YouTube and TED Showcase Good Advertising

The average New Yorker sees more than 5,000 advertisements per day day. Assuming the average New Yorker gets the Better Sleep Council’s and Shannen Dohertry’s recommended eight hours of sleep per night, that’s a little more than 5.2 ads per minute. That feels like a lot of advertising.

Steve Lambert of the Antiadvertising Agency certainly thinks so. Since 2004 he’s engineered a number of urban art initiatives, which simultaneously attack, call attention to, and question the intrusive nature of mass unsolicited cosmopolitan shill and the impact of a developed world where individuals have all but accepted paid public placement as the norm and not a nuisance.

Chris Anderson and TED think thousands of ad impressions a day is a lot of advertising, too. But instead of participating in initiatives that call for its cessation, they want to make advertising better. Enter Ads Worth Spreading.

Last year, the super-elite Southern California conference announced a contest with the intent to showcase “best-in-class ads that raise the bar, elevate the craft and invent new forms of engagement, both online and in general.” TED partnered with YouTube and the two organizations called for submissions in January. They received over 1,000 video ads, which were then vetted by a 24-person judging panel based on four criteria: Infectiously Compelling, Industry Impact, Talk, and Social Good.

TED curator Chris Anderson announced the 10 winners of Ads Worth Spreading at the annual TED conference in Long Beach, California earlier this month. They are:

• Chrysler: “Born of Fire” (Wieden+Kennedy)The Nike Foundation: “Girl Effect, The Clock is Ticking” (Wieden+Kennedy)
• Dulux: “Dulux Walls” (Euro RSCG London)
• Intel: “The Chase” (Venables Bell & Partners)
• Nokia: “The World’s Smallest Stop-Motion Character Animation” (Wieden + Kennedy London)
• Hornbach and HEIMAT Berlin: “Infinite House” (@radical.media)
• The Topsy Foundation: “Selinah” (Ogilvy Johannesburg)
• Batelco: “Infinity” (FP7/DXB, Bahrain)
• Savory Institute: “Changing Our Future” (Foresight Multimedia)
• Target: “Kaleidoscopic Fashion Spectacular” (Mother NY and Legs Media)

Some you’ve probably seen before (Chrysler’s ode to Detroit with a came by Eminem) and some you probably haven’t (Nokia’s tiny and whimsical stop-motion commercial), but all are worth a watch.

They’ll do nothing to roll back the advertising industry’s slow but sure, utter and complete takeover of public space. But for anyone who is resigned to consuming 5,000+ ad impressions per day, hopefully these selections will encourage companies to make the consumer experience at least a little more enjoyable.