didn‘t just release a trailer – it built an entire immersive universe. Ahead of the premiere, it launched an alternate reality game inviting superfans to unravel the show‘s mysteries through a multi-platform scavenger hunt.
At SXSW, HBO constructed real-world replicas of the show‘s theme parks, populated by 60 actors playing android "hosts." In the real world, it placed cryptic Easter eggs like 3D printed mazes for fans to discover. On Alexa and Google Home, it released a "choose your own adventure" game putting fans in control of a sentient host.
The centerpiece was a mobile web game, "The Maze," which used a Facebook Messenger chatbot to guide fans through solving complex puzzles and riddles. Clues were hidden in 360 VR experiences, social media posts from the show‘s characters, and even a creepy "robot only" Reddit forum.
Over 2 million fans participated in the ARG in the run-up to the Season 2 premiere, racking up over 9 million interactions across platforms. Westworld ascended to the #1 most social show across TV.
By bringing its story world to life through cutting-edge creative technology, HBO didn‘t just promote Westworld – it made fans feel like they were living inside it. The campaign was a new high water mark for immersive storytelling.
4. Childish Gambino‘s "This Is America"
While not technically an ad, Childish Gambino‘s "This Is America" deserves inclusion as one of the most provocative and culturally resonant short films of recent years. Written and directed by "Atlanta" auteur Hiro Murai and released as Gambino‘s musical alter ego Donald Glover hosted SNL, the four-minute music video doubled as a searing commentary on race and gun violence in America.
Glover‘s kinetic dancing in the video, alternating between joyful moves and sudden bursts of brutality, became an instant meme and spawned thousands of parodies and fan tributes. On YouTube, the video earned over 12.9 million views in its first 24 hours, breaking records for the most views in a day of a video by an American artist.
But beyond its viral popularity, "This Is America" was a stunning work of protest art, juxtaposing provocative symbolism to indict a culture that numbs itself to violence against black bodies. While Murai and Glover created the film as a standalone expression, it shows the power of short-form storytelling to spark essential conversations.
5. Apple‘s "Welcome Home" by Spike Jonze
To launch its Homepod smart speaker, Apple recruited Oscar winner Spike Jonze to direct a dazzling short film starring FKA twigs. In the film, a world-weary young woman (twigs) arrives home from a long day at a dreary office job.
"Hey Siri, play me something I‘d like," she sighs, and her Homepod starts playing a propulsive Anderson .Paak track. Suddenly, as the apartment floods with music and prismatic light, the space magically begins to expand, the walls glowing with color.
In a tour de force of visual effects and choreography, twigs dances through the transformed space, bounding up the walls and soaring across rooms that defy physics. It‘s a euphoric fantasy of music‘s power to transport us from the everyday to the extraordinary.
The film blew up online, with the 4-minute extended cut earning over 25 million views on YouTube. Adweek named it the best ad of the year, praising Jonze for "packaging the product‘s appeal within a fun, technicolor storyline that anyone would enjoy watching."
6. Nike‘s "Dream Crazier" Narrated by Serena Williams
At the 2019 Oscars, Nike premiered a new chapter in its "Just Do It" campaign centered on female empowerment. Over images of boundary-breaking female athletes like gymnast Simone Biles, fencer Ibtihaj Muhammad, and members of the U.S. Women‘s National Soccer Team, Serena Williams narrated a stirring manifesto on the double standards women face when they "dream crazier" and push beyond prescribed gender roles.
"If we show emotion, we‘re called dramatic," Williams intones over footage of herself on the tennis court defying sexist penalties. "When we dream of equal opportunity, delusional." The images and words build to an inspiring crescendo. "So if they want to call you crazy, fine. Show them what crazy can do."
The video quickly went viral, earning over 11 million views on YouTube in its first week. On Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, mentions of Nike spiked by 163%. But beyond its social media impact, the campaign signaled Nike‘s ongoing commitment to highlight how women are defying stereotypes and expectations in a year marked by record-breaking accomplishments from female athletes.
7. The New York Times‘ "The Truth Is Worth It"
At a time when journalism is under economic and political siege, The New York Times launched a stirring campaign asserting the value and rigor of its reporting. A series of films, "The Truth Is Worth It," viscerally recreated the arduous process of uncovering truths in the paper‘s biggest investigations of the year.
In "Resolve," a camera frantically pans over stacks of legal documents and hand-scrawled notes as audio from an interview with a controversial Supreme Court nominee plays, capturing a reporter‘s painstaking quest for clarity. In "Perseverance," the typing of a single sentence – an excerpt from a Times exposé on Trump‘s unpaid taxes – is intercut with flashes of the global reporting that led to the scoop.
By dramatizing the dogged legwork behind its headlines, the Times made the case for why journalism – and the truth itself – is worth paying for. "The truth doesn‘t report itself," a closing line reads. "And it‘s more important now than ever."
The campaign struck a chord with news consumers feeling inundated by a fog of digital misinformation. It won a slew of ad awards, including a Gold Lion at Cannes, and helped drive the Times to record subscription growth.
