Best BBDO Campaigns of All Time
BBDO has spent decades perfecting the art of the expensive, heart-tugging spectacle that somehow still manages to sell you a dishwasher or a candy bar. They are the masters of the big-budget emotional heist - the kind of work that wins a Grand Prix while making your CFO cry for entirely different reasons. From talking lizards to gut-punching social commentary, their output is a masterclass in scale. Dig into the archives below.
42 campaigns
Sandy Hook Promise: Evan
This campaign cleverly used a seemingly innocent high school romance narrative to distract viewers, then replayed the footage to reveal subtle, previously overlooked warning signs of gun violence in the background, powerfully demonstrating how easily critical signals can be missed.
CodeLikeAGirl: Losing Lena
By advocating for the retirement of the 'Lenna' image - a widely used, problematic test image in tech - the campaign created a tangible action point to symbolize a more inclusive and welcoming environment for women in the industry.
Snickers: Fix the World
Snickers humorously addressed widespread modern annoyances by suggesting that the world's collective grumpiness could be solved by feeding it a colossal Snickers bar, reinforcing the idea that hunger makes people irritable and a Snickers can fix it.
Starbucks: I Am
The campaign celebrated the unique identities and personal stories of Starbucks customers, positioning the brand as a place where individuality is recognized and embraced through personalized coffee experiences, fostering a sense of belonging and self-expression.
Banco de Chile: Project 4270
Banco de Chile captured the country's entire 4,270km length via a continuous drone flight, transforming natural topography into abstract art to reinforce its identity as the 'Bank of Chile' and turn the nation's geography into a shared cultural asset.
Samsung - The Art of Hack
Samsung cleverly 'hacked' the Spanish tax system by selling its Frame TV, which displays art, as a piece of art rather than an electronic device. This reduced VAT from 21% to 10%, making the product significantly more affordable and competitive for consumers.
Decathlon – The Breakaway: The First eCycling Team For Prisoners
Decathlon created the first eCycling team for prisoners, providing them with equipment to participate anonymously in virtual cycling races. By enabling prisoners to engage in sports through Zwift, the brand helped break down social barriers and offer a path to rehabilitation and connection with the outside world.
M&M's: Hazelnut Spread - New Spokescandy
To launch the new Hazelnut Spread flavor, M&M's introduced a new mascot only to have the iconic original characters immediately eat him. This dark humor subverted brand tropes to dramatize the product's irresistible taste through candy cannibalism.
Snickers - Angry Jürgen Klopp at table football
Snickers humorously demonstrated that hunger transforms even a calm person into an irritable, over-the-top celebrity like Jürgen Klopp, only to reveal the celebrity was the hungry person all along, reinforcing the iconic "You're not you when you're hungry" tagline.
Downtown Records: Live Looper
To promote The Academic's single, BBDO turned Facebook Live's technical broadcast delay into a real-time audio-visual looper, allowing the band to layer their performance live. It worked by transforming a platform flaw into a unique, high-stakes creative instrument.
Ariel: Share The Load
Ariel challenged the deep-seated Indian norm that laundry is solely a woman's responsibility by redesigning wash care labels and matrimonial profiles, turning a mundane chore into a national conversation about gender equality and shared domestic labor.
Lowe's: In a Snap.
Lowe's transformed Snapchat's tap-through video feature into an interactive DIY tool, allowing users to 'hammer, drill, and chisel' through virtual home improvement projects, turning passive thumb-tapping into active engagement and demonstrating how easy DIY can be.
P&G: The Talk
P&G's "The Talk" campaign depicted the difficult, yet essential, conversations Black parents have with their children about racial bias and prejudice, creating empathy and understanding by spotlighting a rarely seen reality.
LMG Insurance: Safe & Sound Music Player
LMG Insurance created the world's first safety-focused music app that uses GPS to detect high-risk traffic zones, automatically blending ambient noise into the user's headphones to prevent accidents without forcing them to stop listening to music.
Ariel: Dads #ShareTheLoad
Ariel addressed gender inequality by showing a father's realization that his daughter's domestic burden was a result of the bad example he set, sparking a national movement for men to share household chores starting with laundry.
