Best TV ads ever
What is your favourite TV ad of all time? It’s a tough call for me. Looking back at the best TV adverts of just the last decade alone is hard enough.
Since the turn of the century, the ads have changed from cinematic blockbusters to more subtle and quirky – or conceptual ideas.
Of course, advertisers have also had to cross over to combine campaigns effectively across both TV and the growing power of the web. So the really best ad campaigns have been great on TV and have also gone viral, or semi viral, on the internet.
A few have used clever special effects, but the most effective of all have relied on what are simply clever ideas, well executed.
For example, one of the most successful ads of the last few years has involved a man in a gorilla suit playing the drums; and that was largely it!
Other great ads include the John West Salmon bear fight, from back in 2000. This started out as what seemed to be a nature documentary, but quickly turned into a straightforward fight between a man and bear over a salmon. It’s difficult to say what made it funny – but funny it most certainly was.
Or how about the Levi’s “twisty” jeans ad – or maybe the Honda ad featuring a series of Honda Accord parts in an implausibly long chain reaction; engineered to perfection?
For me, the best TV ads of all time are also the funniest. In recent years, the John Smith’s ads featuring Peter Kay have been great. These ads show John Smith’s as a no-nonsense beer and include Peter Kay representing Great Britain in a diving competition, where he does the “bomb”. In another, he tells his young daughter that she really ought to be worried about burglars rather than monsters.
But when it comes to the funnies, few can match the Fosters Brad & Dan ads, for really capturing the spirit of the age. Young English men phone their Aussie counterparts for words of wisdom on various completely unimportant aspects of life about which the two Aussie lads are only too happy to dispense considered advice; “priceless” as a different ad might say!
