http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wEYFMHFTNec
Others of the year: Honda ‘Choir‘, Sky ‘Come Home To The Simpsons‘, Audi ‘Satellite‘ and DETR ‘The Day You Went To Work‘.
Slim Pickins, and I only put ‘Choir’ in because everyone else seems to like it.
And I’m not sure ‘Paint’ would be a classic in other years.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SpuSaGJ8E24
Travelocity ‘Moustache’ (not online), Guardian ‘Wimbledon’ (couldn’t find it online), VW ‘Life In A Day’, (ditto), Kleenex Velvet ‘Factory’ (why will no fucker put their ads online?), Observer ‘From Abba to Zappa‘, Levi’s ‘Bike‘, Playstation ‘Golfers vs Pornstars‘, Citroen ‘Transformer‘, Orange ‘Swayze‘, Orange ‘Astin‘ and John Smiths ‘Showstopper‘.
Good year, huh? I could also have included other ads from Orange, Levi’s and Life on The Playstation, but that’s fifteen corkers already, and with the high quality of the HoFers, it could be the best year overall.
Here are the best UK ads from 2003:
Other very good ones include Tango ‘Postman‘ and ‘Factory‘, Tesco Cherokee ‘Starbursts‘, Sony ‘Thank You’ (can’t find it online), Johnnie Walker ‘Fish‘, VW ‘Bollocks’, London Film Festival ‘Director’ (couldn’t find it online), Honda ‘Sense‘ and Wrigley’s ‘Dogbreath‘.
This was on at 5:30 PM during a screening of Turner and Hooch on the Comedy Channel:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N7oMY6sC7wQ
Here are the Hall of Famers from 2002:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YCi6YWpbgNk
And the Radio One Extra ad where people around a council estate make sounds in time to urban records. Can’t find it online.
Others include Pot Noodle ‘Slag of all snacks’, Tango ‘Postman’, Audi ‘Hendrix’, The Times ‘Banana’, Nike ‘Enjoy The Weather’, The other X-Box ad, Mercedes ‘Lucky Star’, Think ‘Two Things at Once’, and Barclay’s ‘Samuel L. Jackson’.
Good year for BBH and Danny Kleinman, eh?
Hmmm…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u-6njVFEq2A&feature=player_embedded
Here are the Hall of Famers from 2001 (remember this is UK only).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qfYmwaf89UE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pc4gwCVT4F4
Others of that year include Durex ‘Square’, VW Passat ‘Ice Cream’, VW Lupo ‘Baby’, Kick Racism Out Of Football ‘Dear White Fella’, Paedophiles Online ‘You Never Know’, Stella ‘Plague’, Playstation ‘Wolfman’, and Cup-a-Soup ‘Marathon’, which I couldn’t find online.
I know the anti smoking one seems pretty straight but I’ve seen it about fifty times and I cry every single time I see it, so it goes in the HoF (this is a benign dictatorship, not a democracy).
The Hall of Famers from 2000:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Wj-D5iF0oc
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nOeS9K4-7C0
Other greats include the QTV ‘Danster’ campaign, Heinz ‘Two Minutes’, Lynx ‘Shaver‘, Monster.co.uk ‘Voices’, Stella ‘Hero’s Return’, Audi ‘Wakeboarder’, Skoda ‘Factory’, Weetabix ‘Black Beauty’, Aristoc ‘Subtitles’, Metz ‘Judderman’, VW ‘Smile‘ and Reebok ‘Belly’.
I think that 2000 was the greatest ever year for British TV advertising. Several of the ‘greats’ could also be classics, depending on your opinion, but there’s 18 ads up there and they’re all exceptionally good.
Here’s the 1999 Hall of Fame selection:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zff9hVH3ptY
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kB9s3Ar2nd8
Others of that year include BA ‘PJ O’Rourke’ and the ones I couldn’t find online: Land Rover ‘Releasing an animal into the wild but it’s actually a car’, Olympus ‘Joan Collins’.
Not such a good year, that one. Maybe everyone spent the whole time pissed to celebrate the new millennium.
Here are 1998’s Hall of Famers:
Other greats from the same year: Supernoodles ‘Baby’, and ‘Wasted Away’, Scalextric ‘Birth’, Yellow Pages ‘Burglary’ and I couldn’t find Lego ‘Box’, BT ‘When you’re on a lampost’, Lynx ‘The one where the two people are standing next to each other on the tube’ or Sony ‘The one where the donut sign falls down’ online. Sorry about that.
Those of us who were around at the time might recall that this was a year when people complained about the dominance of the US, with their quite violent ads being given an unfair advantage through laxer BACC-type regulations, and by the fact that no one had seen them before and therefore their humour was fresher on the day.
But as you can see, the UK produced some real crackers that stand the test of time quite brilliantly.