Ad Age's Top 5 Ads of the Week: Brad Pitt's Dogs, Spice Girls, and a Skyrim Shelving Unit

This week's most celebrated advertising work leaned hard into comedy, celebrity, and cultural provocation — a mix of high-concept absurdism and savvy brand positioning that turned ordinary products into entertainment.

Topping the list is MapQuest, which parlayed a political moment into a viral brand revival. After pointedly ignoring Trump's attempt to rename Lake Ontario as 'Lake America,' the vintage mapping service saw a spike in downloads and followed up with a Quality Meats outdoor campaign. The ads — printed directions from six cities to the actual Lake Ontario — were designed to replicate the look of classic MapQuest printouts, complete with highway icons and that inexplicably blank third page everyone used to get. It's a textbook case of a dormant brand finding relevance by leaning into nostalgia and a timely political stance.

Running second, Caesars Sportsbook went grotesque to announce a major app overhaul. Agency Fellow Kids enlisted retired Green Bay Packers linebacker Clay Matthews and transformed him via Legacy Effects prosthetics into a surgically altered, 'looksmaxxed' caricature — exaggerated square jaw, cartoonish physique, calf implants and all. Director Dave Laden shot the piece through Hungry Man Productions. The literal-minded metaphor (the app got work done, so did the guy) is both cringe-inducing and impossible to ignore, and Matthews deserves credit for committing fully to looking ridiculous.

Ikea claimed the third spot with a genuinely clever gaming integration. Working with Mother and modding studio Kinggath Creations, the furniture giant built a free Skyrim companion mod featuring the Kallax shelving unit — fully voiced by British actor Matt Berry — that helps players manage in-game loot, completes a furniture-store quest, and battles a boss called the Clutter Golem. It even features a Dragon Shout ('AYE KEY YAH!'). The mod solves a real player frustration while embedding Ikea's storage identity deep inside a beloved fantasy world.

Dunkin' came in fourth with a Pumpkin Spice campaign built around a fictional girl-group mythology. Agency Artists Equity reunited real-life former Spice Girls Emma Bunton and Geri Halliwell-Horner with Saturday Night Live alumna Rachel Dratch, who plays 'Pumpkin Spice' — a supposed forgotten fifth member staging a delusional autumn comeback complete with bad choreography and seasonal beverages. Rounding out the top five, De'Longhi recruited Brad Pitt, director Spike Jonze, and 16 actual dogs for a global spot promoting the Magnifica Duo coffee machine. Pitt plays the put-upon human in a house full of canine roommates with grievances, keeping the product's hot-and-cold versatility in frame without letting it overwhelm the comedy.