The Best Of 1995: ADVERTISING

1 GOT MILK? CAMPAIGN Unlike the print ads that force attractive celebrities to don unsightly white mustaches, the series of television spots promoting the joys of milk consumption are gems of sketch comedy. The best has a smug yuppie hit by a truck and beamed to another world replete with yummy cookies and a beckoning refrigerator stocked with milk. Heaven? Nope, all the containers are empty. Hell.

2 DHL DELIVERY SERVICE Three TV spots for DHL parody advertisers’ fear tactics, as they exaggerate the perils of entrusting foreign-package delivery to no-name operators. One scenario: your parcel ends up in the hands of an aspiring Russian rock star, who holds band practice in his delivery truck and uses the pieces of cargo as drums.

3 NEIMAN MARCUS: “ART OF FASHION” The 28-page spread appeared in magazines to promote the Chanels, Armanis and Pradas available at Neiman’s. Fashion advertising is rarely this conceptual or dark. In brilliantly composed photographs, the ad lays out a young woman’s dream of becoming a model. Soon she is larger than life, literally towering over buildings and people. Pity her fate, though: she winds up a storefront mannequin.

4 LEVI’S 501S: “PRAGUE” This black-and-white TV spot is as artfully shot as it is wittily scripted. A hip ex-pat putters about the city in a tiny old auto only to emerge in his boxers. Where are his 501 jeans? “In Prague,” he declares, “you can trade them for a car.”

5 PIONEER CAR STEREOS The conceit is amusingly elaborate. A five-ad print campaign titled “The Road-Kill Diaries” notes the afterlife insights of critters flattened by automobiles with distractingly good sound systems. Sample entry: “Spent the morning burrowing. Heard the sound of some powerful amps. Should’ve looked both ways.”

6 TAGHEUER SPORTS WATCHES A series of surreal, seamlessly edited images makes this black-and-white TV spot unforgettably stylish. The ad, free of a voiceover, interprets the mind games athletes play to muster their drive. A swimmer races against sharks, a golfer takes a swing on a course full of vases and, in the finale, an equestrian and her horse traverse the roofs of skyscrapers.

7 ESPN SPORTS CENTER Taken together, these 15 TV spots promoting the sports-news show function as a mock documentary, offering a hilarious behind-the-scenes look at Sports Center. Fittingly, Spinal Tap’s David St. Hubbins (Michael McKean) appears in two of the ads as the composer of the program’s theme music.

8 MERCEDES BENZ VIA JANIS JOPLIN Sure, sure, it prostitutes the spirit of the 1960s, but the finest car ad of late achieves perfect-pitch simplicity. A new model E-class coasts toward us on the TV screen. The only sound we hear is Joplin belting her classic Mercedes Benz.

9 KEDS When was the last time salesmanship seemed touching? Aimed at young women, this TV ad tastefully evokes a nostalgia for girlhood while successfully repositioning Keds as acceptable grownup footwear. As women of all ages frolic in slow motion, a narrator asks, “What size Keds were you wearing when they stopped delivering milk? When your mother was the prettiest woman on earth? … What size Keds will you be wearing when a woman walks on Mars?”

10 LEE JEANS: “FERRY BOAT” This TV ad has a terrifically imaginative boy-chases-girl premise. In it, a bearded twentysomething frantically pulls up to a boat as it is about to depart. His license plate reads OHIO. He’s looking for the beauty in Lees, and when he finds her, he hands her a necklace. “Excuse me,” he says. “You dropped this back there.” She smiles and asks, “Where?” His response: “In Nebraska.”

…AND THE WORST

DURACELL BATTERIES The creators of the TV Puttermans, the jowly, cackling family of puppets used to hawk Duracell batteries, seem oblivious to the fact that advertising should, at the very least, never be ugly. The mere sight of this brood, at picnics and on porch swings, could make one long for the disturbing Energizer bunny. Moreover, the ads try to satirize American life’s most overcaricatured theme, retro suburbia. Memo to Ogilvy & Mather: let them run down.