What you may not have realized is that many of these comforting, sexy, funny and charismatic people telling you what to do are celebrities. Some of biggest and best ad campaigns on today’s television and radio ads feature star your favorite television and movie crushes and heros who end up using their vocal charm to earn a bit of extra coin on the side.

Get off that matted-down couch cushion! Here are some great examples of how celebrity voices have been used to turn lackluster commercials into much more successful advertisements.

Company: Visa
Celebrity Voice: Morgan Freeman

When it comes to voice overs, Morgan Freeman gets a gold star. While his honey-smooth southern drawl appears in countless ad campaigns as well as full length movies, it is so distinctive that we know exactly who it is and can place a face to the name immediately.

This particular ad campaign for the 2012 Olympics in London gets extra bonus points from me because of its consistency over several commercials. They are all filmed with same gold tone, feature an up and coming olympic athlete and feature Morgan Freeman’s voice explaining the hardships and thrills of intense competition. I hope to see more of these spots in the months leading up to the big games.

Company: Esurance
Celebrity Voice: John Krasinksi (Jim from The Office!)

This Esurance ad uses John Krasinski’s characteristic playful voice tone along with Chet Atkins plucking away on guitar behind it. Krasinski uses whimsical questions in each of the Esurance ads in the campaign to challenge the mid-twenties to early thirty-somethings to feel safe with Esurance. Why do we trust him? Because he’s Jim from the office and who wouldn’t trust the voice that’s paired with such a great and persistent “aw shucks” face?

Company: Fage
Celebrity Voice: Willem Dafoe

This celebrity voice-over advertisement weighs in a bit more heavily than the first in the series which was only 16 seconds. For that installment, Fage didn’t exactly get their monies worth. In the new Fage commercial, the idiosyncratic Boondock Saints co-star makes every word count as he narrates the scene with his vocal talents.

Unusually, Fage has done a remarkable job of making beautiful abstract art from yogurt, something that is easily taken for granted with its fermented, milky form. I look forward to more macro cinematography with the other Fage flavors in the near future.

Company: Olive Garden
Celebrity Voice: Kelly Ripa

When she’s not busy with her show, kids and husband, Kelly Ripa is busy doing voiceovers for the Italian chain restaurant, Olive Garden. The slightly raspy notes in her voice add a bit of a fun quality make her a good choice to promote the restaurant’s deals.

Company: Dodge
Celebrity Voice: Michael C. Hall (Dexter)

For anyone who’s seen the hit Showtime series, Dexter, this celebrity voice over is a fairly easy one to guess. The ominous and looming tone that Hall projects is perfect for the promotion of the angry, dark Charger.

Since Michael C. Hall’s voice over is very prominent in the Dexter drama, it is easy for fans to draw the conclusion that this vehicle would be a prime vessel for a strong, brooding, independent type (with maybe a few secrets to hide…and, not to mention, a trunk with plenty of head room!)

I’ve decided to keep this post a work in progress since there are so many new commercials featuring dubstep. I’ve also renamed the post “Current Ad Campaigns Featuring Dubstep Music” because there are plenty more than 6 out there.

Are consumers developing robot ears?

I’ll start out by saying that I am a little biased in this one. Over the past few years I have been following the electronic music scene and have loved the new life that’s recently been drawn into particularly the dubstep scene.

For those of you that have no idea what I am talking about, please feel free to click on some of the examples below. The new style of dubstep can be described as very high-quality with intensely warping or wobbling bass and electronic sounds that take on more of an organic sound than machine-like as most previous electronic music has boasted for years.

I have to admit, when I started hearing dubstep in advertisements over the past year or so, I got really excited because it was proof that the genre was finally starting to walk into the mainstream. Below are 6 prime examples of the best ad campaigns I have seen employ this type of background music.

HP dm4 Beats™ Edition
featuring Nero - “Promises”

As a side note, I am a huge fan of Nero and I recommend picking up or downloading the entire album. 

Pucker Vodka – Raspberry Rave
featuring a remix of Steve Aoki’s - “Ladi Dadi”

Wallgreens – Wallgreens Pharmacists Go Above and Beyond to Help

Does anyone know what song or who the artist is in this commercial? Leave a comment and I’ll add it!

