After more than six decades of recognizing individuals who have shaped the creative industry, The One Club for Creativity is introducing a brand into the Creative Hall of Fame for the first time. The first inductee into the new Brand Hall of Fame will be Apple, selected in recognition of 50 years of work in design, branding and communications.
The new category is designed to recognize brands whose creativity is not limited to individual campaigns, but can be traced over a longer period and across different areas of the business. In Apple’s case, The One Club particularly highlights a continuity that extends from advertising to product design, packaging and retail store design.
The brand’s advertising history includes some of the best-known campaigns of the past several decades. From the 1984 commercial, which introduced the original Macintosh, and the Think Different campaign, through iPod Silhouettes and the Get a Mac series, to more recent platforms such as Shot on iPhone and Privacy, that’s iPhone.
Among its more recent work, The One Club also highlights the holiday films Misunderstood and Fuzzy Feelings, the accessibility-focused films I Am the Greatest and I’m Not Remarkable, as well as the HomePod film Welcome Home. Over the years, the brand has worked with internal creative teams and agencies Chiat/Day and TBWA\Media Arts Lab.
“It’s an incredible honor for Apple to join the Creative Hall of Fame, because imagination is woven into everything we do. It drives how we innovate, how we design, and how we work every day to empower people everywhere to create their own extraordinary things,” said Tim Cook, CEO of Apple.
The company already has a connection with the Creative Hall of Fame. Co-founder Steve Jobs was inducted in 2012, while Apple and TBWA\Media Arts Lab received the Penta Pencil in 2017 and 2026, a The One Show award recognizing an agency and brand that have created outstanding creative work together over the previous five years.
The One Club will consider candidates for the Brand Hall of Fame every two years. The organization will use its archive of more than a century of winners from The One Show and ADC Annual Awards to identify brands that have consistently appeared among award winners. The final selection will be decided by the organization’s national and international boards.
According to Kevin Swanepoel, CEO of The One Club, the aim of the new category is to recognize the rare brands that have made creativity a fundamental part of their identity and, in doing so, influenced both the industry and culture. Apple’s decades-long continuity in design, innovation and creative communication, he said, made it a natural choice as the first inductee.
The formal induction will take place on September 16, 2026, during a gala evening at Capitale in New York. The ceremony also serves as a fundraiser for the nonprofit The One Club for Creativity.
This year’s Creative Hall of Fame class also includes Rosie Arnold, former art director at BBH known for her work for Levi’s, Janet Champ, a copywriter at Wieden+Kennedy who worked on Nike’s If You Let Me Play campaign, and John C Jay, whose work has included brands such as Nike and Uniqlo.
They are joined by Caroline R. Jones, a pioneer of the advertising industry with experience at J. Walter Thompson, BBDO, as well as Caroline Jones Advertising, Zebra Associates and Mingo-Jones, Joyce King Thomas, the creative force behind Mastercard’s Priceless campaign, and Piyush Pandey, one of the key figures in modern Indian advertising, who through his work at Ogilvy brought the language, humor and everyday life of India into advertising.
This year, Michael Conrad, former Global CCO of Leo Burnett Worldwide and co-founder of the Berlin School of Creative Leadership, will be inducted into the Educators Hall of Fame.
When selecting individuals, The One Club evaluates three areas: the impact and longevity of their work, their contribution to the development of the industry and broader society, and their ability to influence new generations of creative leaders through their work, mentorship and by opening up opportunities.
