We've come a long way since the PG Tips chimps.
When it's such big business, it's no surprise that some of the great film directors working in Hollywood have made forays into commercials – often with results so impressive that the ads feel like a short movie of their own. (So much so that you sometimes forget what it is they're even for – whoops!)
We've rounded up eight of the very best, by the very biggest. Enjoy, and don't blame us if you find yourself fancying a pint of Guinness or a fizzy wine.
1. Ridley Scott – Apple
Less beloved than his 1973 Hovis ad ("t'was like takin' bread to t'top of world"), Sir Scott's dystopian Apple Mac short is generally considered one of the most influential commercials of all time. The roles have reversed a bit now that Big Brother sounds more like Siri, but back in 1984 Apple was just a braless model taking a sledgehammer to conformity. (And presumably hoping that everyone would get the literary reference.)
2. Wes Anderson – American Express
The best thing about Wes Anderson's AmEx ad isn't the brilliant cinematography, the vein of self-parody or even the casual references to François Truffaut's New Wave classic Day For Night. It's the fact that it doesn't have anything to do with banking. Hipsters don't want to be told which credit card to buy! They only want to be told which credit card Wes Anderson buys.
3. Spike Jonze – Kenzo
Spike Jonze's career is peppered with brilliant commercial credits (check out his brutal Ikea lamp short, or the infamous anti-ad he shot for Gap), but his latest is probably the most bizarrely memorable. Starring Margaret Qualley from The Leftovers, Jonze's Kenzo ad shows us exactly what it feels like to be somewhere we don't want to be (and what it feels like to jump through a giant eyeball made out of flowers).
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4. David Lynch – Playstation 2
It was a bit of a coup for Sony when they bagged David Lynch to direct a series of ads to promote the Playstation 2 back in 2000. In retrospect though, it probably wasn't the smartest marketing idea. Instead of showing fun clips of sexy millennials bonding over Crash Bandicoot, Lynch handed in one static shot of a dog, one scrappy animated short about a werewolf riding a rocket and this disturbing mini-masterpiece that looked like an Eraserhead sequel.
5. Jonathan Glazer - Guinness
Before Sexy Beast and Under The Skin, Jonathan Glazer made a name for himself with one of most iconic ads of the '90s – still regularly voted the best commercial ever made. A bass heavy mix of Moby Dick, Walter Crane and Leftfield, Glazer transformed a belchy old man's beer into the coolest drink around with 60 seconds of black-and-white beauty.
6. Michel Gondry – Smirnoff
How would you visualise the transformative effects of cheap vodka? Phil Mitchell puking up bile in a skip? Not if you're French surrealist Michel Gondry. Riffing on the optical illusions of a clear liquid bottle, Gondry's 1996 Smirnoff ad was a seamless bullet-time masterwork (long before The Matrix) – spinning cameras, perspectives and genres through a movie chase homage that was better than the whole of The Green Hornet.
7. Wong Kar Wai – Phillips
Less of an advert than a stand-alone short (with a passing reference to LCD televisions), There Is Only One Sun looks like a condensed version of Kar Wai's 2046. Exquisitely painted in neon colours and filtered through a range of reflections, textures and lights, the 10-minute film stands as a perfect distillation of Kar Wai's best work. It probably also looks great on a Phillips TV.
8. Martin Scorsese - Freixenet
In 2007, Martin Scorsese discovered three pages of an un-filmed Alfred Hitchcock script called "The Key To Reserva" and decided to film them exactly as Hitch might have done. It's all a lie, of course, designed to peddle fizzy wine in Spain, but the film itself is a brilliant love-letter from one genius to another – proving just how confident Scorsese is at imitating his idols.