Internet Explorer 9 – A More Beautiful Web
featuring Alex Clare – “Too Close”
Commercial by Keith Rivers 

The North Face – Tested. Proven
featuring Bassnectar – “Above and Beyond”

GoPro HD – Kayak Kiss
featuring Skrillex – “Scary Monsters and Nice Sprites”

Weetavbix Chocolate Spoonsize
featuring Mord Fustang – “A New World”

Southern Comfort Fiery Pepper – “Two Things”
featuring Crush Effect – “Burn It Down”

Mortal Kombat 9
featuring Magnetic Man – “Karma Crazy”

Here is the Gold medal performance:

What is video mapping?

Video mapping is the means by which video production studios create accurate and believable spaces or canvases to scale that relate to the videos that are projected on them. The example above and the ones to follow are all examples of building projections, a specific type of video mapping and projection.

Building projections have been around for quite a while but it is only fairly recently that technology has caught up to the level of realism that we have come to expect. The idea is to be able to trick brain into thinking that something is happening that actually is not. For instance, many building projections show a building as pliable or shattering. With tight video mapping and high resolution, realistic video graphics, these newer examples are making it harder and harder to distinguish art versus reality.

Video mapping ad campaign examples

Below are some of the more impressive examples, in no particular order, of video mapping building projections used for some of, what I consider to be the one of the most successful advertising techniques out there.

BMW JOY 3D: Asia’s 1st Interactive 3D Building Projection

Agency: NuFormer

“This particular 3D projection was done on two identical, adjacent buildings of Sun Tec City in Singapore. The projections were on show for two nights and were part of a special event for the top executives of BMW Asia and their business associates.” -  NuFormer.com

3D projection mapping in the city centre of Amsterdam for H&M

Agency: Muse Amsterdam

“On 22, 23 & 24 November 2010, H&M brought their flagship store in Amsterdam to live with a 3D projection mapping on the historic building. For over 3 minutes, guests and a gathered crowd enjoyed a surreal fairytale of light and magical effects. A red ribbon, wrapped around the building, untangles and transformed the building into a colorful dollhouse where nothing is what it seems. An old fashioned music box pops opens up and music notes floated out that lights up rooms. A big eye peers inside the dollhouse setting of a climax. Layers of silk, wool and jeans fabric are peeled away of revealing the flagship store.  The red ribbon reties itself and is met with a large cheering crowd.” - muse.pressdoc.com

Charter “Ultimate Home Makeover”

Agency: Klip

This is a great video for those who are interested in learning more about what goes into the process of a successful video mapping ad campaign.

Stand apart from the competition

Rather than a static flyer or on air commercial, these event driven ad campaigns make their mark on those who attend and get their mileage from all of the posting and reposting of videos of the advertisement.

The cost for an expertly crafted campaign to the magnitude of the examples above is usually well above the heads of the small to medium sized company, however there are several other outlets for video mapping and projection.

Electronic music is beginning to play a more and more important role in today’s musical taste and product advertising, namely the gaming and movie industries. Since there is usually only one performer in many electronic music acts, the live shows had been lacking some interesting elements. With the uprising of precision video mapping, artists like Deadmau5, The Glitch Mob, and Bassnectar can now visually stimulate the audience with the same level of dynamics as their audio.

The future of video mapping advertising campaigns

As with any technology, the video mapping of today will someday become obsolete. They are already performing “4D” experiences on buildings, similar to 3d movies. I believe the studios will be able to get even more precise with their mappings and projections and produce even more successful ads as the software and hardware continues to leap frog itself every few years or so.

The great thing about these types of advertisements is that they serves as an inspiration for those who believe that the only limit is one’s imagination.

• Have you been to any video mapping and building projection events?
• What s the most successful projection advertisement you’ve watched.

