Top 10 Most Iconic TV Commercials of All Time

The first "Just Do It" commercial aired in 1988 and featured 80-year-old Walt Stack, a barefoot San Francisco runner who completed a 17-mile daily run, delivering the tagline with weathered sincerity. Nike's revenues grew from $877 million to $9.2 billion in the decade following the campaign's launch — one of the most dramatic brand transformations in corporate history. The three-word slogan, conceived by advertising legend Dan Wieden, became one of the most recognised brand statements in the world and is consistently cited as the greatest advertising tagline ever created.

The "Hilltop" ad, filmed on a hillside in Manziana, Italy and broadcast in 1971, showed 200 young people from dozens of nations singing together — a two-minute vision of global harmony wrapped around a soft drink. It generated over 100,000 letters to Coca-Cola and was re-released as a standalone single that reached the Top 10 charts. The commercial has been officially relaunched five times over five decades and was paid homage to in the final scene of Mad Men's series finale in 2015 — a testament to its permanent place in the cultural imagination.

Starring Isaiah Mustafa in an unbroken monologue filmed in a single shifting set, the Old Spice commercial launched on Super Bowl Sunday 2010 and accumulated 55 million YouTube views within its first month. What followed was equally revolutionary: Mustafa filmed 186 personalised video responses to celebrities and fans on Twitter within 48 hours, setting a new standard for real-time social media marketing. The campaign won the Grand Prix at Cannes Lions, revitalised an ageing brand, and demonstrated that the era of one-way television advertising was definitively over.

Aired during Super Bowl XLVIII in February 2014, Budweiser's "Puppy Love" — depicting a Labrador puppy's friendship with a Budweiser Clydesdale horse — became the most-shared Super Bowl advertisement in history at the time, generating 57 million YouTube views within a week. The spot won USA Today's Super Bowl Ad Meter for the second consecutive year, cementing Budweiser's Clydesdale campaign as the gold standard of emotional Super Bowl advertising. It demonstrated the commercial power of sentiment over product features at a moment when brands were beginning to compete for shareability as much as airtime.

Released in April 2013, Dove's "Real Beauty Sketches" featured an FBI-trained forensic artist drawing women based on their own self-descriptions versus descriptions by strangers — revealing starkly how harshly women perceive themselves. It accumulated 163 million views across 33 countries in its first month, making it the most-watched online advertisement in history at the time. The spot won the Cannes Lions Titanium Grand Prix and became the commercial flagship of Dove's decade-long "Real Beauty" platform, which fundamentally shifted how beauty brands speak to female consumers.

Created by Bill Bernbach and his team at Doyle Dane Bernbach, VW's "Think Small" 1959 print and television campaign shattered every rule of postwar American advertising: it admitted the car was small and ugly, used vast white space instead of glamour photography, and employed self-deprecating humour in an era of hard-sell boosterism. Advertising Age ranked it the greatest advertising campaign of the 20th century in 1999. The campaign's influence on advertising philosophy is so profound that the intellectual framework of modern creative advertising — honesty, wit, respect for the audience — traces its lineage directly to this work.

84-year-old Clara Peller's indignant demand "Where's the beef?" in Wendy's 1984 commercial became the most quoted catchphrase in American culture that year, appearing on bumper stickers, T-shirts, and in Walter Mondale's attack on Gary Hart during the 1984 Democratic primary debates. The campaign increased Wendy's annual revenues by 31 percent and is credited as a turning point in fast food advertising — the moment competitor brands began attacking each other directly with comedic weapons rather than aspirational imagery. Peller became a pop culture celebrity, appearing on The Tonight Show and in subsequent commercials.

Directed by Jonathan Glazer and produced by Abbott Mead Vickers BBDO, Guinness's "Surfer" (1999) depicted surfers waiting for the perfect wave while white horses charged through the ocean — set to Leftfield's "Phat Planet" and anchored by the tagline "Good things come to those who wait." Channel 4 viewers voted it the greatest television advertisement ever made in a 2002 poll, and it won the Grand Prix at Cannes Lions. With a production budget of over £1 million, it set a new standard for cinematic ambition in advertising and remains the most acclaimed British television commercial ever produced.

Procter & Gamble's "Best Job" commercial, part of the "Thank You, Mom" campaign launched for the 2012 London Olympics, depicted mothers from around the world sacrificing sleep, money, and comfort to raise Olympic athletes — ending with the simple line "P&G: Proud sponsor of moms." It generated 74 million YouTube views and won the Grand Prix at Cannes Lions, and the campaign was so successful it was replayed across the 2014 Sochi, 2016 Rio, 2018 Pyeongchang, and 2020 Tokyo Olympics. It is widely considered the most effective corporate sponsorship advertisement ever produced.

