Funny Ad Campaigns That Ran for Years

The PG Tips chimpanzee ads (UK, 1956 to 2002) The grandparent of every comic mascot campaign. For more than four decades, chimps in human clothes played the "Tipps family," with actors supplying their voices, sending up whatever British family life looked like that year. The best-remembered moment is the 1988 piano-moving sketch, with its deadpan punchline about a piano sitting on someone's foot. The joke outlived its moment: the last Tipps family ad aired in January 2002, replaced by claymation birds. PG Tips later found a second long run with Johnny Vegas and a knitted Monkey from 2007, proof that the brand never stopped believing tea sells best with a straight face and a silly partner.

A fussy grocer begging customers, "Please don't squeeze the Charmin!" over and over. Character actor Dick Wilson played Mr. Whipple in more than 500 commercials between 1964 and 1985, which makes this one of the purest examples of a single gag repeated until it became part of the culture. The repetition was the point. A 1978 Procter & Gamble survey placed Whipple as the third best-known American, behind Richard Nixon and Billy Graham. After a 14-year break he even came back in 1999, joking that he could not retire while the public still needed telling about Charmin.

India's answer to the editorial cartoon, sold with butter. Since the late 1960s, the moppet in a polka-dot dress has commented on the week's news from Amul billboards, painted bus panels and posters, with punning one-liners that change as fast as the headlines. The topicality is what keeps it alive, and occasionally gets it into trouble. The character was drawn simply because hand-painted billboards had to be changed often, and the jokes have drawn fire from Indian Airlines, Shiv Sena and the Satyam board over the years. Few brands anywhere have let a mascot be this cheeky about current events for this long.

Miller Lite's "Tastes Great, Less Filling" campaign (US, 1974 to the early 1990s) The campaign that made light beer feel safe for tough guys, by staging a barroom argument with no possible winner. Opposing camps chanted "Less filling!" and "Tastes great!" while former football players and other familiar faces, from Dick Butkus and Bubba Smith to Bob Uecker and Rodney Dangerfield, played it as broad comedy. It ran for well over a decade on that one shouting match before fading in the early 1990s, and Ad Age ranked it eighth among the greatest campaigns in history. The format proved strong enough that Miller has brought the old theme back more than once since.

A pink drumming rabbit that started life in 1988 as a dig at a rival: the Energizer Bunny was created as a parody of the Duracell bunny. The joke then grew far beyond its target. Its cleverest phase had the bunny wander onto the sets of realistic-looking commercials for fictional products and march straight through them, so viewers spent the first seconds of every ad unsure what they were watching. That format turned the battery's selling point, that it keeps going, into a running gag about interruption, and the character has stayed in Energizer's advertising through changes of agency ever since.

A campaign built on deprivation: people caught in an uncomfortable situation with a full mouth and no milk to wash it down. Goodby Silverstein & Partners made it for the California Milk Processor Board, and the first spot, "Aaron Burr," directed by Michael Bay, aired nationwide on October 29, 1993. The joke then split in two. The TV spots kept finding new ways to strand people without milk, while national print ads put celebrities and fictional characters in milk mustaches. Those mustache ads were dropped in 2014, but the campaign carried on in California, and a two-word question had already become one of the best-known lines in American advertising.

A fast-food founder with a giant round clown head, played completely straight. Jack in the Box revived its old mascot in 1994 as a no-nonsense businessman, and the first new ad opened with him blowing up the board of directors as payback for having been scrapped in 1980. That deadpan corporate comedy carried the chain for decades. The campaign even built multi-part storylines: a 2009 Super Bowl ad had Jack hit by a bus, and the follow-ups ran a four-part arc until he woke up and the screen read "Jack's Back." Creator Rick Sittig voiced Jack from 1994 to 2015 before David Tompkins took over.

ESPN's long-running promos imagine its own campus as an ordinary office where star athletes just happen to wander the corridors. Shot in a deadpan mockumentary style, the spots lampoon sports and sports broadcasting from the inside. The premise never needed changing because the cast refreshes itself every season: whoever is famous this year can turn up at the photocopier. Wieden+Kennedy's New York office wrote and produced the series from its 1995 debut until 2017, when ESPN took production in-house and kept the format going.

