Hello Avocados! We are here today to nominate the best/funniest/most successful television advertisements of all time! You may nominate any commercial that hocked a good, service, political campaign, whatever. You may determine for yourself what makes a “great” commercial, whether it is because of its notoriety, humor, how effectively it persuaded people to buy its product, its jingle, whatever.

However, there are a few guidelines to put in place:

First, no parodies. SNL has some great fake commercials, but “Happy Fun Ball” is not eligible for this tournament. Do not taunt Happy Fun Ball.

Secondly, take care of peoples’ sensibilities. Some commercials are, uh… problematic. Any ad that I deem particularly offensive, such as infantilization of women (That Love’s Baby Soft commercial that Raven Wilder posted on Ad Space last year? *shudders*), or stereotyping of people of color, will be stricken. This includes commercials whose messages may be in the right place but use harmful stereotypes. I’m looking at you, “Crying Indian.”

This doesn’t, in whole cloth, ban any and all sexuality in ads (we’d hardly have anything left!), but you know, be mindful that there’s a thin line between using beautiful people to move products, and objectification.

Lastly, commercials may be from anywhere in the world. English not required.

Guidelines to nominations, please read! Nomination posts should include the following:

• Name of product being advertised
• Name of commercial (Optional, but recommended if it will help people identify the ad)
• A link to a Youtube video that can be posted for people to watch. Regional limitations being what they are, some may be restricted by country but we’ll do our best.

So using the header image as an example, it’d be:

Apple (or Macintosh), “1984”

Any questions, let me know! Nominations will be open until Friday, June 9th at 10PM Eastern. Depending on how many nominations we get and peoples’ opinions, we may have a seeding round, or may jump right into round 1 from there.