7 best print ads and the ideas behind them
Seven print and outdoor campaigns worth studying, from British Airways' 500 answers to Heinz's Ketchup Fraud, with the brand problem each solved and the move worth stealing.
The best print ads run on a single idea strong enough to survive any format: a page, a billboard, a bus shelter, a social crop. That is the test worth stealing. A beautiful page that only works as a page is a dead end; a clear idea on a page can become a film, a post, or a poster without falling apart.
I work on the production side of a creative team, and print references show up in briefs constantly. The problem is that most “best print ads” lists are museums. The same five campaigns from the last century get circled on every moodboard, while the strongest print and outdoor work of the past few years goes unstudied. So this list flips the ratio: six campaigns from 2022 to 2024, each with a named source and a real visual, plus one classic kept as the control, because the mechanics have not changed since 1959.
For each one I cover what is visible on the page, the brand problem it solved, and how the idea travels into other channels. Seven campaigns made the cut.
1. British Airways, “A British Original” (2022)
British Airways relaunched its brand in October 2022 with one question and hundreds of answers. Every landing card asks “What is the purpose of your visit?”, and the campaign, made with Uncommon Creative Studio, answered it over and over: “because this weather sucks”, “to eat a tomato that actually tastes like a tomato”. The launch announcement counted more than 500 unique print, digital, and outdoor executions, and Adweek reported the work taking the Outdoor Grand Prix at Cannes Lions 2023.
Most executions are just type on the brand’s livery colors, no plane, no seat, no destination photography. The format is a form field filled in by a human being, and that is the whole trick. The airline had spent years communicating like an airline; the campaign let it communicate like its passengers instead.
The same platform produced a set of short films. Here is one of them, from British Airways’ own channel.
The move to steal is volume with a spine. One rigid template, one fixed question, then hundreds of specific, human answers. Specificity is what keeps 500 executions from reading as wallpaper; “to eat a tomato that actually tastes like a tomato” is funnier and truer than any line about wanderlust. The trap is running the format without the editorial bar. A hundred generic answers would have killed it; the discipline is in what got cut.
2. Coca-Cola, “Recycle Me” (2024)
Coca-Cola crushed its own logo. The Recycle Me posters show the script mark as it looks on a crumpled can, with the recycle-me line lifted straight from the packaging, and nothing else on a red field. The team crushed real cans with mechanical presses rather than distorting the logo digitally, so every execution is a different, physically true crumple. The campaign began across Latin America, and Ad Age reported it winning the Print and Publishing Grand Prix at Cannes Lions 2024.
Few brands would damage the most protected logo in consumer goods on purpose, and that is exactly why the page stops you. The distortion carries the entire message; if the mark were pristine, there would be no ad. It is the rare sustainability execution where the visual is the argument rather than a garnish on a claim.
Worth saying plainly: the campaign also drew criticism, since a company that produces this much packaging invites scrutiny when it advertises recycling. That is part of the lesson too. A bold purpose execution buys attention and questions at the same time, and a brand should walk in expecting both.
3. IKEA, “Proudly Second Best” (2023)
Al-Futtaim IKEA, the franchisee for the UAE, Qatar, Egypt, and Oman, ran a print campaign in 2023 that demoted its own products. Each ad shows a child ignoring the IKEA item built for the moment: dinner happens on dad’s lap next to an empty ANTILOP high chair, sleep happens on a parent’s chest beside the cot. The product sits in the frame, named and priced, politely unused. The line: Proudly Second Best. The campaign, created with DAVID Madrid and INGO Hamburg, is documented on IKEA’s own global site and in the D&AD awards archive.
The brand problem was warmth. A catalog brand can list functions forever without ever earning affection. This campaign buys affection with honesty: no parent believes a high chair beats their own lap, and a brand that admits it earns the trust that sells the chair anyway. It is the same engine that powered Volkswagen in 1959, an admitted limitation turned into the argument, which is why the structure keeps working across brand archetypes as different as a carmaker and a furniture retailer.
