The 100 Best TV Commercials: . . . and Why They Worked (Hardcover)

by Bernice Kanner (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review
For better or worse, television advertising occasionally becomes a touchstone in our lives. Chevrolet's "Baseball, Hot Dogs, Apple Pie," Alka-Seltzer's spicy meatball, the Federal Express fast talker, the Energizer Bunny, "Bo Knows" Nike, Quaker Oats' Mikey--these and a select group of other video campaigns get so embedded in our psyches that we can easily recall them, word-for-word and scene-by-scene, many years after they last were aired. The 100 Best TV Commercials ... and Why They Worked, by advertising and marketing columnist Bernice Kanner, takes a critical but fond look at the best commercials in 15 categories, including "Show and Tell," "The Sound of Music," "Animal Magnetism," "Comparatively Speaking," and "Killer Comedy." While the book unabashedly "honors esthetics more than effectiveness in moving product," Kanner still seeks to celebrate those "artful and artistic" efforts that manage to push their various objects or ideas more successfully than the competition. One pleasant surprise: more than half of those chosen will be unfamiliar to most Americans, as they aired only in the U.K., France, Japan, Spain, and eight other countries that take their TV commercials as seriously as advertisers do in the U.S. --Howard Rothman

Product Description
Who cares about commercials?

All of us, that's who. The television commercial has become a part of the American narrative, as important a signifier of our times as a great work of literature or
a blockbuster motion picture. Indeed, we often care more about the commercials than we do about the programming itself (ask any Super Bowl aficionado). The ad is art . . . and some of the art is brilliant.
        The hundred commercials in this book are brilliant. They were selected by a team of experts at the Leo Burnett Company, creators of Tony the Tiger and the Maytag Repairman, in collaboration with dozens of advertising pros from around the globe and throughout the industry. Their choices represent the very best that the advertising world has to offer. Together, they portray a half century of human hopes, wishes, and dreams.
        Bernice Kanner, whose "On Madison Avenue" column in New York magazine was required reading for more than a decade, has taken each of these small masterpieces and analyzed what made them work, why they so successfully moved us, and how they broke through the clutter to become a part of the cultural landscape.
        From the Marlboro Man to the Energizer Bunny, The 100 Best TV Commercials provides a hundred important lessons in how we communicate and persuade today. It is vital reading for those who create our commercial culture . . . and those who live in it.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 272 pages
• Publisher: Crown; 1 edition (June 7, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0812929950
• ISBN-13: 978-0812929959
• Product Dimensions: 10.1 x 7.9 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,067,054 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Words cannot convey..., August 31, 2000

By	Marcy L. Thompson (Sammamish, WA USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This book covers some *great* commercials. It should be a *great* book, but it is not. Kanner is a talented writer, but she is trying to convey in words something that can only be conveyed visually. I would buy this book in a second if it were accompanied by a CD or a DVD containing the commercials.

As it is, it is hard to recommend the book, when the words fall so far short of conveying the essence of any commercial. (To see what I mean, try reading about a commercial you remember well. You will note that the description is accurate, but it does not delvier the complexity of the experience you had when you watched the commercial.)

It's not a bad book. In fact, it's probably as good as a book like this gets. But words are not a medium suited to the task at hand. Books about advertising work better when they are about print campaigns.

9 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Great concept, wrong medium!, July 11, 1999

By A Customer

Turn this into a video and I'd buy it in a heartbeat! Because 40% of the included commercials are foreign, and therefore unfamiliar to most U.S. audiences, the author's words are essential to conveying the concept of the ad. As talented as Kanner is, her descriptions of the commercials fall flat. I want to *see* the commercials she's talking about, along with first-person commentary with the parties involved.

5 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars indispensable for some; fascinating for others, July 28, 1999

By A Customer

This is an indispensable guide to what makes advertising work for anyone interested in advertising; and interesting for anyone who didn't think he/she was. Best of all, in a witty way, Kanner explains what the advertising had to do and whether it did it! A classic...