#10 “Talk To Chuck” – Charles Schwab (click here to see the campaign)
Company : Charles Schwab
Agency: Euro RSCG
ThirdWay Ad Blog Review: click here
Rationale: Schwab receives a major overhaul with these engaging and creative print and television ads from Euro RSCG. The campaign balances visual novelty with an aggressive, consumer-oriented message that gets attention.#9 “The Art of the Heist” – Audi (click here to read a BusinessWeek description of the campaign)
Company : Volkswagen AG
Agency: McKinney & Silver
Rationale: This campaign started off with the theft of a new Audi A3 from a New York Audi dealership and evolved as Audi posted handbills seeking information about the heist at the New York International Auto Show. It wasn’t clear at first that this was advertising, and that is what is intriguing and noteworthy about Audi’s approach. Audi recognized that car sales are largely driven by the opinions of the most fervent brand followers and found a way to mobilize them with this game around the A3. The campaign was so complex that BusinessWeek reports that Audi had to staff an attorney fulltime on the game. The result was the sale of 500 A3′s in the first week of availability – a pace well beyond expectations.

#8 “The Family Farmer” – Ben & Jerry’s (click here to see the campaign)
Company : Unilever
Agency: McKinney & Silver
ThirdWay Ad Blog Review: click here
Rationale: Cause-based advertising is notoriously difficult to get right. Some brands with strong affiliations to causes get little credit for their efforts. Other brands are so heavy-handed with their self-promotion that they damage their image. Unilever and McKinney & Silver have combined efforts to make Ben & Jerry’s look and feel small again by promoting the Campaign for the Family Farmer. It is a socially and politically astute choice that leaves little room for disagreement. By focusing on the cause and using the Ben & Jerry’s name as an endorsement of the cause and to ask for support, Unilever brilliantly capitalizes on the full affiliation value of the campaign.

#7 “Characters Welcome” – USA Networks (click here to see the campaign)
Company : NBC Universal
ThirdWay Ad Blog Review: click here
Rationale: One of the great advertising challenges of 2005 was to entertain while still delivering a relevant brand message. It was surprising to see a cable network show how this could be done with witty, unique spots that created a clear brand character for the network. In fact, these spots were some of the best advertising on the network.

#6 “Alter Ego” – Motorola ROKR (click here to see the campaign)
Company : Cingular/Motorola
Agency: BBDO
ThirdWay Ad Blog Review: click here
Rationale: It seems like a tough job to explain a phone built by Motorola available from Cingular which features iTunes from Apple in a single :30 second spot. But BBDO does a marvelous job of threading the need with a visual metaphor that embodies the way that we listen to music better than most iPod commercials.

#5 “How We Earn It” – Smith Barney (click here)
Company : Citigroup
Agency: Merkley + Partners
ThirdWay Ad Blog Review: click here
Rationale: Newly freed from Salomon, Smith Barney reaches to the past for inspiration in this fresh, hard-hitting campaign. Taking a similar tone to both the legendary John Houseman spots and Charles Schwab’s overhauled campaign, these spots feature aging people in idyllic situations who interrupt the storybook to explain the dirty business of actually making enough money to retire. Merkley does a fine job of building on the long-dormant brand equity of Smith Barney.

#4 “Employee Discount For Everyone” – General Motors (click here)
Company : General Motors
Agency: McCann Erickson
ThirdWay Ad Blog Review: click here
Rationale: Of all of the advertising campaigns of 2005, none drove more sales than General Motors’ Employee Discount For Everyone. Of course, announcing a huge discount on your products is always a good way to get attention. But, as this advertising blog argued in July, General Motors went one step further with this promotion. The employee discount for everyone not only lowered the price for everyone, it gave everyone the same price. This helped women and African Americans who traditionally pay more on negotiated car prices. This simple commercial represented an important step forward to a tradition-bound industry.

#3 “I Can’t Believe I Ate That Whole Thing” – Alka-Seltzer (click here)
Company : Bayer
Agency: BBDO
ThirdWay Ad Blog Review: click here
Rationale: One of the most successfully advertised brands of all time returns to fighting form courtesy of BBDO, with the help of Peter Boyle and Doris Robert from “Everybody Loves Raymond.” This simple spot features an unhappy Boyle repeating the slightly updated signature line for Alka-Seltzer “I can’t believe I ate that whole thing.” The spot draws on our historical affinity for Alka-Seltzer advertising to bring us back to the brand – a neat trick which BBDO manages splendidly.

#2 “New Yorker Issue” – Target
Company : Bayer
Agency:
ThirdWay Ad Blog Review: click here
Rationale: 2005 may be remembered as the year when Target launched “Design for All” and sought to bring value and design together for ordinary people. The most extraordinary step in this long process was their capture of an entire issue of the New Yorker magazine. Rather than run conventional advertising, Target commissioned new artwork which had the red bullseye as a common them. As we discussed here, we think Target is up to big things in the future and the breakout in 2005 is only the beginning.

#1 “Dance Party” – Nextel (click here – the link is to AdForum, a pay site)
Company : Sprint
Agency: TBWA/Chiat/Day New York
ThirdWay Ad Blog Review:
Rationale: The best spot that ran in 2005 was actually launched late in 2004 by Sprint (the corporate parent of Nextel and TBWA/Chiat/Day). This is a breezy little spot that in 30 short seconds finally explains why you should care about Nextel if you are a business. Three distinctly uncool-looking white men gyrate to tunes in an office. The boss walks in and asks angrily about three important things. Using Nextel walky-talky phones, the GPS function and messaging service the three men find the answers and cheekily return to dancing. By repositioning the end benefit of the phone network to “More time for stuff you really want to do,” Nextel successfully shows why those squawky little phones are worth having. And amazingly, this spot becomes funnier and more memorable each time it is viewed – without losing the brand in the process.

Those are are picks for ad campaigns running in 2005. Here are a few caveats about our selections:

1. Our Vision is Limited – We only cover what we see, hear and read and what you, dear readers send us. We spent most of 2005 focusing on television advertising because it is still the lingua franca for advertising. We plan to extend our coverage of other media in the new year, but we acknowledge that other media are underrecognized in our awards.
2. Our Perspective is Different – from consumers and media commentators. We focus on just three criteria in choosing effective advertising:

1. Did it Capture Our Attention? Even the best strategy fails if nobody is watching.
2. Did it Position the Brand? Great advertising must reinforce the brand positioning that exists in the mind of the consumer
3. Did it Build the Brand? We really want to know if these spots added to the equity of the brand both directly (increasing revenue) and indirectly (increasing the brand premium over competition)

3. Our Information is Limited – We don’t have inside access to financial data that might support or contradict our picks for effective advertising. Our picks are based on publicly available data and our experience as brand managers and trainers.