The trap is self-deprecation without a flattering truth underneath. The ad puts the parent first and the product second; the humility lands because the reader is the winner of the comparison, and the product still gets its name and price on the page.
4. Heinz, “Ketchup Fraud” (2023)
Heinz built a campaign out of a petty crime. In March 2023 the brand ran print and out-of-home work showing restaurant workers refilling Heinz glass bottles with a cheaper substitute ketchup, photographed like surveillance caught in the act, under the line “Even when it isn’t Heinz, it has to be Heinz”. Famous Campaigns covered the launch: social posts, print ads, and large-scale billboards across New York and Chicago.
The observation came first. People had filmed restaurants doing exactly this and posted it; the campaign did not invent a behavior, it staged one everyone had already seen. That is what makes the page work in a glance: you recognize the scene before you read a word, and the twist reframes the fraud as the world’s most reliable compliment. Restaurants only refill the Heinz bottle because the bottle is what customers trust.
The move to steal is turning a complaint into proof of demand. Every brand has some version of this, a workaround or an imitation that only exists because the original matters. The trap is stretching it: the mechanic collapses if the behavior is not genuinely common, because the reader has to supply the recognition themselves.
5. McDonald’s, “Raise Your Arches” (2023)
In January 2023, McDonald’s UK and Leo Burnett released a campaign with no food, no restaurant, and no logo in its usual form. The golden arches bend into a pair of raised eyebrows, the office-wide signal for “fancy a McDonald’s?”. Famous Campaigns documented the launch: a film directed by Edgar Wright in which the gesture spreads through an office into a full walkout, plus the reworked logo across posters and social. The work is archived at The One Club.
Here is the film, as posted on McDonald’s Pakistan’s official channel during the campaign’s international rollout.
On a poster, the idea is almost nothing: two arched shapes on red. It only works because a half century of brand building lets the reader complete the image, and that is precisely the point being demonstrated. The campaign is a public flex of distinctive assets, the same discipline you see when auditing ad creative for repeatability: which asset survives a hundred variations, and how little of it do you actually need to show?
The caution is obvious but worth stating. This is a graduation move. A brand without near-universal recognition that hides its own logo is not being confident, it is being invisible. Earn the shorthand first.
6. Specsavers, the van on a bollard (2024)
Specsavers has run the line “Should’ve gone to Specsavers” for over two decades, and in March 2024 it staged the line instead of printing it. A branded van appeared in central Edinburgh hoisted on a rising bollard, next to a warning sign reading “Caution. Automatic bollards in operation. No parking.” Marketing Beat reported the stunt, devised with out-of-home specialist Grand Visual, with bespoke bollards engineered so the van could sit there safely for days.
Notice what is missing: the slogan. The stunt never says “should’ve gone to Specsavers” because every person who walks past says it for them. That is the highest state a tagline can reach, the ad reduced to a setup that the audience completes, then photographs, then posts. Decades of consistent repetition built the reflex; there are more lines that earned that status in these brand tagline examples.
The move to steal is letting the world stage the joke. The trap is doing a stunt without a verbal identity strong enough to be the unspoken caption. Remove the slogan’s twenty-year history and this is just a van on a pole.
7. Volkswagen, “Think Small” (1959)
One classic stays on the list, because it is the control group for everything above. Volkswagen’s Think Small addressed an awkward fact head on: the Beetle was small in a market that celebrated enormous American cars. Doyle Dane Bernbach, with art director Helmut Krone and copywriter Julian Koenig, put a small black and white Beetle inside a huge field of white space and paired it with candid, conversational copy. Advertising Age named it the best advertising campaign of the 20th century in 1999.
The layout makes the argument before you finish the headline. The car occupies a sliver of the page, and the emptiness around it reads as confidence. The copy then turns size into practicality and economy. Volkswagen never pretends the Beetle is something it is not; it hands the reader a new way to value what they can already see.
Look back up the list and the lineage is everywhere. IKEA’s admitted second place is Think Small’s honesty. Coca-Cola’s crushed logo is Think Small’s nerve about the sacred asset. The white space discipline runs through the British Airways type-only pages. The mechanics did not change; the surfaces did. For a broader tour of executions old and new, these advertisement examples cover the wider set.
