70 free Marketing trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
63 free Marketing trivia questions with answers. Marketing trivia for the office quiz, the marketing class or anyone who has ever argued about the best ad of all time. It covers the famous campaigns and where they came from (Just Do It, Got Milk?, Apple's 1984, A Diamond Is Forever, the Marlboro Man, Think Small, Where's the Beef?), the mascots (Tony the Tiger, the Michelin Man, the GEICO Gecko, Betty Crocker, Ronald McDonald), the theory (the 4 and 7 Ps, AIDA, loss leaders, charm pricing), the people (Kotler, Ogilvy, Bernbach, Burnett), the firsts (the first TV commercial, the first banner ad, AdWords) and the fiascos (New Coke, the Boston LED scare). Easy questions any consumer can answer come first; later ones will test someone with a marketing degree. Digital-era items - CAN-SPAM, GDPR, Share a Coke, Old Spice - are in there too. Every answer has been checked against a reference page and carries its source, so the dates, prices and percentages are real rather than the version that gets repeated in conference keynotes.
30 of 70 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Nike's 'Just Do It' was reportedly inspired by the last words of whom?
Convicted murderer Gary Gilmore
Dan Wieden of Wieden+Kennedy coined it in 1988; Nike's share of the North American sports-shoe market went from 18% to 43% in the following decade.
Q 02How much was Carolyn Davidson paid in 1971 for designing the Nike Swoosh?
$35
She was a Portland State design student; in 1983 Phil Knight gave her a diamond Swoosh ring and 500 shares of stock, since split into 32,000.
Q 03The Swoosh's shape was inspired by what?
The wings of a Greek goddess
Nike is the winged Greek goddess of victory; the company had been called Blue Ribbon Sports until 1971.
Q 04'Got Milk?' was created in 1993 for which client?
California's dairy board
Goodby Silverstein & Partners wrote it; the first ad, 'Aaron Burr', was directed by a young Michael Bay.
Q 05Who directed the first 'Got Milk?' commercial, in which a history buff can't say 'Aaron Burr' through peanut butter?
Michael Bay
The milk-moustache print ads were a separate licence to the national MilkPEP body, which dropped the slogan for 'Milk Life' in 2014.
Q 06Apple's famous '1984' commercial, which launched the Macintosh, was directed by whom?
Ridley Scott
Chiat/Day's Lee Clow and Steve Hayden conceived it; Apple's board hated it, and it aired nationally only once, in the third quarter of Super Bowl XVIII.
Q 07Apple's '1984' ad technically first aired in December 1983 in which unlikely place?
Twin Falls, Idaho
Chiat/Day ran it on a local station on New Year's Eve to qualify for that year's awards.
Q 08Advertising Age named which line the best advertising slogan of the 20th century?
A Diamond Is Forever
Frances Gerety of N. W. Ayer wrote it for De Beers in 1947, late one night before a presentation, and it made the diamond engagement ring standard.
Q 09Before the Marlboro Man arrived in 1954, Marlboro had been marketed as what?
A women's brand, 'Mild as May'
Leo Burnett's cowboy turned it into a top-four brand within a year; two of the men who played him later died of lung cancer.
Q 10Which fast-food chain's 1984 ad had Clara Peller demanding 'Where's the beef?'
Wendy's
Walter Mondale borrowed the line against Gary Hart in a presidential debate; Peller was dropped in 1985 after telling a Prego ad 'I found it'.
Q 11Why is Bibendum, the Michelin Man, the colour he is?
Early tyres were pale, not black
He was born at the 1894 Lyon Exhibition when the Michelin brothers saw a stack of tyres shaped like a man; his name comes from Horace's 'Nunc est bibendum'.
Q 12The Michelin Man is one of the world's oldest trademarks. In his early depictions he did what?
Smoked a cigar and wore pince-nez
Cartoonist O'Galop drew him for the Michelin brothers; the Latin motto under him translates 'Now is the time to drink' - i.e. the tyre drinks up obstacles.
