The whole build up to The Blair Witch Project.
Wayyy back, I remember the first, and for the longest time, only crossover ad, and it was brilliant.
You think you’re watching a commercial for Trix cereal, and the rabbit steals the bowl of Trix and runs away, but after making a few deeks and turns, he rounds a bush and manages to get away with the bowl of cereal. But then he looks down with a dejected look at the bowl in his hands and a message pops up on the screen… “Got milk?”. I laughed my ass off.
In the 90s, RJ Reynolds (Camel cigarettes) came out with the advertising campaign for Joe Camel. It was so successful that studies showed by age six, nearly as many children could correlate Joe Camel to cigarettes as could correlate Mickey Mouse to Disney.
Coca Cola putting peoples names on the bottles was a stroke of genius
Genius/nefarious: BP inventing “personal carbon footprint calculator”, so that individuals can be shamed for any wasteful/harmful behavior, while taking the pressure off fossil fuel companies for the extensive damage they’ve done to the planet.