The seven campaigns side by side
| Campaign | Year | Brand goal | The move to steal | Watch out for |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| British Airways, A British Original | 2022 | Make a legacy carrier feel human | One fixed question, hundreds of specific answers | Volume formats die without a harsh editorial bar |
| Coca-Cola, Recycle Me | 2024 | Attach the brand to recycling | Let damage to your own logo carry the message | Purpose work invites scrutiny of the practice behind it |
| IKEA, Proudly Second Best | 2023 | Earn warmth for a catalog brand | Demote the product; honesty does the selling | Self-deprecation needs a truth that flatters the reader |
| Heinz, Ketchup Fraud | 2023 | Defend the original against refills | Recast a common complaint as proof of demand | Collapses if the behavior is not widely recognized |
| McDonald’s, Raise Your Arches | 2023 | Prove the brand works without the product | Compress the identity into a single gesture | A graduation move; weak brands turn invisible |
| Specsavers, van on a bollard | 2024 | Keep a decades-old line alive | Stage the setup, let the public supply the line | Without the verbal identity it is just a spectacle |
| Volkswagen, Think Small | 1959 | Reframe a product limitation | Admit the weakness, then argue its value | White space with no honest truth under it |
Turn the print idea into a campaign system
The strongest examples share a practical quality: the idea is never trapped in one finished page. British Airways turned a form field into a format. Coca-Cola let a crushed can do the talking. IKEA made honesty the warmth strategy. Heinz reframed a complaint as devotion. McDonald’s compressed fifty years of brand building into two curved lines. Specsavers built a joke the public finishes. Volkswagen made a limitation persuasive.
That is the value of studying the best print ads. You are looking for a working creative system, not a museum piece. A system gives your team rules for the next ad, the next post, the next film, and the next landing page. Usually it does at least one of these things: builds a recognizable visual device, makes a limitation useful, ties the brand to one clear feeling, creates a repeatable format, or uses the medium itself as part of the message. The same test applies to visual storytelling in any channel: ask what changes between the first look and the second, and why the brand belongs inside that change. A useful reference point for teams studying that kind of consistency is this set of inspiring brand identity examples.
Print deserves real measurement too. When response matters, use campaign-specific promo codes, unique phone numbers, QR codes, tracking URLs, or dedicated landing pages, then compare exposed and unexposed groups or track sales inside a defined window. Attribution beats impressions every time, and a print piece with no response path is a brand bet, which is fine as long as you made that bet on purpose.
The adaptation work should preserve the idea while changing the format. A print crop may need a faster opening for social. A silent visual may need sound. A static transformation may need pacing in motion. At Moonb, a good share of my week is exactly this: taking a print-strength idea and moving it into video and motion without flattening it. The core stays stable while the audience’s behavior changes.
If you are heading toward actual production, it helps to understand how modern print work gets made and placed; this primer on digital print advertising covers the production side. Then pick one of these seven systems and test it against your next brief. Write the idea in one sentence, name the device that makes it recognizable, and map that device across print, social, video, and motion. One idea, carried everywhere, beats a folder of disconnected executions.
Frequently asked questions
It survives translation. Write the idea in one sentence, then check whether it still works as a 6 second video, a social tile, and a billboard read at 90 kilometers an hour. If the idea only works with the original layout, you have a nice page, not a system. The classics all pass this test: Think Small works spoken aloud, and the Absolut bottle works at any size.
Yes, in specific situations: reaching a local or older audience, signaling seriousness (a full-page ad is a costly, visible commitment), standing out where competitors are digital-only, and events or retail spaces where a physical piece lingers longer than a feed impression. Treat print as a targeted move with a defined audience and response path, not a default line item.
Give every piece its own response path: a campaign-specific QR code, promo code, vanity URL, or phone number that appears nowhere else. Then compare behavior between exposed and unexposed groups, for example matched regions with and without the placement, or sales inside a defined window after the run. If a print piece has no response path at all, you are making a brand bet, which is fine only if you decided that on purpose.