Q 13What are the 4 Ps of the marketing mix, as set out by E. Jerome McCarthy in 1960?
Q 21Haddon Sundblom is best known for painting which advertising figure for Coca-Cola from 1931 for 33 years?
Santa Claus
He is often wrongly credited with inventing the red-suited Santa; he also drew the 1957 Quaker Oats man.
Q 22What is hidden in the negative space of the FedEx logo?
An arrow between the E and x
Lindon Leader of Landor Associates designed it in 1994; the company had been founded as Federal Express in 1971 by Fred Smith.
Q 23How much did a 30-second commercial cost at the first Super Bowl in 1967?
$37,500
By 2026 the price was around $8 million; a 2010 Nielsen study found 51% of viewers enjoy the ads more than the game.
Product, price, place, promotion
Booms and Bitner added people, process and physical evidence for services in 1981; Lauterborn's customer-side 4 Cs came in 1990.
Q 14Which 'father of modern marketing' wrote the 1967 textbook Marketing Management?
Philip Kotler
He taught at Northwestern's Kellogg School from 1962 to 2018 and holds an MIT PhD in economics.
Q 15Which company aired the world's first TV commercial, on July 1, 1941, before a Brooklyn Dodgers game?
Bulova
It was a modified test card shaped like a clock and cost somewhere between $4 and $9 of airtime.
Q 16The first clickable web banner ad, run on HotWired in October 1994, was bought by which company?
AT&T
It read 'Have you ever clicked your mouse right here? You will.' - and 44 percent of people who saw it did.
Q 17What was the click-through rate on that first-ever web banner ad in 1994?
About 44%
Banner click rates today are typically well under one percent.
Q 18How many days did New Coke last before Coca-Cola announced the return of the original formula in 1985?
79
Launched April 23 and abandoned July 11 after tens of thousands of angry calls; company president Don Keough said 'We're not that dumb, and we're not that smart.'
Q 19What prompted Coca-Cola to reformulate its drink as New Coke?
Taste tests favouring sweeter Pepsi
The Pepsi Challenge, begun in 1975, had been humiliating Coke at shopping malls for a decade.
Q 20Malcolm Gladwell's critique of the Pepsi Challenge argued that a single sip favours what?
The sweeter drink
People may prefer a less sweet drink over a whole can, which is why Coke's taste-test victory turned into the New Coke disaster.
Q 24Which brand's Super Bowl ads have won USA Today's annual Ad Meter poll 14 times?
Budweiser and its Clydesdales
Advertising Age readers separately voted Coca-Cola's 1980 'Hey Kid, Catch!' with Mean Joe Greene the best Super Bowl ad ever.
Q 25Which agency made Volkswagen's 1959 'Think Small', Advertising Age's campaign of the century?
Doyle Dane Bernbach
Art director Helmut Krone and copywriter Julian Koenig put a tiny Beetle on a mostly white page; the 'Lemon' ad came from the same brief.
Q 26Tony the Tiger debuted in 1952 as the mascot for which cereal?
Frosted Flakes
He saw off Katy the Kangaroo, Elmo the Elephant and Newt the Gnu within a year; Thurl Ravenscroft growled 'They're gr-r-reat!' for five decades.
Q 27Which rival mascot lost out to Tony the Tiger on cereal boxes in the early 1950s?
Katy the Kangaroo
Eugene Kolkey at the Leo Burnett agency drew Tony; the also-rans were dropped within the year.
Q 28The GEICO Gecko speaks with which accent?
Cockney
English actor Jake Wood voices him; Kelsey Grammer was one of the earlier voices, and GEICO spent over $1.1 billion on ads in 2012.
Q 29What does the marketing acronym AIDA stand for?
Attention, Interest, Desire, Action
The formula is usually credited to E. St. Elmo Lewis around 1898; it is the ancestor of every marketing 'funnel'.
Q 30Google Ads launched in October 2000 under what name?
AdWords
It was renamed Google Ads in 2018 and charges advertisers per click through an auction.