Examples of Above the Line Marketing

Above the line (ATL) marketing is advertising in mass media: television, radio, newspapers, magazines, cinema and billboards. It reaches a large, broad audience at once, and its main job is brand awareness. Classic examples include Apple's "1984" Super Bowl ad, Apple's iPod silhouette posters, Pepsi's Cindy Crawford commercial and the "Got Milk?" campaign.

What is above the line marketing?

ATL marketing puts one message in front of as many people as possible through mass media. Instead of targeting individuals, it targets everyone who watches, listens or passes by. The goal is that when people later need the product, they already know and remember the brand.

The terms "above the line" and "below the line" date back to 1954, when Procter & Gamble changed how it paid its advertising agencies. The labels stuck as a way to split mass media from more targeted promotion.

Above the line vs. below the line vs. through the line

Digital channels blur the line. A national YouTube or streaming TV campaign works like ATL, while a search ad aimed at a narrow keyword works like BTL. See also online vs. offline marketing and integrated marketing.

Examples of above the line marketing

1. Television: Apple's "1984"

Apple introduced the Macintosh computer with a commercial directed by Ridley Scott and created by the agency Chiat/Day. Its only national broadcast was on 22 January 1984, during CBS's telecast of Super Bowl XVIII. The ad won the Cannes Grand Prix and is widely ranked among the greatest commercials ever made.

Why it is ATL: one broadcast to one of the largest TV audiences of the year, aimed at making a new product famous overnight.

2. Television: Pepsi and Cindy Crawford

In 1992 Pepsi ran a Super Bowl commercial with supermodel Cindy Crawford buying a Pepsi from a vending machine at a gas station. The ad became so well known that Pepsi remade it for Super Bowl LII in 2018, this time with Crawford's son, as part of a campaign marking the brand's 120 years in pop culture.

Why it is ATL: mass reach, a famous face and a simple scene designed to be remembered for years. The remake decades later shows how long that recall can last.

3. Outdoor and print: Apple's iPod silhouettes

From 2003, Apple advertised the iPod with dark silhouettes of people dancing against brightly coloured backgrounds, with the iPod and its earphones shown in white so they stood out. The design ran in TV commercials, posters and print.

Why it is ATL: one simple visual idea, repeated across mass media, that people recognised at a glance even without reading a word.

4. Print, TV and outdoor: "Got Milk?"

The "Got Milk?" campaign launched in 1993 for the California Milk Processor Board, created by the agency Goodby Silverstein & Partners. From 1995, the milk mustache print ads showed celebrities wearing a milk mustache. The campaign ran on TV, in print and outdoors.

Why it is ATL: a category campaign, selling milk rather than one brand, that needed to reach almost every household.

5. A B2B example: Salesforce at the Super Bowl

ATL is not only for consumer brands. In 2022 Salesforce ran a Super Bowl ad starring Matthew McConaughey as an astronaut, which ended with a call to focus on restoring Earth rather than escaping to Mars or the metaverse. In 2025 McConaughey returned in a Salesforce Super Bowl ad for Agentforce, its AI product.

Why it is ATL: most viewers will never buy Salesforce, but the people who choose business software are watching too. The ad builds familiarity before a sales conversation starts.

What are the pros and cons of above the line marketing?

Pros:

• Reach. One placement can reach millions of people at once.
• Brand building. Repetition in mass media builds recognition and recall.
• Credibility. Appearing in major media signals that a brand is established.
• Support for other channels. People who already know a brand may be more likely to respond to its sales outreach and ads later.

Cons:

• Cost. A 30-second ad during Super Bowl LX in February 2026 cost about 8 million dollars on average, according to Statista, up from 4.3 million dollars in 2015. That is media cost alone, before production.
• Waste. Much of the audience will never be a customer, which matters more for niche B2B products.
• Harder to measure. It is difficult to link a single sale to a TV ad or billboard.

How do you measure above the line marketing?

Because ATL rarely produces a click, marketers measure it indirectly:

• Brand lift studies: survey awareness and consideration before and after the campaign, or against a control group.
• Search lift: watch for more branded searches and direct website visits during and after the campaign.
• Regional tests: run the campaign in some regions only and compare results.
• Marketing mix modelling: a statistical method that estimates the sales impact of each channel, including TV and print, and helps compare return on investment. See the marketing mix.

Is above the line marketing right for you?

For most small and mid-size B2B companies, broad mass media is too expensive for the audience it reaches, and targeted below the line tactics work better. ATL makes sense when your market is large, you need broad awareness quickly, for example at a launch, and you can sustain the spend long enough for people to remember you.

For targeted alternatives, read about guerrilla marketing, buzz marketing and how to build and measure brand equity.