At first, I thought this was a trailer for a movie that was coming out that I hadn’t heard about, but I quickly realized it was too complete of a thought for it to be one. When I say complete I mean it. Some highlights of the ad are:

• real panthers
• shot in location in France, Italy and Spain
• full orchestra for the original soundtrack
• high-end special effects by WIZZ, a french production studio

The reason for such an epic ad campaign from a company that rarely advertises on television, at least in the United States is to celebrate their 165th birthday as a company.

According to the Cartier Website, the short film used three real panthers to walk us through the famed jeweler’s history. These beautiful big cats had never stepped foot on snow before the shoot and with locations like France, Italy and Spain, the film makers were a bit worried the Panthers might act strangely around the powder.

Overall, through the use of quality graphics, sound and theme, this made for one of the best ad campaigns I have seen in a very long time. It’s unfortunate that Cartier was unable to showcase their work for a larger audience during the recent and most-watched event of the year, Super Bowl XLVI, although the cost of the ad space would have averaged closed to $24.5 million for the three and a half minute short film. I think they should take the money they saved and give the panthers, Cali, Tiga and Damou their fair share of premium steaks on diamond encrusted plates for being such good sports.

As a child of the 80′s, living in the U.S., the first ad campaigns that comes to my mind are the Nickelodeon bumpers, or the short commercials that show up just before going to a commercial break, just before going back to a broadcast, or both. These are some of the ads that I specifically remember as a youngster while hanging out at my grandmother’s house circa 1986-89:

There’s something about the creativity and excessiveness, (not to mention incessant timing) that allowed for this to be memorable for me. The simple message of “Nick, Nick, Nick, Nick, Nick, Nick, Nick, Nick, Nickelodeon!” was one that was easily remembered, even if it was wrapped around the complex polyphony of an African quartet or lazily sung by a chorus of stuffed picNICK ants. THAT is what the best ad campaigns mean to me; commercials or advertisements that can be easily picked out quickly and that a generation can use as a forum for discussion about life at the time of it’s placement on the public.

OK, so maybe that’s a bit of a long-winded definition, but I guess that is why the great people who work for dictionaries get paid to come up with such concise meanings for seemingly all-encompassing words, so we’ll go back to theirs: “the action of calling something to the attention of the public especially by public announcement.”

Something as broad as this could literally be applied almost to the beginning of time or at least to the time when communication began altogether, but we’ll leave that for another article. With the meaning of advertising fresh on our minds, lets delve a little deeper into the meaning of ADVERTISING.

Advertising is nothing short of a publicly viewed announcement. Therefore, the best original manifestation and simplest form would technically be cave paintings, or more the modern version, billboards. Billboards are posted in a common area and the value of a billboard ad campaign lies in its location; busy cities are going to be more highly regarded than a university common area, but with the audience in mind, both can be equally as effective. That being said, I think the word relevance is important and should be included while defining an advertisement. There is really no reason to advertise when audience doesn’t want to hear the message or it is so irrelevant it does not apply to the audience that is being exposed to it.

I would like to therefore propose a new definition for advertising:  the action of calling something relevant, especially by public announcement, that can be easily remembered and can be used as a forum for discussion about present life and reminisced or remembered by the public at a later date. 

Coming from  Graphic Design and Communications backgrounds, I have always been very interested in what makes the best paper advertisements, commercials, radio spots, and online ad campaigns resonate with the general public or in some cases very specific audiences. Since my education revolves around the need for a successful projects ability to satisfy attention to creative and technical aspects, I have always admired the advertising world for doing the same.

You may already know that there is a lot of creative and technical work that is put into the best ad campaigns, but what REALLY makes them stand out? Why was one particular retro ad more memorable than countless others created in a certain era? Those along with the following are the types of details and answers that I hope to provide with BestAdCampaigns.com:

• Best ad campaigns in history
• How the best ad campaigns were created
• Current trends and examples of the best advertisements
• Personal opinions on the best advertising campaigns

I look forward to educating you, the visitor/reader as well as myself in the process and will try to keep BestAdCampaigns.com as informative, current and credibly opinionated as possible.

I’d like to start things off with a “bang” by displaying (wherever legally permitted) and discussing the best ad campaigns from Super Bowl XLVI. Hopefully this year the big name advertisers will leave us in awe!