FEATURE
Ads that stopped explaining taste started explaining how to drink and eat instead
The sound of ice cracking, the last drop pulled up through a straw, a 30-second eating challenge, fingers smudged with powder, a single noodle 3.5 meters long. Read in order from oldest to newest, here are five ads that set aside explaining how the product tastes and instead put front and center the motions of bringing it to your mouth. From Italy in 1975 to Indonesia in 2025, the products and the countries are all different, but every one of them shows "drink it like this" or "eat it like this" first. Results like sales bouncing back, or 60,000 TikTok videos being made, all happened around those motions. The lineup simply follows the year each ad came out — there's no deeper logic than that.
5 articles
FRATELLI BRANCA DISTILLERIE | 1975
"Brrr." Just four letters, and somehow they carry the brand name, how to drink it, and the sensation all at once. This campaign, which began in 1971, is said to have become the most famous piece of onomatopoeia in the history of Italian advertising.
PEPSI-COLA | 1995
A boy wearing an inner tube at the beach is drinking a Pepsi through a straw. He sucks and sucks, trying to get every last drop — and ends up getting pulled into the bottle himself, tube and all. His little sister turns and says, "Mom, he did it again." This 60-second spot aired during the Super Bowl in 1995, and it hits you with a "wait, what?" before you're already laughing.
CADBURY | 2010
Turn on the TV in Australia in 2010 and you might catch a 30-second ad of an ordinary person desperately stuffing a chocolate bar into their mouth. A different person, a different face, every time. Over 200 ads ran, and not one was the same as another.
CHEETOS | 2020
A guy holds up his fingers and says "Can't touch this~" as an excuse, and MC Hammer bursts out from behind him. Wrapped up in a rolled carpet, popping up as a baby's face, climbing out of a picnic basket. It's completely absurd, but that chaos is exactly the strategy behind selling a new product during the Super Bowl.
Haraku Ramen | 2025
3.5 meters. That's the length of a single noodle. When I heard it described as "a noodle designed so you never have to hit pause," I couldn't help but laugh. This is a genuine love letter to gamers from an Indonesian ramen shop.
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