People may seem to do anything they can to avoid commercials but there are some that they actually choose to watch. YouTube has compiled a list of 2012’s Top 20 ads uploaded by brands on its site, and it shows that consumers actually chose to watch a few ads, billions of times, last year.

How YouTube defined most popular: "The 2012 YouTube Ads Leaderboard celebrates the U.S. ads that most moved audiences through a winning combination of promotion (paid ads) and popularity (organic views)." The tally captures data as of Dec. 6th, 2012.

While Nike's Nike Football channel took the top spot with "Nike Football: My Time is Now," Old Spice led the pack with four ads in the top 20. Nike and Volkswagen each had two ads on the list.Continue reading...

With December 21st the Mayan calendar's end of the world deadline (finished your holiday shopping yet?), Old Spice today revealed on Twitter and Facebook the latest installment in the digital portion of its Believe in Your Smellf campaign: a video game called Dikembe Mutombo's 4 1/2 Weeks to Save the World, which features the retired NBA star and a sub machine gun with pickle laser. One Facebook commenter called it a "truly awesome time waster" — we'll let you judge for yourself. Credit, as with previous Old Spice campaigns, to Wieden + Kennedy Portland.Continue reading...

Depending where you were, you may have celebrated Halloween on Oct. 31st. At Procter & Gamble, they've been celebrating the company's 175th anniversary.

That's right: P&G – mother of such consumer packaged goods icons as Tide, Pampers, and Comet, among others – is now 175 years old, but a look back at the company's history reveals that the whole endeavor might not have started if an errant flame and a rapscallion hadn’t done their dirty work all those years ago — or if an opinionated father and father-in-law hadn't intervened.

Or put another way, Mr. Procter's failures in England led to P&G's global success today — and Procter took a Gamble that paid off.Continue reading...

Are you ready for some football? Big brands surely are. The National Football League may be a marketing and TV-programing juggernaut, but it is carrying more weight for more major brands than ever.

Take auto advertisers, for instance. Despite football telecasts that already were slated to be crowded with other car brands, Audi decided to use tonight's kickoff game between the New York Giants and Dallas Cowboys for the marketing launch of its crucial new 2013 S Models. These performance nameplates (S6, S7 and S8) and the "S" brand are fundamental for Audi to move to the next phase of its positioning in the U.S. market, as a provider of exciting, luxurious and well-designed automobiles.

And so the NFL gets the call tonight to host the first Audi ad under its new tagline, "Heighten Every Moment," featuring the Audi S8. The 60-second spot (watch it above) will run in the first break after kickoff. Audi also announced that it will appear in the Super Bowl game in February, its sixth consecutive advertising appearance in the big game.Continue reading...

Old Spice is following up on last week's viral hit — an interactive "muscle music" video with former NFL player Terry Crews — with a new campaign featuring a current NFL player who's preparing for life off the football field: the Green Bay Packers' Greg Jennings. Check out the first of seven spots featuring Jennings above.

The wide receiver, a 2006 Super Bowl champ who played with Brett Favre and has been trying his hand at acting, has fun touting Old Spice's Champion line of "man freshening" products — which were previously promoted with an Olympics-themed spot and a sand car commercial with the tagline, "Believe in your smellf."Continue reading...

About a year ago, Volkswagen announced its new "People's Car Project" (自造车) in China. The idea was to crowd source unique concepts from Chinese Internet users. About 120,000 ideas later, VW chose three and displayed them at the Beijing Auto Show in May. One of those three ideas was a VW "Hover Car" (磁悬球形车).

That car is now here. Kind of… It's just one more piece of VW's massive push. 

VW Beetle, meet the VW "Moth."

In a promotional video shot in the Chinese city of Chengdu, VW introduces the Hover Car and allows the parents of "Dark520" to take a spin. Dark520 is the handle of the People's Car Project user who suggested the hover project. Continue reading...

Always a bonanza for marketers (as the New York Times' Stuart Elliott notes), campaigns pegged to the Olympics are often overly serious and attempt to be tearjerkers, as P&G knows all too well. Still, its Old Spice brand is retickling its Old Spice Guy funny bone by partnering again with W+K on an Olympics commercial. "I Will Live Forever," above, stars a skinny hero who listens to a self-help tape and somehow manages to win a slew of medals and a ton of hearts while smelling good all along the way.Continue reading...

Forget the Old Spice Man; the P&G brand is all about the Old Spice Champ. The latest W+K campaign for the brand features a cameo by Heather Graham (getting dumped, above) in support of its Champion product line of antipersperant/deodorant, deodorant, body wash and body spray. The groan-inducing tagline: "Believe in Your Smellf." Check out the 15-second spots below.Continue reading...