Advertising Age: Top Ad Campaigns

“Historians and archaeologists will one day discover that the ads of our time are the richest and most faithful daily reflections any society ever made of its whole range of activities.” –Marshall McLuhan

In 1999, as the 20th century came to a close, the Ad Age staff set out to examine all the ways in which advertising has motivated, entertained and moved us over the years. We ranked the 100 best campaigns of the century. Now, Advertising Age is updating this list with 15 of the best ad campaigns (so far) of the 21st Century.
Over the last 15 years, advertising and marketing, and the media it uses to get out its messages, has experienced an incredible upheaval as digital media and interactivity changed the dynamics of how consumers see and pay attention to brand messages.
On Jan. 12, Ad Age will unveil this century’s 15 top ad campaigns as chosen by a panel of judges made up of the industry’s leading and most distinguished creators and marketers. We gave the judges a list of 50 nominees from which to vote for their top 15.We asked our judges to consider three criteria, the same three questions that were used for the original Top 100 Ad Campaigns of the 20th Century:

• Was it a watershed ad or campaign, discernibly changing the culture of advertising or the popular culture as a whole?
• If the ad campaign itself was credited with creating a category, or if by its efforts a brand became entrenched in its category as No. 1.
• Was it simply unforgettable?

 
These top 15 landmark campaigns, and the top 100 ad campaigns of the 20 Century, are all in this ebook, Advertising Age’s Top Ad Campaigns.