12 minutes read
If there’s something that comes and goes from our lives (besides money, luck, and people), it sure is the inspiration. We know how difficult finding something that hasn’t been done before is, but luckily no one ever got hurt from getting inspiration from one another. That’s why in this article, we’re bringing into the spotlight 50 great advertisement ideas from which you can get your inspiration.
Let’s start at the beginning. What is an advertisement? The short and easy advertising definition of this broad term is:
Something that is shown or presented to the public to help sell a product or to make an announcement.
Of course, this is the scaled-down definition of everything that advertising represents, but it shows the most important reason people practice it. Selling!
What Types of Advertisements Are Out There?
If we’d be living in 1950, you’d probably be reading this article in a newspaper or a magazine. At the beginning of advertising times, there was lots of text in the ads. The primary advertising method proved the authenticity of the products presented in the ads by mentioning doctors and professors that could vouch for the products. In this chapter, if we were in 1950, I would only talk to you about printed ads, radio, and, if you’re lucky, a bit of TV. Nowadays, with the help of technology, there are so many types of advertisements that marketers and advertisers become overwhelmed. And even more, there are more types categorized by different criteria like channel or purpose.
We’ve put together a collection of 50 advertisement ideas to get your creative juices flowing and start a great marketing campaign. To get started, just go to our online advertisement maker and create your next great innovative ads.
Great Advertisement Ideas
Creative Billboard Ads
Billboard ads are a classic way to promote your product, but with a twist of creativity and with using the right banner maker, they can become great ways to get noticed.
Check out how companies like Bic, Prestige, or DHL used their products shape as billboards to get attention.
1. Prestige Strong Handles Billboard
How can a product’s advantages be showcased? Here’s a creative way to do that with a billboard. This ad for Prestige Omega frying pans cleverly uses the frying pan’s handle as the support for the billboard, emphasizing the product’s “strong handles” feature in a visually striking and memorable way.
2. Bic Creative Billboard Idea
The billboard from Bic is a classic and inspiring example. It cleverly uses a razor cutting through the grass to lead up to the billboard, demonstrating the product’s power in a simple yet impactful way.
3. Creative Use Of The Billboard Transparency – Koleston Naturals
Use the colors of nature to talk about the product you promote. You can create a masterpiece like this creative billboard from Koleston Naturals with a touch of creativity. The billboard features a cut-out of a woman’s hair, allowing the changing colors of the sunset to highlight the different shades of hair color offered by Koleston Naturals, creating a stunning and dynamic visual effect.
4. DHL Billboard Packaging
Why not pack your billboard? It’s a fun and creative way to remind your customers what you’re all about. This DHL Express billboard is designed to look like a giant, partially open package, instantly conveying the company’s core service of shipping and handling heavyweight shipments. It’s a clever visual that grabs attention and reinforces the brand’s message.
5. Use the color of the sky
A creative way to promote your product is to use a billboard to showcase your product’s advantages. This billboard for Berger Paints brilliantly uses the sky as part of its design. The painter appears to be painting the billboard, but the paint is the color of the sky, seamlessly blending with the background. This clever use of the environment makes the advertisement stand out and effectively highlights the product’s natural finish colors.
6. Creative Billboards That Mimic Nature – Nestle
If you’re looking for creativity, you don’t have to stick to the classic rectangular shape. Get inspired by this Nestle billboard. It breaks the mold by incorporating 3D elements, with birds seemingly carrying giant chocolate bars. This playful and eye-catching design draws attention and effectively showcases the product in a fun and memorable way.
7. Formula Toothpaste – Unique Billboard Idea
Are you looking for a creative way to make your billboard stand out? Take a cue from this Formula toothpaste ad. It uses a striking 3D effect to depict a person biting through the billboard, emphasizing the toothpaste’s strength-boosting power. This eye-catching design grabs attention and cleverly conveys the product’s key benefits in a memorable and impactful manner.
8. Clean Pores – Clean Billboard
This Pond’s billboard takes creativity to a new level. By cutting a pore-shaped hole in the center and positioning a worker to clean it, the ad vividly illustrates the product’s promise of cleaning pores and fighting pimples. The visual metaphor is clear and engaging, making the message instantly memorable. The simple tagline “Cleans pores. Fights pimples.” complements the innovative design perfectly, driving home the product’s key benefits visually strikingly.