The first "Just Do It" commercial aired in 1988 and featured 80-year-old Walt Stack, a barefoot San Francisco runner who completed a 17-mile daily run, delivering the tagline with weathered sincerity. Nike's revenues grew from $877 million to $9.2 billion in the decade following the campaign's launch — one of the most dramatic brand transformations in corporate history. The three-word slogan, conceived by advertising legend Dan Wieden, became one of the most recognised brand statements in the world and is consistently cited as the greatest advertising tagline ever created.

The "Hilltop" ad, filmed on a hillside in Manziana, Italy and broadcast in 1971, showed 200 young people from dozens of nations singing together — a two-minute vision of global harmony wrapped around a soft drink. It generated over 100,000 letters to Coca-Cola and was re-released as a standalone single that reached the Top 10 charts. The commercial has been officially relaunched five times over five decades and was paid homage to in the final scene of Mad Men's series finale in 2015 — a testament to its permanent place in the cultural imagination.

Starring Isaiah Mustafa in an unbroken monologue filmed in a single shifting set, the Old Spice commercial launched on Super Bowl Sunday 2010 and accumulated 55 million YouTube views within its first month. What followed was equally revolutionary: Mustafa filmed 186 personalised video responses to celebrities and fans on Twitter within 48 hours, setting a new standard for real-time social media marketing. The campaign won the Grand Prix at Cannes Lions, revitalised an ageing brand, and demonstrated that the era of one-way television advertising was definitively over.

Aired during Super Bowl XLVIII in February 2014, Budweiser's "Puppy Love" — depicting a Labrador puppy's friendship with a Budweiser Clydesdale horse — became the most-shared Super Bowl advertisement in history at the time, generating 57 million YouTube views within a week. The spot won USA Today's Super Bowl Ad Meter for the second consecutive year, cementing Budweiser's Clydesdale campaign as the gold standard of emotional Super Bowl advertising. It demonstrated the commercial power of sentiment over product features at a moment when brands were beginning to compete for shareability as much as airtime.

Released in April 2013, Dove's "Real Beauty Sketches" featured an FBI-trained forensic artist drawing women based on their own self-descriptions versus descriptions by strangers — revealing starkly how harshly women perceive themselves. It accumulated 163 million views across 33 countries in its first month, making it the most-watched online advertisement in history at the time. The spot won the Cannes Lions Titanium Grand Prix and became the commercial flagship of Dove's decade-long "Real Beauty" platform, which fundamentally shifted how beauty brands speak to female consumers.

Created by Bill Bernbach and his team at Doyle Dane Bernbach, VW's "Think Small" 1959 print and television campaign shattered every rule of postwar American advertising: it admitted the car was small and ugly, used vast white space instead of glamour photography, and employed self-deprecating humour in an era of hard-sell boosterism. Advertising Age ranked it the greatest advertising campaign of the 20th century in 1999. The campaign's influence on advertising philosophy is so profound that the intellectual framework of modern creative advertising — honesty, wit, respect for the audience — traces its lineage directly to this work.

84-year-old Clara Peller's indignant demand "Where's the beef?" in Wendy's 1984 commercial became the most quoted catchphrase in American culture that year, appearing on bumper stickers, T-shirts, and in Walter Mondale's attack on Gary Hart during the 1984 Democratic primary debates. The campaign increased Wendy's annual revenues by 31 percent and is credited as a turning point in fast food advertising — the moment competitor brands began attacking each other directly with comedic weapons rather than aspirational imagery. Peller became a pop culture celebrity, appearing on The Tonight Show and in subsequent commercials.

Directed by Jonathan Glazer and produced by Abbott Mead Vickers BBDO, Guinness's "Surfer" (1999) depicted surfers waiting for the perfect wave while white horses charged through the ocean — set to Leftfield's "Phat Planet" and anchored by the tagline "Good things come to those who wait." Channel 4 viewers voted it the greatest television advertisement ever made in a 2002 poll, and it won the Grand Prix at Cannes Lions. With a production budget of over £1 million, it set a new standard for cinematic ambition in advertising and remains the most acclaimed British television commercial ever produced.

Procter & Gamble's "Best Job" commercial, part of the "Thank You, Mom" campaign launched for the 2012 London Olympics, depicted mothers from around the world sacrificing sleep, money, and comfort to raise Olympic athletes — ending with the simple line "P&G: Proud sponsor of moms." It generated 74 million YouTube views and won the Grand Prix at Cannes Lions, and the campaign was so successful it was replayed across the 2014 Sochi, 2016 Rio, 2018 Pyeongchang, and 2020 Tokyo Olympics. It is widely considered the most effective corporate sponsorship advertisement ever produced.