30 Years Later, Motel 6 and Tom Bodett Are Still Cranking Out the World's Best Radio Ads

BBDO's Robin Fitzgerald picks her 3 favorite ads

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Among long-running advertising campaigns, few are as charming as Motel 6’s radio work featuring Tom Bodett as the folksy voice who promises that the motel will “leave the light on for ya.”

The campaign—which BBDO’s Robin Fitzgerald picks as one of her three favorites in our new “Best Ads Ever” video, above—has been running for a staggering 31 years. It was way back in 1986 that David Fowler, a creative director at The Richards Group in Dallas, heard Bodett talking on NPR’s All Things Considered (he had a gig as a humorist on the show, while making a living building houses in Alaska) and signed him up for the Motel 6 campaign.

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