Despite almost two decades of innovation online, digital ads are still being used to simply inform more than they're being used to connect, engage, and entertain. So to create an immediate change in the industry’s perception of and approach to digital advertising, we put the space to the ultimate test. We asked five legends of American advertising to re-imagine their most iconic advertising campaigns for a medium they knew almost nothing about: the web.

For Project Re: Brief, Google partnered with four global brands and the advertising legends behind four of America’s greatest advertisements to re-imagine Coca-Cola’s “Hilltop” (1971), Volvo’s “Drive it like you hate it” (1962), Alka-Seltzer’s “I can’t believe I ate the whole thing” (1972), and Avis’ “We try harder” (1962) for the digital age.

As part of Project Re: Brief, we showcased the capabilities of modern web technologies and Google’s advertising platforms through interactive mobile and display ads for each re-imagined campaign. For Avis, we incentivized customer feedback online by letting users turn their rental stories into short, personalized films. For Coca-Cola, we enabled consumers to actually ‘buy the world a Coke’ through specially-developed vending machines. For Alka-Seltzer, we revealed the events of Ralph’s day leading up the famous bedroom scene and allowed the him to interact with the content and the user. And for Volvo, we told unique story of Irv Gordon - a man with nearly 3 million miles on his P1800S and allowed the viewer to become a part of his journey in real-time. Each experience demonstrated that digital ads are every bit as powerful a medium of storytelling as traditional channels

In just 1 month, the project garnered over 70m earned media impressions, including coverage in almost every major trade publication (AdAge, the New York Times, Creativity Online, AdWeek, Fast Company, Mashable, Gizmodo and The Wall Street Journal), and what began as a campaign to get the industry talking, turned into a global conversation.The individual executions themselves also served to highlight the potential of the medium. Average time spent with Rich Media ads in the US is 9.2 seconds - and all 4 executions exceeded this figure by a staggering amount. The Avis ad saw an increase of 3,000% above the average, Volvo at 1,707%, Coca-Cola at 1,033% and Alka-Seltzer up 989%.