9. McDonald’s Light Logo Billboard
McDonald’s had a creative idea to promote the fact that they are open at night: using two lights to recreate their iconic logo certainly got everyone’s attention. This billboard’s simplicity and effectiveness lie in its ability to convey the message clearly with minimal elements, making it a standout advertisement that’s hard to miss.
Bus Advertising – Creative Examples
Buses and trucks work greatas billboards, and since they are always in motion, the visibility of the product they promote increases every day. Some brands found incredibly creative ways to attract everyone’s attention with huge all-around prints, while others made use of the bus shape to enhance some features, like the new Dr. Best Flexible toothbrush.
10. Creative Bus Ads – Dr. Best Flexible Toothbrush
What do a toothbrush and a bus have in common? Flexibility. Here’s a great example of bus advertising done right.
11. Mars Truck Size Chocolate
Mars made this great truck commercial to promote its new truck-size chocolate. The oversized, realistic design of the candy bar on the truck looks so appealing and instantly grabs attention. It’s a fun and clever way to advertise, making sure everyone on the road notices their delicious product.
12. The AbsolutBus
For their campaign “In An Absolut World,” the famous drink brand showcased a bus creatively transformed to look like a luxurious limousine. This clever visual highlights an ideal, extravagant world, perfectly aligning with the campaign’s message
13. Weight Watchers Funny Bus Advertising
Other brands, like Weight Watchers, have found creative ways to playfully promote their products. This clever bus advertisement uses the illusion of a stretched interior to humorously suggest the effectiveness of their weight loss program.
14. FedEx BusAds
FedEx found a unique and subtle way to make fun of the competition with its creative truck advertisement. By seamlessly blending the FedEx truck into a rival’s delivery vehicle, they cleverly highlighted their “Always First” slogan, implying their superiority in the delivery industry.
Bus Stop Advertising Ideas
Some brands found creative ways to use the places where people spend time, transforming them into a unique and unforgettable experience. Bus stations became ski lifts, aquariums, or mobile phone chargers in the vision of some really creative advertisers.
15. Ski Lift Bus Station
Why not plan your next vacation while waiting for the bus? Here’s a creative bus stop advertisement example.
16. Aquarium Bus Stop Billboard
How to suggest your products are always fresh? Here’s how Fisch Franke decided to show their fish is as fresh as it can be…
17. IBM Smart Cities Bus Stop Marketing
The idea of making an actually useful billboard is brilliantly applied by IBM with this cool concept.
18. Charge Yourself With Vitamin Aqua
Check out how Vitamin Aqua found a way to be useful while still making a point for their brand. They offered a place where you can charge your phone to remind you how to gain energy from their drink.
Ambient Advertisement Examples
Ambient advertising has no limits when it comes to getting people’s attention, and often it finds a way to use the environment’s faults to showcase a product’s utility.
19. Rejoice Conditioner Outdoor Advertising
Here’s an excellent example by Leo Burnett on Rejoice Conditioners, from Bangkok. The message on the comb reads – “Tangles? Switch to Rejoice Conditioner!”
20. McDonald’s Creative Outdoor Advertising
Another creative example was created by TBWA for McDonald’s, in Switzerland, during the Zurifest. Here, the crosswalk was transformed into the iconic fries to get people’s attention.
21. Adidas Creative Pop-up Store
In Amsterdam, Adidas made a pop-up store that looks like a giant shoebox. It’s all in the details. The store even features some over-sized laces peeking out.
22. Oldtimer All You Can Eat
Creative business advertising ideas always stick in people’s heads. Try to showcase your product in a unique way, and don’t forget to think outside the box.
When you are on the road and get hungry, you really can’t miss this huge Oldtimer All You Can Eat Rest shop sign at the tunnel entrance.
Related articles:
The Evolution of Video Advertising: From TV Commercials to the Mobile Age
11 Emotional Advertising Examples Most Used by Brands
12 Creative Facebook Carousel Ads Examples + Templates
Unconventional Advertising Examples
Guerilla marketing campaigns are all about creativity and finding unconventional spaces to place your ad and make a point.
23. Life’s Too Short For The Wrong Job
Jobsintown.de, a German online recruitment website, made an original advertising campaign to inspire people to find better jobs.
It showcased people doing the machines’ jobs and really makes you think about how work will look like in the next decade and what’s your role in your career.
24. Coffee Machine Job – WrongJobCampaign
Don’t settle for a job that’s not suited for you. That’s the message of this creative campaign; here, you can see an imaginary inside of a Coffee Machine.
