Johanna Blakley

Media | Entertainment | Fashion

Archive for online culture

Catvertising & the Popular Culture of the Web

Kenzo Digital and I were teamed up by TED to nominate amazing ads for the Ads Worth Spreading challenge. Every nomination team had a category – here was the description of ours:

Cultural Compass

These are the campaigns that touch a cultural nerve; ads that capture or catalyze a cultural movement, moment or event. These campaigns may reflect the popular culture of the web, having gone viral, or celebrate specific regions or global diversity as part of their message. These are ads that are an active part of cultural dialogue in a connected world, crossing borders and cultures.

We put together a pretty long list of candidates – from silly video game ads to a touching long-form piece about the impact of the Tōhoku earthquake and tsusami on the creative community in Japan. Now that TED has announced the winners, I thought I’d celebrate some of the runners-up that we loved.

For those of you who didn’t have the good fortune of encountering “Catvertising” (top) I am delighted to share it with you here. I can’t tell you how many people forwarded this one to me – and with good reason. Kenzo and I were tasked with nominating ads that reflected the popular culture of the Web: no accurate accounting of that culture could ignore the ridiculously robust role that cat videos play.