Let the M(ad)ness begin. Voting is now open for round one of the first-ever Campaign Cup, with the winner crowned the greatest Canadian ad of the 21st century.
If you know the details, you can click here now to get started. If this is your first time hearing about the Campaign Cup, allow us to explain.
The inspiration arose out of our weeks of reporting, interviewing, and writing for our Made in Canada editorial package that helped officially launch Campaign in Canada last month.
Those conversations got us thinking about all the great work that has come out of the country, so we came up with this fun way to both celebrate some of that work and then—because this is an industry that loves competition—challenge our readers to choose the best of the lot.
We started with a thorough review of award-winning work since the year 2000 (with an emphasis on Cannes and ADCC), and came up with a long list of great creative. From there we undertook the very difficult job of narrowing the list down to 32 contenders which were then drawn into a 16-match tournament bracket—we’re calling it March M(ad)ness—with winners moving on to the next round (the sweet sixteen) and so on until we end up with the winner.
As we reviewed the work and eventually ended up with our list, what stood out for us was the breadth of the executions and the depth of thinking behind them, but also the clearly obvious trends that define a period in time.
There are knee-slapping laughs, as well as purpose-led work that pulls at heartstrings and brings tears to eyes. There are ideas for the TV age, the social media age, and everything in between. There’s work to sell soap, beer and condoms, and work to fix the world. We’ve got long-form video, 15-second broadcast spots, and billboards.
And now it’s over to you. We've divided the bracket in half, so you can review the work, then quickly and easily vote for your favourites. See eight of the matchups here (Round 1A) and the other eight matchups here (Round 1B).
There are some fascinating first round contests, and we’re already eyeing some potential doozies for round two.
Game on.
