from Adweek Media’s bestofthe2000s.com
Adweekmedia has named “the best and the brightest in the branding, marketing, media and agency world in 33 categories.”
But before you read on, I must point out Apple garnered five categories from Adweek Media. Take a look at these and tell me if you think that these are rightfully deserved categories.
Apple’s “Get a Mac” Ad Campaign – Campaign of the Decade
“Silhouettes” – Out-Of-Home Ad of the Decade
Steve Jobs – Marketer of the Year
Apple – Brand of the Decade
iPod – Product of the Decade
As for the rest of the categories, some of the people and companies that were chosen by Adweek are not surprising.
Enjoy!
MEDIA COMPANY OF THE DECADE & DIGITAL COMPANY OF THE DECADE
Google
Sergey Brin and Larry Page surely didn’t realize it when Google launched in 1998, but the two had founded the most powerful direct-response marketing vehicle ever created (people tell Google they want specific stuff and Google delivers ads offering that stuff).
MEDIA EXECUTIVE OF THE DECADE
Rupert Murdoch
Murdoch is the last of the great media moguls, and while he’s 78 years old, the entrepreneur may well be at the height of his powers
MEDIA ENTREPRENEURS OF THE DECADE
Larry Page & Sergey Brin
Here’s what really changed about media in the past decade: The fastest growing, most dynamic, disruptive and arguably most important media company of the 2000s produced absolutely no content of its own. Not a single article. No hit series. Google, founded at the end of the prior decade by Larry Page and Sergey Brin, is an engineering endeavor through and through.
TV SHOW OF THE DECADE
The Sopranos
When The Sopranos debuted on Jan. 10, 1999, it was as if creator David Chase were telling the nation that the very best things were finished, and that American life from that moment forward would be informed by a dull longing for the irretrievable past.
BROADCAST NETWORK OF THE DECADE
CBS
The strength and consistency of the most watched network, CBS, shows it can be done, year after year, thanks to its steady diet of scripted comedies and dramas, top-notch reality, and the granddaddy of newsmagazines, 60 Minutes.
CABLE NETWORK OF THE DECADE
Disney Channel
Hannah Montana. High School Musical. The Jonas Brothers. These inescapably popular names would most certainly not grace the pop-culture lexicon were it not for the marketing (some might say evil) genius at Disney Channel.
MAGAZINE OF THE DECADE
Wired
Wired survived the storm by capturing a broader readership with an editorial mix spanning technology, business, science, entertainment and culture—in essence becoming the chronicler of the technology surge that’s changed all our lives this decade.
RADIO PERSONALITY OF THE DECADE
Rush Limbaugh
Love him (as his “dittohead” fans do) or hate him (as every liberal does), no radio host or personality comes close to Rush Limbaugh in size of audience or volume of political discourse. The man manages to stay in the headlines no matter who’s in the White House or who’s gunning for him.
WEB SITE OF THE DECADE
YouTube
YouTube helped make it remarkably easy to post video online, and even easier to stream. Plus, clips could suddenly be embedded on any site across the Web. Super syndication—now a core digital media strategy for many content companies—was born.
BLOG OF THE DECADE
Gawker
Gawker burst onto the scene in 2002 as a new kind of publication. It defiantly skipped magazine prose in favor of Internet snark, obsessively needling the New York-centric media world.
COMMERCIAL OF THE DECADE
Honda, “Grrr”
An unlikely mix of cute animals frolicking in a CGI Eden, flying diesel engines and the gravel-on-velvet voice of Garrison Keillor, the spot won a slew of awards in 2005. It gets ours for the best of the decade, period.
SUPER BOWL SPOT OF THE DECADE
Coca-Cola, “It’s Mine”
Normally, a fight on New York City’s streets isn’t this funny—let alone heartwarming. But the theme is just one of the chances taken by Wieden & Kennedy, Portland, Ore., in creating Coke’s 2008 Super Bowl ad, “It’s Mine.”
CAMPAIGN OF THE DECADE
Apple, “Get a Mac”
Apple always diverged from the “speeds and feeds” ads associated with the computer category, but the brand really defined itself with the 2006 launch of the “Get a Mac” campaign. That series of 60-plus ads brought some humanity into the equation by turning the machines into live-action cartoons.
COMMERCIAL DIRECTOR OF THE DECADE
Daniel Kleinman
The special-effects savvy director Daniel Kleinman, an expert teller of weird but beautiful stories, has a career characterized by a collection of offbeat gems.
PRINT AD OF THE DECADE
NBA, “There Can Only Be One”
In 2008, Goodby, Silverstein & Partners dunked the tradition of freeze-frame action shots customarily used in NBA marketing by replacing it with an image at once emotional and iconic: the human face.