Bud Light's mock-heroic salutes to everyday oddballs, delivered as power ballads. An announcer, Pete Stacker, raised a toast to some unsung figure, while Dave Bickler, the lead singer of Survivor, wailed absurd backing lines over the top. It began as a radio campaign in 1998 under the title "Real American Heroes," with 12 spots, and was relaunched as "Real Men of Genius" in 2002. More than 200 installments followed, and it won the Cannes Grand Prix for Radio in both 2005 and 2006, rare proof that a comic format can thrive with no pictures at all. Funding was cut in 2008, though the series was never officially canceled.

The mascot who was only supposed to fill a gap. GEICO's gecko debuted in 1999, when a Screen Actors Guild strike kept live actors out of commercials, and the pun on a name people kept mispronouncing did the rest. He was meant to be temporary and was kept on. What makes this campaign worth studying is how quietly it evolved. The gecko began with a posh accent that drifted into a Cockney style, and several actors have voiced him, from Kelsey Grammer early on to Jake Wood today. A throwaway pun became a polite, slightly put-upon spokesman, and GEICO has built more than a quarter of a century of advertising around him.

The Aflac Duck campaign (US, December 1999 to present) A one-word joke built on an odd company name. An art director walking in Central Park kept repeating "Aflac, Aflac" and realized it sounded like a duck's quack, and a duck has been squawking the brand name in Aflac's commercials ever since, making the insurer far more widely recognized in the US. The setup barely needs to change, which is the gag. The campaign even survived the loss of its original voice: Gilbert Gottfried was dismissed in March 2011, and Daniel McKeague, a Minnesota ad sales manager, took over in a commercial that aired that May.

"Should've gone to Specsavers" (UK, 2002 to present) A sign-off line so useful that it escaped the ads. Each spot shows someone making a ridiculous mistake because of poor eyesight, then lands the line: a sheep farmer shears his sheepdog instead of a sheep, and an elderly couple sit down on what they think is a bench, only to find themselves strapped into a rollercoaster. The line has run since 2002, and the formula has hardly changed because it does not need to: any situation that can be misread becomes a new ad, and audiences can say the punchline before it arrives.

The annual Australian Lamb summer ads (Australia, mid-2000s to present) Australia's yearly advertising event, and a lesson in letting a joke grow up. Meat & Livestock Australia's lamb ads began with former footballer Sam Kekovich delivering deadpan rants that branded vegetarians "un-Australian" for skipping lamb on Australia Day. The ads drew complaints, but the Advertising Standards Bureau kept them on air as satire. Kekovich stayed on as "Lambassador," and the ads now arrive each January as a satirical take on the national mood. The 2026 edition, launched on January 5, had him confronting happiness auditors after Australia dropped out of the top 10 happiest countries, with a summer lamb barbecue as the fix.

A silver-haired adventurer whose legend is so absurd that the beer is almost an afterthought, closing every spot with "I don't always drink beer. But when I do, I prefer Dos Equis." Jonathan Goldsmith played him from 2006, and the company said US sales rose every year from 2006 to 2010. The campaign's later history is a study in how hard a character is to replace. Augustin Legrand took over in 2016 and the original campaign ended in 2018. In January 2026, with the brand struggling, Dos Equis brought Goldsmith back, betting that a joke people still quote is worth more than anything that replaced it.

Two men, a white background and about 30 seconds of small talk. Justin Long played the relaxed Mac and humorist John Hodgman the fussy, well-meaning PC, and the comedy came from Hodgman's character being far more likable than a rival brand had any right to be. Apple's agency, TBWA\Media Arts Lab, ran the format from 2006 to 2009, finding endless variations on the same conversation about viruses, spyware and, later, Windows Vista. It also showed how a format can travel: the British version recast the pair with Robert Webb as Mac and David Mitchell as PC, translating the same idea into a different national style of awkwardness.

Suntory Boss Coffee's "Alien Jones" commercials (Japan, 2006 to present) Tommy Lee Jones as an alien observing human life on Earth, going undercover in one ordinary Japanese job after another, a station attendant on a busy platform among them, with the same weary, unreadable face. The idea has lasted because the alien's job changes every time while his expression never does, so each new ad finds a fresh corner of working life to puzzle over. Jones has fronted the brand since 2006, and a 2019 special stitched his past appearances into a farewell to the Heisei era. It is a reminder that a deadpan outsider can make a domestic audience laugh at itself for years.

