FEATURE
Showing, not telling. Why is this the one trick that never gets old?
Instead of describing performance in words, these ads prove it right in front of you. This particular trick has barely changed since the 1960s, so we've lined up sixty years of it in order. An egg, a ball, a rocking chair, seven days of rain, and a man standing between two trucks. Watch them in sequence and you'll see that only the spectacle of the proof and the technology for broadcasting it have changed — the underlying structure is strikingly the same. But in the very last one, the one being proven to is no longer a person. Only then does it become clear why this old trick still isn't finished.
10 articles
CHEVROLET | 1963
In 1963, Chevrolet won the Grand Prix at Cannes. Their fourth win in five years. They hung eggs from a truck, drove it over rough roads, and the eggs didn't break. That was the whole ad.
LUSTUCRU | 1964
France, 1964. The pasta brand LUSTUCRU released an ad titled "Proof by the egg." Instead of just saying their pasta used fresh eggs, they set out to show it honestly, and with humor, through film.
VOLVO | 1971
This is an ad from 1971 where Volvo talks about hardtops. Back then, in the American market, Volvo—having come all the way from Sweden—was in the middle of building its reputation as a maker of tough, sturdy cars.
PENN ATHLETIC PRODUCTS | 1989
In 1989, Minneapolis agency Fallon McElligott unleashed a 30-second spot on the world. To prove the "consistency of bounce" of a racquetball, it wasn't just balls getting dropped from a building.
LOCTITE | 1990
Chile, 1990. A LOCTITE glue commercial starring a rocking chair. The only thing we know for sure is that it won Gold.
HENKEL | 2005
A monitor, stuck to a wall. That's all this footage showed—and it ran nonstop for 24 hours straight. Brazil, 2005.
GEOX AMPHIBIOX | 2013
They built three artificial rain clouds and kept one man soaked in rain for seven days straight. The location: the middle of Barcelona. Even though the sky was clear.
Volvo Trucks | 2013
The moment Enya starts singing, my jaw dropped and I let out a tiny "whaaat" (I was in public, so I kept it quiet), and my mouth just stayed open until the end. This 75-second film, released in 11/2013, still hits just as hard today.
BECK’S | 2020
Brazil is pilsner paradise. BECK'S makes the bitterest beer around, but it's behind competitors in both distribution and budget. So what did they do? They got people to drink their rivals' beer.
HEINZ | 2024
Ask an AI to draw ketchup, and a Heinz bottle shows up on its own. Ask a person, same result. Behind the scenes at restaurants, fake ketchup gets refilled into Heinz bottles. The work that spent five years collecting proof of this blindingly obvious fact won the Creative Effectiveness Grand Prix at Cannes in 2024.
Fictional People Started Working
Five people who don't exist — and reality answered back anyway.
Ads That Reached Into the Law
Breaking rules, slipping through loopholes, rewriting statutes — eight ads, ordered by how far they reached.
Alone, You Can't Reach It
An ad that isn't finished until one more person shows up.
What Was Already There Became the Medium
From chalk to banknotes: 11 media nobody had to buy
The Product Is Nowhere to Be Seen
How choosing not to show became the boldest statement of all
Putting 'We're Broke' Right at the Center of the Idea
Six ads that turned a shortfall into the raw material itself