The best ads of the decade - did they make you purchase?

Best campaigns of the decade?

The Globe and Mail article has set out the 5 best campaigns this decade, with a few runners up. Most of h spots they've posted made me smile and agree with them. Some, like one the runner ups made me cringe at the thought of watching it again....

Take a look and let me know - did they miss something?

Potentially the Nike Freestyle ads?

Athletes as brands and selling them.....

Steve Nash the basketball star, Canadian and brand?

A great (but long) article posted on the Canadian marketing website, Marketing Mag.ca explains the evolution of athletes from brand promoters to brands themselves. Not very long ago Michael Jordan was just breaking through creating the Air Jordan brand with Nike.

Now athletes are brands themselves. Steve Nash is one of the most viral of these brands and is successfully leveraging his celebrity, awkward humour and viral videos to really make a breakthrough impact which is doing a great job at creating an image for himself and the products he promotes. Professional salaries are rising and so are the sponsorship stakes... not to mention the egos, yet somehow Mr. Nash is managing to keep it lighthearted.


Check out the full article here

Here are some of the Steve Nash videos. Two are for Vitamin Water and another is just fun:

"Web 2.0 way to get your vitamins" (Shamwow/SlapChop Parody with 50 Cent)


"I've been hired, naturally...." (Parody of the Office)


(Step Brothers Parody)


The Steve Nash brand is fun, entertaining and in good taste. It'll be interesting to see how athletes promote themselves after the success of Mr. Nash and his kinda awkward videos. Check out the article above for a deeper insight and other expamples of athletes promoting their brand.

Bringing page to life

Nike Lunarglide+ "Actually, it is rocket science"

The plain (almost boring) Nike print ad I found on the back of my Women's Health mag instructed me head on over to nikirunning.com to experience it in 3D.... Naturally, I was curious as to how an ad in a magazine could be 3D. Once there I was told to hold the page to my webcam, hesitantly (and in the privacy of my home so as to not incite thoughts of insanity from my peers) I lifted the page to my screen. Instantly the image jumped to life in 3D and could be rotated, split apart and switched from men's to women's. Pretty neat for a plain ol' print ad!

Bringing this page to life meant I stayed on the Nike site for much longer than I intended and searched through other pages to see what other tricks they might have hiding under their laces!

Even though I didn't purchase anything from them that day they were still, in a way, successful. I, the consumer, saw their ad and was intrigued enough to followed it online. Once there I was happily entertained through clever online technology and decided to spend even more time with their brand! So, no I didn't buy anything, BUT yes, I did build a deeper connection with their brand and have passed what I saw on to you.

If you want to check it out online there is a how-to video on nikerunning.com that shows a demonstration: http://nikerunning.nike.com/nikeos/p/nikeplus/en_US/products/lunarglide?blogSource=en_US#/experience

And from a consumer's perspective, here's what I found on youtube:


Pretty neat way of bringing print to life and driving online traffic ... so what's next?