SoftBank Corp.'s Shirato family commercials for its mobile network (Japan, 2007 to present) A sitcom family in which the father is a white dog, and nobody in the family finds that strange. The original father, Kai-kun, was a Hokkaido dog who took the role in 2007, playing opposite a human wife, Kanako Higuchi, and children played by Aya Ueto and Dante Carver. The household logic is the joke, and it has proved endlessly renewable. SoftBank's commercials topped Japan's annual commercial popularity ranking three years running by the end of 2009, new cast members have joined since, and after Kai-kun retired the father role passed to his two sons, so the series has outlived its first canine star.

Progressive's relentlessly upbeat cashier in her brilliant white uniform, played by comedian Stephanie Courtney since 2008. Flo sells insurance as if it were a product on a shelf, and her sunny overcommitment is the joke. Few campaigns have expanded a single character so methodically. Flo has passed 100 ads, gained a sidekick, Jamie, in 2014, and that same year the 100th ad introduced her whole family, every one of them played by Courtney. That willingness to build a sitcom world around one performer is why Flo still feels fresh after more than 15 years.

A Russian aristocrat meerkat, Aleksandr Orlov, furious that people keep confusing his website with a price comparison site. Launched on January 5, 2009, by the agency VCCP, the campaign turned a pun into a business plan: "meerkat" was a far cheaper search term than "market," and Orlov's catchphrase, "simples," gave viewers something to repeat. It kept growing for years. The site climbed to fourth among UK insurance websites, a toy meerkat came with each policy from 2011, Meerkat Movies cinema tickets followed in 2015, and Orlov gained a sidekick in Sergei the IT technician. An Australian version launched in 2013.

Isaiah Mustafa as an impossibly smooth man speaking straight to the women watching, inviting them to compare him with their own partners. Wieden+Kennedy's spot debuted online on February 4, 2010, won the Cannes Lions Grand Prix for film that June and a Primetime Emmy for Outstanding Commercial in July. What turned a hit spot into a campaign was the follow-through. By mid-July 2010, videos from the series made up eight of the 11 most popular on YouTube, and Old Spice kept the character going for years, eventually pairing Mustafa with Terry Crews in 2015's "Make a Smellmitment." It remains the model for keeping a comic character talking to the audience.

Snickers' "You're Not You When You're Hungry" (US and worldwide, 2010 to present) One idea that works in any language: hunger turns you into someone else, usually a celebrity behaving out of character, until a bite of Snickers turns you back. It launched during the 2010 Super Bowl with Betty White and Abe Vigoda playing football, and BBDO New York credited it with taking Snickers from seventh to the top candy bar. The structure is endlessly recastable, which is why it has lasted. Local markets have supplied their own stars, with Joan Collins in the first British spot and Rowan Atkinson's Mr. Bean in 2014, and in 2020 USA Today's Ad Meter named it the best Super Bowl campaign of the previous 25 years.

Allstate's Mayhem campaign (US, 2010 to present) Dean Winters as disaster personified: a bruised, scarred man in a black suit who sets up each little catastrophe himself, then warns that a cheaper policy will not cover it. Leo Burnett created the character, and Winters has played him since the 2010 launch. Mayhem works because he is a villain who narrates his own mischief with obvious pleasure, turning the fear behind insurance into slapstick. By mid-2011 the campaign had won around 80 industry awards, and it later tried a twist, with a 2018 series in which Mayhem set out to keep people safe.

Liberty Mutual's LiMu Emu and Doug (US, 2019 to present) The newest campaign here, and already a proper double act. LiMu Emu is a large, unruly bird, and Doug, played by David Hoffman, is the patient colleague forever trying to stop him acting out. Goodby Silverstein & Partners built it in 2019 as a buddy comedy, with the insurance message squeezed in around the bird's chaos. It earns its place by showing the long-running formula still works for a new brand character: a fixed pairing, a simple tension between order and mayhem, and room for endless new situations. Years in, the pair still turn up in the brand's ads, even after Liberty Mutual added a new puppet mascot, Liberty Biberty, in 2026.