Welcome to The Wheelhouse, where we discuss critical topics for marketers who want to maximise advertising effectiveness.
Alexandra Voss, Effectiveness Director at Ebiquity, returns to The Wheelhouse this December with a celebration of 2025’s most memorable adverts. Drawing on effectiveness principles and real-world benchmarks, this piece explores the recipe for creative success, from emotional resonance and brand consistency to the power of distinctive assets and long-term campaign thinking.
Following the success of last year’s article on the standout creatives of 2024 and why great creatives are so important, I have been invited back with another Top of the Pops-esque countdown for 2025!
Looking back over January to October of this year, we have again taken the top 100 spending UK advertisers by TV film code, which an eager panel of advert watchers whittled down to a top 12 shortlist of favourite adverts. Our UK office then voted on their favoured creative, ranking each from one to five.
Let’s delve into which brands made our top 5 this year:
5. In ‘The Big One’, Ariel cleverly plays with the name of their product throughout the ad with rangy Peter Crouch experiencing various ‘big’ stain experiences with the subsequent riposte of ‘big deal’. The Ebiquity pollsters clearly like their cleaning detergent ads to feature a footballer with Persil & Saka ranking well last year too, showing that using a celebrity can be a good way to differentiate yourself versus the competition.
4. Zooming into 4th place is the Trunk Trucker from Virgin Media. Broadband isn’t necessarily the sexiest product to try and advertise so I applaud Virgin Media’s disrupter technique, playing on their fun brand personality instead by using CGI animals whizzing about on various vehicles accompanied by 80’s bangers. This latest addition has a wonderful elephant adventuring to the bright lights of Bangkok to advertise their TV entertainment packages. This ad highlights how important a role music can play in advertising and linking ad formats on different media lines with the killer soundtrack getting stuck in my head whenever I hear the ad on TV or radio and immediately making Virgin Media spring to mind.
3. The Ebiquity pollsters again showed they are a bunch of animal lovers with Petplan’s emotive ‘Getting the Best Pet Care Matters’ coming in at position 3 this year. The moving and relatable story chimed with our viewers; our Effectiveness case studies and industry research show that adverts that drive a strong emotional response (which can be positive or negative) tend to be more memorable thus making that brand more top of mind when a customer is in a purchasing position.
2. Just pipped to the post for the top spot is Yorkshire Tea’s humorous ‘Investigations Done Proper’ at number 2. Yorkshire Tea consistently excels at strong brand visibility throughout the duration of their ads alongside the familiar look and feel of their ‘Done Proper’ range of adverts with assorted Yorkshire greats guest starring. This consistency of brand cues combined with their strategy of deploying the same creative multiple times and sticking with this creative universe over numerous years, drives immediate recognition for the viewer (even when a new creative is launched) as well as building long term brand salience. Also, who can resist seeing Happy Valley’s Sarah Lancashire back on the beat?!
1. Straight in at number 1 for Ebiquity’s favourite advert of 2025 is ‘The Weetabix Discovery’ with Weetabix showcasing classic British humour at its finest alongside good branding. Here Weetabix play with their infamous tag line of “Have you had your Weetabix?” and flip it to suggest Britain is on the slide because not enough people are eating their product – clever, eh? I should think it’s every marketer’s dream that their slogan becomes a phrase in the nation’s lexicon! And that it’s still going strong 30 odd years later is a perfect example of the long-term impact of advertising and remaining loyal to a fluent device to reap the benefits.
The recipe to creative success
Each of our top 5 tick one or more boxes of the effectiveness principles below which should see them measure a strong return on investment for their creatives:
- Strong brand visibility and clear attribution throughout a creative is critical. In our experience, recognition is a strong determinant of how well a creative performs: from our pool of FMCG benchmarks, we have measured that those using distinctive brand assets with strong recognition indicators enjoy 62% higher ROIs on average. In the simplest terms, we cannot act on an ad and purchase if we cannot ascertain who the advert is for!
- Brand consistency through fluent devices (e.g. characters, slogans), repeated creative deployment, and long-term campaign universes builds immediate recognition as well as long-term salience: longevity of brand cues compounds effectiveness over time. Ebiquity benchmarks show that new campaigns take time to work to their maximum effect, but good campaigns build, gaining greater efficiency (+45% by the 4th burst) due to higher recognition.
- Celebrity endorsement can effectively differentiate brands from competitors if used consistently so they become synonymous with your brand. One Ebiquity case study of a long term infamous brand ambassador measured that ads including them were 3.2x more effective than those that didn’t.
- Emotional response (both positive or negative) drives memorability. System1’s ratings system can help us measure how strong the emotional intensity of an ad is, with our top 5 creatives all scoring well above average for their industries with an average of 1.6 ranking them as either strong or exceptional. Music is one avenue to drive an emotional response and works as a great memory trigger for cross-media recognition.
Here are the links to each creative so you can have a watch yourself. What do you think about our favourite creatives of 2025? Do you agree, or do you have another contender?
5. Ariel – The Big One: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c7qUZiHA_kA
4. Virgin Media – Trunk Trucker: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ivg1ebSRu3M
3. Petplan – Getting the Best Pet Care Matters: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n_U1KrZecxs
2. Yorkshire Tea – Investigations Done Proper: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G4UHS3no1S0
1. Weetabix – The Weetabix Discovery: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T2ZZiIeuwRE
