Remember when you actually looked forward to the ad break? Not because you needed a brew and a biscuit, but because you didn’t want to miss what came next. Some made you laugh out loud. Some made you tear up. Some left you wondering what on earth you’d just witnessed. But you remembered them. You talked about them. You felt something.
That’s what today’s best creatives are trying to bring back, not the formats, but the feeling. And I think we need it.
Back When Ads Were Cultural Currency
In the not-so-distant past, advertising grabbed attention and held it, it was front-page news. It sparked conversation and you quoted the lines in the pub…’Wasssssuuuppppppp’. You debated them at work, had favourites and absolute hates.
Think about the unfiltered bravado of Ray Gardner in Fanta’s Blackcurrant ‘St. George’. Or Pot Noodle’s ‘slag of all snacks’ campaign, equal parts absurd and sharp-as-a-knife insight. It didn’t ask to be liked. It just was. Funny, bold, and completely unignorable.
And that was the goal, make people stop and make them care. Maybe even make them spit out their noodles. Not every campaign was a crowd-pleaser, that was kind of the point.
Let’s not forget Tango, the bright orange slapstick madness that caused genuine panic among playground monitors in the ‘90s. Or Boddingtons: Manc humour with a creamy head, flipping the stuffy beer ad script on its head. And yes, Guinness ‘The Surfer’, it helps when you have Jonathan Glazer directing I guess.
These weren’t ads. They were events.
The Role of Controversy: Still Powerful, Still Risky
Take the recent Sweeney American Eagle campaign. Whether you loved it or hated it, you heard about it. Some called it tasteless, others called it brave. But no one ignored it and in a world where most ads barely register, that’s a win in itself.
Yes, it was provocative, yes, it leaned hard into sexual appeal, but here’s the uncomfortable truth: attractive people sell things (industry perceived, I get that). They always have. From perfume ads to fashion runways, we’ve built decades of brand equity on beauty, allure, and desire. American Eagle didn’t invent the formula, they just brought it to the front again, loudly.
So why does it still cause such a stir? Maybe because we’ve become uncomfortable with just how much image still sells. Or maybe it’s because we expect brands today to walk a moral tightrope, not just sell jeans. But whether you agree with the execution or not, the ad did its job: it made American Eagle culturally visible…and their share price.
And frankly, cultural visibility is still the most valuable media real estate a brand can buy.
You can’t fake that kind of conversation and you certainly can’t buy it with bland.
Nostalgia as a Creative Tool, Not a Crutch
What is working about this new wave of creative? It raids the past like it owns the place, grabbing the good bits, giving them a shake, and serving them back with swagger. Nostalgia with a voltage boost, it’s a provocation and a reminder of when we dared to be funnier, edgier, more emotional. When creative teams didn’t second-guess every line to death.
You’re seeing it everywhere: lo-fi visuals, VHS fuzz, MS Paint graphics, even old-school jingles being reworked into modern spots. It’s a creative comeback, a middle finger to beige and it’s what happens when people get tired of ads that feel like they like it was cooked up by committee.
At its best, this nostalgic lens reminds us of when advertising had a heartbeat. A voice, a sense of play.
So What Now?
We’re not going back to the 90s, and we shouldn’t want to. But the creative soul of that era, unmissable, emotional, occasionally controversial still matters. Maybe more than ever. AI might make production slicker and faster, algorithms might help us find the right people buut it’s still that human spark that gets remembered.
The best ads don’t play it safe, they play it smart and they take risks. They interrupt with joy, humour, outrage, surprise. And that’s what makes them unforgettable.
Good advertising doesn’t play it safe, we can’t all be universally liked. It knows exactly who it is, and dares the world to have an opinion. Because if people aren’t talking, your brand isn’t breathing.
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