The ad that changed the industry, Volkswagen's The Force ad, from 2011's Super Bowl, was an instant classic, and remains so.
A premise of a kid dressed up as Darth Vader using the power of the force on various objects and creatures around his home with a punchline at the end, it was a recipe for success for reasons more than just the ad itself.
Desipte being released right in the middle of the decade gap between 2005's Star Wars Episode 3 2005 prequel, and the 2015 Episode 7 sequel (it's a convoluted order, any SW fan will explain at length), Volkwagen's 2012 Passat was the featured model at the time... but all that took a back-seat to a six-year-old kid dressed up as Darth Vader.
Problem was, the ad was 60-seconds long, and VW had booked two 30-second spots for Super Bowl 45, at a cost of $3millionUSD each.
So, four days before the Super Bowl, the 60 second version of "The Force" appeared on YouTube, a platform that was barely five years old at the time. Racking up 17 million views even before kick-off, the video was viewed more than 70 million times before being taken down in 2021 (presumably due to a 10-year copyright term).
These days, marketing companies employ a similar cross-platform strategy across TV, social media and multiple areas and integration and all those other marketing buzz words.
The idea of Darth Junior came from a photograph in the ad agency's Los Angeles office, of a kid wearing a Vader helmet, sitting forlorn at an empty Burger King table. Twelve years on, the ad is still considered the best Super Bowl car ad of all time and even more shocking, that 6yo boy, Max Page, is now 18 and has had more than a dozen heart surgeries for a congenital disorder.