ADC Switzerland chooses the best German advertising text of all time

The result was very close: The winner by a razor-thin margin was the text "I never want children are the greatest thing for me" for SwissLife's "Life is full of twists and turns" prevention campaign from 2011, implemented by Spillmann Felser Leo Burnett. In second place comes "Ohne Dings kein Bums" for the Stop Aids campaign of the BAG from 1997, for which cR Basel was responsible. In third place is "Der Uhr" by Wirz for IWC from 1999.

"We wanted to remind people of the fine art of copywriting. And the competition showed that grandiose texts are still meaningful and inspiring," said Thomas Wildberger, jury chairman of the ADC Awards. "It was great to see how people engaged and that many of the subjects we posted daily from the shortlist on social media sparked exciting, passionate and also controversial discussions. For me personally, almost any of the proposals could have won, but the fact that Swiss Life ended up a notch ahead of the others doesn't surprise me. The turnaround phrase, so to speak, established a new category of writing. It is an idea of the century that cannot be repeated. The brilliant text mechanics are capable of telling entertaining and emotional stories without pictures. Congratulations to all involved on the agency and client side. You may not win a cube, but you can now rightfully call yourselves Queen or King of Copy."

One of those who was involved on the agency side back then is freelancer Thomas Schöb. When asked how the SwissLife campaign came about back then, he answers: "If you do without looking over your shoulder, if you only present a single idea, if you trust the intelligence, humor and imagination of the target audience, if you don't confuse emotionality with the depiction of happy people, then really good headlines can emerge."

Go to Shortlist with all proposals.