WSJ: A Companion to Time's "Person of the Year"

After we were all anointed Time's "Person of the Year," The Wall Street Journal ran its "Best (and Worst) Ads of '06." Happily enough, the good folks at the Journal took its cue from Time and pointed out something good folks like Seth and Paul have been pointing out for some time. Commenting on advertisers' successful reactions to the trend that sees consumers desiring control over their own media, the WSJ said, "This low-key approach is a major reversal for an industry long keen on marketing messages delivered with a sledge hammer."

Here's WSJ's list of the 5 most successful ads of '06:

1. CareerBuilder's Monkey Business. Not one of my personal favorites aesthetically or in terms of usability, but I like how they integrated multiple media by promoting the Super Bowl TV ads.
2. KFC's TiVo Buster. I never actually saw this ad on TV, but I can't help but admire KFC's willingness to embrace and experiment with alternative solutions to a growing problem for TV advertisers by encouraging the audience to interact with the brand in new ways. I also appreciate how the promotion was able to drive traffic to the site to download coupons (Over 100K within a week, and 3 million page views). KFC also came under fire for supposedly violating an FCC rule against "subliminal advertising," but this was more a case of imaginative lawyers with too much time on their hands than KFC doing something wrong.
3. Philips "Bodygroom" Shaver. What can be said about this that hasn't been said before? It's shameless. It's engaging. It's hilarious, not just for what it shows, but for what it leaves out. Great use of technology. I have no word on the ROI (building a site like this had to be expensive), but it's difficult to put a price tag on the word-of-mouth something like that generates.
4. Apple's Anthropomorphism. With 95ish% of the market owning PCs, Apple didn't seek to make PC owners look bad, which would have been a polarizing disaster. The actor playing a generic "PC" is respectable in his own right, lovable for certain, but he's also a little out of touch with the "in" crowd. As the WSJ puts it, "Apple's knife cuts deep, but by the time rivals feel it, they have already started to bleed." These ads made the rounds on YouTube, but they also spurred a flurry of funny spoof ads on the same platform, which  by themselves do nothing but build awareness for Apple's ads and its brand.
5. Sprint's Phone. This is the one where one of the phones is supposedly a "crime deterrent" -- a stone-age use of cutting-edge technologies that Sprint tells us allows users to connect with the Web.

Notice how all of these, in some way, utilize either integrated or Web-only campaigns, or promote interaction with the Internet? It's a Web 2.0 world, folks. We're just living in it. First Time, and now The Wall Street Journal, seem to recognize this. Time's article smacks of shameless pandering. The Wall Street Journal article, by contrast appearing on page B1 of Friday's edition, seems much more authentic. Does that make it a trend? - Cam Beck