Mountain Dew: PuppyMonkeyBaby
Mountain Dew created a bizarre, energetic "Puppy Monkey Baby" creature to personify Kickstart's unique "Dew, Juice, Caffeine" combination, disrupting a mundane night and capturing Super Bowl attention through unforgettable absurdity and viral appeal.
GE: You Can't Unring a Bell
GE showcased its advanced acoustic technology by 'unringing' a loud community bell, creating a quiet zone for a sleeping baby, thereby dramatically proving its capability to tackle seemingly impossible engineering challenges and redefine what's possible.
Council Against Handgun Violence: Teddy Gun
The Illinois Council Against Handgun Violence created the "Teddy Gun" campaign, which highlighted the absurd reality that teddy bears are more strictly regulated than firearms by creating a conceptual "unregulated" teddy bear. The campaign aimed to draw public attention to the lack of common-sense gun regulations by using a provocative comparison between toy safety standards and gun manufacturing guidelines.
AT&T Ticket Twosdays: Married Friend
AT&T created "Ticket Twosdays" to reward customers by letting them bring a friend to the movies for free every Tuesday. The campaign humorously showcases how this free ticket perk can turn a potential solo movie night into an unexpected social opportunity with friends.
Wildlife Conservation Film Festival: Dream
The campaign subverted the hopeful "I Dreamed a Dream" song by pairing its lyrics with idyllic wildlife scenes that quickly turn into brutal depictions of human-caused destruction, powerfully shocking viewers into confronting the reality of extinction and inspiring urgent action.
AT&T: Close To Home
AT&T dramatized the devastating ripple effect of a single "glance" at a smartphone by deconstructing a fatal car crash in haunting slow-motion, proving that no digital notification is worth the cost of a human life.
Media Mart: Rabbit Race
MediaMarkt transformed Easter 2015 into a global spectacle by casting, training, and turning 10 rabbits into celebrity athletes for the world's first live commercial break sports event, the 'Rabbit Race,' engaging 21 million viewers by turning receipts into betting slips for cashback vouchers, driving unprecedented traffic and sales.
GE: The Message
GE made its technical sonic healing technology relevant and interesting by launching "The Message," a sci-fi podcast and immersive Alternate Reality Game that captivated millions, transforming complex science into record-breaking entertainment.
International Coastal Clean-up Day
Ocean Conservancy's 30th International Coastal Cleanup campaign powerfully juxtaposed three decades of global volunteer efforts and massive trash collection with the stark, ongoing reality of widespread pollution, creating an urgent call to action by highlighting that the problem still needs help despite past successes.
Foot Locker: Kyrie Irving
Kyrie Irving is comically frozen mid-air during a dunk, seeking inspiration through mundane objects and outfit changes, dramatically exaggerating the mental and physical journey to achieve peak performance, ultimately showing Foot Locker provides "ALL THE GEAR TO GET YOU THERE."
Smart: Off Road
The Smart Fortwo challenges perceptions by demonstrating surprising off-road capability, then effortlessly conquers tight city parking, proving it's the ultimate versatile city car by excelling where larger, supposedly rugged vehicles fail.
Sandy Hook Promise: Back to School
This campaign powerfully recontextualized innocent back-to-school items, transforming them into tools for survival during a school shooting, to dramatically expose the terrifying reality children face and underscore the urgent need for school shooting prevention by knowing the signs.
Limitless Trailer: How to Hack Video Screens on Times Square
A man used a portable video transmitter and repeater to spectacularly hijack Times Square's iconic digital billboards, replacing commercial ads with his live iPhone feed, demonstrating the device's disruptive power and creating an unforgettable public spectacle.
Skittles: Touch the Rainbow
Skittles created an interactive video transforming the viewer's index finger into a dramatic war hero, fighting for the rainbow. This worked by using absurd, over-the-top storytelling and direct engagement to make the brand's playful essence and "Taste the Rainbow" tagline an unforgettable, immersive experience.
FedEx: Enchanted Forest
FedEx transformed its tangible sustainable efforts - electric trucks, recycled materials, lower emission planes - into an 'enchanted tale' by first presenting a magical forest, then stripping away the fantasy to reveal the real-world impact, proving that genuine environmental commitment is its own kind of magic.