Advertising Age, the famous American magazine of advertising and marketing, has just announced the Top Campaigns of the 21st Century. In 1999, at the turn of the 20^th century, Ad Age had come out with the ranking of the 100 best campaigns of the century in a special issue. (In case you would also like to go through the 100, you can read about them here).

Advertising Age has now come out with a list of the top 15 ad campaigns of the 21^st century just has we have entered 2015. This was necessitated because Ad Age (as Advertising Age is popularly called) felt that the last fifteen years have seen unprecedented change due to technological advancements, the incredible rise of the internet and the increasing importance of digital media.

Advertising Age asked its judges, comprising of leading marketing and advertising practitioners, to consider three criteria (the same criteria that they had used for judging the top 100 campaigns of the 20^th century) for judging the shortlisted 50 ad campaigns:

• Was it a watershed ad or campaign, discernibly changing the culture of advertising or the popular culture as a whole?
• If it 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?

The results will not many of you by surprise because they include ad campaigns for brands that we are all pretty familiar with and respect a lot: Apple, Nike, BMW, American Express, Burger King, Budweiser, P&G, Old Spice, Red Bull, Dos Equis, and Chipotle.

You can read about the 15 campaigns of the 21^st century here.

Visual courtesy : adage.com