25. Laundry Machine Job– WrongJobCampaign
The Guerrilla Marketing classic campaign continued with more examples of awful jobs; imagine how it would be to work inside a laundry machine.
26. Petrol Station Worker–WrongJobCampaign
When you’re in the wrong job, you might feel like this character: doing a useless job you don’t like, and that could be done by a machine. This is the campaign’s brilliant way of making you aim for a better job by showing you the worst jobs.
Creative Packaging Advertising
Advertising on products and creative packaging designs are new trends nowadays.
27. Y+ Yoga Center – Flexibility And Creativity
Here’s a creative advertisement on a drinking straw promotes Y+ Yoga Center, also made by Leo Burnett.
28. YKM Gym Packaging Advertising Idea
Here’s another excellent example of how to promote a gym with a creative and unique packaging idea.
29. Bon Vivant – Business Card Advertising Idea
Here’s a business card that is actually useful, so you won’t lose it in your wallet somewhere.
30. Mondo Pasta – Product Advertising Idea
Here’s an intriguing and creative example of a product advertisement: it’s all about pasta.
31. Bus Ad – Indus Pride Non-alcoholic Beer
Creating an ad that’s both useful and suggestive isn’t always easy, but Indus Pride did an excellent job with these beer holders.
Mall Advertisement Ideas
What better place to be inspired to do some more shopping than the mall? Here are some really creative examples that use the stairs, the elevators, or the floor inside malls in smart ways to get attention.
32. Mall Advertising For New Movies
See how movie characters come to life within the mall and make you want to buy some movie tickets asap. That’s what we call a creative marketing campaign.
33. Outdoor Advertising – The Simpsons
In some cases, creative advertisement means grabbing attention in the most playful way. Sometimes an image is worth 1000 words… or was that donuts?
34. Elevator Advertising Idea For Plastic Surgery Clinic: Be Born Again
The concept is bold and suggestive at the same time, using one of the most well-known paintings of all time.
35. Creative Frontline Ad
This excellent ad example from Frontline is fully visible only from above, but it’s very suggestive. Interesting advertisements like this one make you stop for a while and smile.
Print Ads – Creative Examples To Inspire You
When you have no inspiration, you can go ahead and check some creative visual ads for print and online.
Here, the sky’s the limit to what you can show. Some of the great examples below make use of clever, unusual associations and word games to make a clear point, while others are just hilarious.
36. 3M Lint Roller Print Ad
Here’s a great advertising idea only pet owners will understand.
37. Kiello Travel Holliday Advertising
Here’s a creative advertisement that can make you daydream about your next Holiday…
38. Spiderman Raid Advert
Sometimes it’s ok to make fun of your own product. Here’s a funny Raid Ad that’s guaranteed to be remembered.
39. Give A Hand To Wildlife
Here’s an inspirational ad poster on wildlife and how we can all make a difference.
40. The Pasta Hotline
Creative and funny ad from Eatalica known as the pasta hotline.
41. Cemex – Fast Drying Concrete
Creative advertisement at its finest, or how to illustrate your product’s advantage with very few words.
42. Nivea Advertising Inspiration
Nivea has always been an example of creativity and inspiring advertising, and this ad makes no exception.
43. Creative Online Dating Ad
Wondering how to tell a story using a creative analogy? Here’s a great example: a cool print ad for Parship.com.
44. Forests Are The Lungs Of The Earth
This creative advertisement shows how forests are the lungs of the earth.
45. Keloptic – Creative Art Inspired Advertising
Art always makes a huge impact, so everything art inspired can make a great impression. Here’s an ad that’s really suggestive.
46. Harley Davidson Advertising
Stop dreaming and start riding is the message behind this creative advertising example. A print ad that became as legendary as the motorcycle company itself.
47.The “neighbors” FedEx advertising
A great way to showcase how boundaries disappear with the right advertising.
48. The Road Is The Best Gift
This cool Mazda commercial speaks for itself. It was created for Mazda 6 by Saatchi & Saatchi, and it’s a cool photo manipulation and source of inspiration.
49. Creative Weight Watchers Print
Weight Watchers comes back to our top with a not so subtle print that shows a solution in a clever and funny way.
50. A Creative Idea To Use The Power Of Your Competition
One of the most creative examples of using the power of competition to stand out can be found in the iconic competition between Pepsi and Coca-Cola. Here’s one of our favorite Social Media posts from Halloween.
We hope these examples of good advertising ideas will be excellent sources of inspiration and motivation for you to create a marketing strategy. Let us know whether you tried any of these and if it worked.