OUT-OF-HOME AD OF THE DECADE
Apple, “Silhouettes”
You’d have thought Andy Warhol did them—and why not? In the end, the work was nearly as iconic. Perennially at work on new ways to brand Apple’s products, TBWA\Media Arts Lab took the wraps off of “Silhouettes” in 2003. It didn’t just brand the iPod—it immortalized it.
DIGITAL CAMPAIGN OF THE DECADE
Nike Plus
If there was a knock against Nike Plus from the ad world, it was what it wasn’t: an ad. Which was, of course, the point. Nike Plus takes “Just do it” and actually helps runners get it done.
AGENCY OF THE DECADE
Goodby, Silverstein & Partners
Retooled into a potent force for the digital age, Goodby, Silverstein & Partners is a true master of all trades, deserving to be called the decade’s best.
SMALL AGENCY OF THE DECADE
Butler, Shine, Stern & Partners
When John Butler, Mike Shine and Greg Stern left Goodby, Silverstein & Partners to open their own shop across the bay, they were warned that no one would ever take them seriously. 16 years later, Butler, Shine, Stern & Partners is thriving with $30 million in revenue and 150 staffers.
AGENCY EXECUTIVES OF THE DECADE
Jeff Goodby & Rich Silverstein
Jeff Goodby and Rich Silverstein, co-chairmen and creative directors of Goodby, Silverstein & Partners, have been setting creative standards since they opened their award-winning San Francisco agency in 1983.
AGENCY CREATIVE DIRECTOR OF THE DECADE
Alex Bogusky
While his methods are alternately revered and reviled in the industry, few would disagree that the Crispin Porter + Bogusky co-chairman is the one man who most shaped creative trends in advertising over the past decade.
MULTICULTURAL AGENCY OF THE DECADE
GlobalHue
The agency’s successful investment in demographic research following the 2000 U.S. Census helped fuel the shop’s growth into the largest, smartest multicultural agency in the U.S. with revenue of $83 million in 2008.
DIGITAL AGENCY OF THE DECADE
R/GA
R/GA founder and CEO Bob Greenberg has a fortune-teller’s knack for seeing what’s around the corner. R/GA has been at the forefront of the top developments in interactive marketing and, along the way, has developed an agency model melding creativity and technology that’s the envy of the industry.
MEDIA AGENCY OF THE DECADE
Starcom MediaVest Group
The Publicis-owned shop started the decade as the AdweekMedia’s first Media Agency of the Year, an award bestowed after the organization— technically two shops that operate separately but also collaborate on key accounts such as Procter & Gamble—won General Motors’ landmark $2.9 billion planning assignment. Huge wins from Kraft, Coca-Cola and Mars followed.
MEDIA AGENCY EXECUTIVE OF THE DECADE
Irwin Gotlieb
Alternately known as the “king of advertising” or the “Zen master” for the skills and influence he brings to bear on the media agency business, Irwin Gotlieb, CEO of WPP’s GroupM, has been a media innovator throughout his career, now spanning some four decades.
MARKETER OF THE DECADE
Steve Jobs
Visionary, iconoclastic and fearless, Steve Jobs the marketer is inseparable from Steve Jobs the personality. His inimitable blend of competitive skill and design savvy hasn’t just saved a fading brand, it’s recast two businesses that used to have nothing to do with computers: music and mobile phones.
MARKETING INNOVATION OF THE DECADE
Viral Videos
For advertising, the watershed moment came in 2004, when the “Subservient Chicken” video for Burger King’s TenderCrisp chicken sandwich got hundreds of millions of visits. Here, for the first time, was an ad created for the Internet with a reach far beyond what TV could offer—and all at a fraction of broadcast’s high prices.
BRAND OF THE DECADE
Apple
In terms of politics and world events, this has been a wild decade, but on the marketing front, one thing has remained constant: Apple’s emotional connection to consumers, who reward it with an almost cult-like loyalty.
PRODUCT OF THE DECADE
iPod
To date, more than 220 million iPods have been sold worldwide. The success is all the more amazing because Apple didn’t invent the MP3 player—it redefined it.
PROMOTION OF THE DECADE
BMW Films
In 2001, BMW was searching for a new way to get the word out about its kick-ass cars. But instead of just running commercials, its then-agency Fallon proposed creating five Hollywood-style minifeatures, then airing them only online. Soon, branded entertainment became an industry buzzword, but no one ever topped BMW, which was first and did it best.
PRODUCT PLACEMENT OF THE DECADE
Coca-Cola/‘American Idol’
With its 20 million-plus viewers, American Idol wasn’t just a successful program, it was a phenomenon. At the center of the action was Coca-Cola, which got straight commercial time plus other perks like a Coke-red waiting room for contestants.
DIGITAL DEVICE/PLATFORM OF THE DECADE
Facebook
Just as Google wasn’t the first search engine, Facebook didn’t invent the social network, but rather improved upon it in such a way that it became the de facto standard. By decade’s end, Facebook was at the forefront of the evolution of online advertising.