8. HBO‘s "For the Throne" to Promote Game of Thrones
To promote the climactic final season of Game of Thrones, HBO pulled out all the stops on a globe-spanning, multi-platform campaign designed to ratchet up anticipation. The centerpiece was #FortheThrone, a sweeping social media initiative that included everything from Super Bowl ads to blood drives to pop-up installations in global cities.
On Snapchat, HBO created a custom augmented reality lens that transformed fans into the Night King. On Twitter, it launched custom character emoji and an exclusive rushed-looking branded hashtag. And across outdoor media in New York and London, it plastered 150 variations of the #FortheThrone call to action, driving fans to a dedicated microsite hosting exclusive content from the cast and crew.
But perhaps the campaign‘s most ambitious execution was "Bleed for the Throne," a 4-day immersive theater event at South by Southwest. Visitors journeyed through recreated sets from Westeros before being knighted as part of the Season 8 campaign. By marshaling its vast marketing arsenal and enlisting its worldwide fanbase, HBO turned the Game of Thrones swan song into an inescapable global event.
9. Hulu‘s "Better Ruins Everything"
Hulu took a comedic jab at our current golden age of prestige TV with a campaign for its upcoming slate of original programming. In "Better Ruins Everything," characters from Hulu hits like The Handmaid‘s Tale and Pen15 invade iconic scenes from classic TV shows, exposing their tropes and clichés.
June from Handmaid‘s Tale time travels to the black-and-white world of Leave It To Beaver, where she casts a sly, fourth-wall-breaking glance at the cheerful repression of 1950s suburbia. In a clip from ER, Pen15‘s hormone-addled teen heroines replace the doctors and scream at a patient to just "walk it off!"
The ads poked fun at the very notion of TV being "better" or more enlightened than ever, while slyly suggesting Hulu‘s shows have raised the bar on the medium. For a brand still establishing itself as a prestige player against rivals like Netflix and HBO, the self-aware spots showed Hulu isn‘t afraid to both celebrate and skewer the very tropes that make its original series stand out.
10. Bud Light x Game of Thrones Super Bowl Ad
In a masterstroke of IP synergy, Bud Light and HBO teamed up on a Super Bowl ad that served as a stealth Game of Thrones promo. The ad began like one of Bud Light‘s familiar, goofy medieval ads, with a jousting match between the "Bud Knight" mascot and a challenger.
But the bit takes a very dark turn when the jousting knight removes his helmet to reveal the Mountain, the monstrous mercenary from Game of Thrones. He crushes the Bud Knight‘s head like a melon, and the scene erupts into fiery chaos as a dragon soars over the panicked crowd.
The collaboration started when Game of Thrones showrunners approached Anheuser-Busch about partnering on something to promote the show‘s final season. The end result was an ingenious Trojan horse, smuggling a final season teaser inside a silly beer ad that gradually turns into "Game of Thrones."
Beyond just capitalizing on two major pieces of appointment viewing to get fans talking, the stunt showed the creative and strategic upside of marrying great IP and brands to elevate both.
Key Takeaways: The New Rules of Advertising Creativity
Looking across these wildly different but equally bold campaigns, some key themes and lessons emerge:
Take a stand: From Nike to HBO, the bravest brands aren‘t afraid to champion their values and stake out a point of view on social issues, even if it means alienating some customers. In an era of rising consumer activism, younger audiences increasingly expect brands to stand for something.
Embrace new platforms: Whether experimenting with AR lenses, building chatbots, or creating immersive theater, the most innovative campaigns found fresh ways to bring their creative to life through new technologies and storytelling formats.
Craft compelling content: While technology creates new canvases, creativity still comes down to crafting moving, memorable stories. The best campaigns used tech in service of powerful ideas.
Open up your IP: Smart brands look for creative ways to extend their fictional worlds and enlist fans to participate in their stories across platforms, inspiring more engagement in the process.
Deploy humor strategically: Many campaigns used wit and irreverence to leaven their messaging, from Bud Light‘s dragon cameo to Hulu‘s meta-parody. In an era of YouTube ad skips, laughter is still one of the most effective ways to disarm and engage audiences.
Tackle taboos: From Burger King‘s geofenced trolling to Childish Gambino‘s charged symbolism, many campaigns pushed sensitive buttons and ventured into risky territory to provoke conversations. But it takes a deft touch to pull off controversy gracefully.
Ultimately, what distinguished all these campaigns was a willingness to take creative risks in pursuit of emotional resonance and cultural impact. They aimed to be not just ads, but works of entertainment, art, and commentary that transcend the confines of commercial messaging. And in almost every case, that ambition translated to true business results, from app downloads to viral impressions to sales.
In a time of increasing ad blindness and mistrust of institutions, creativity has never been a more vital differentiator. As these campaigns reveal, fortune favors the bold. The brands that succeed will be the ones that embrace the power of creative storytelling to not just capture attention, but to spark meaningful connections.
While technology will keep evolving, the campaigns honored here show that great advertising still boils down to a simple imperative: make people feel something. The mediums may change, but that mission remains the same. No matter what innovations emerge in the years ahead, creativity will always be the beating heart of the industry.