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Three people operated that gorilla suit. The performer inside had to learn the drums, then work in short bursts through punishing heat. Juan Cabral cared that much about a chocolate ad with no chocolate in it. People made hundreds of their own versions. Phil Collins went back into the charts. Joy travels.

Fallon; directed by Juan Cabral

Making a man fight a bear is the easy joke. Daniel Kleinman makes the wildlife film convincing enough to ambush you, then gives every ridiculous movement room to land. Thirty seconds, beautifully spent. A tin of salmon gets the comic commitment of a proper little film. That is a generous use of an advertising budget.

BBH; directed by Daniel Kleinman

Isaiah Mustafa made the impossible sound effortless. Then the team behind him did something just as impressive: 186 personal video replies in two and a half days. Writers, developers and producers kept the joke alive while actual people joined in. A body-wash commercial became something you could talk back to, and get an answer.

Wieden+Kennedy; directed by Tom Kuntz

A truck-steering brief became a job for Jean-Claude Van Damme, a stunt crew and two extraordinarily steady drivers. The calm is the achievement: all that coordination, presented without a flicker of strain. Volvo gave industrial engineering the entrance of a movie star. Precision suddenly had an audience far beyond the people buying trucks.

Forsman & Bodenfors; directed by Andreas Nilsson

BBH Singapore listened closely enough to technology advertising to reproduce its every reverent pause. That precision makes the affection work. A printed catalogue gets the attention normally reserved for an expensive new device, and paper feels ingenious again. It takes a very good ear to make something this familiar sound freshly worth having.

BBH Singapore

Pepsi lets its rival occupy most of the joke. That takes nerve, and an exact sense of when the audience will catch up. A child does the selling without a speech, a slogan or a laboratory comparison. The pleasure is being trusted to get it. Two enormous brands, reduced to one very small act of cheek.

A small boy; a very pointed purchase

BBDO gives the rival drivers enough warmth to make their almost-friendship worth something. The glances and little courtesies do the work before the joke arrives. That is careful comic writing: even a cola feud needs people you like. For a moment, two competing companies feel like two blokes who might actually get along.

BBDO New York

Casting Cindy Crawford buys attention. Knowing exactly where to send that attention is the craft. BBDO built the whole film around an assumption the audience would supply for free, then saved the reward for the product. A redesigned can received the staging of a star entrance. Someone took a packaging brief very seriously indeed.

BBDO

Joe Greene did not need to become a different person to be moving. The filmmakers gave his toughness room, then let a little kindness reach it. That restraint makes the exchange feel earned. An athlete and a child share the screen as equals, and a soft-drink commercial finds something genuinely tender between them.

McCann-Erickson

The shoot went wrong. The team found more money, another location and another cast, then tried again. Coca-Cola says more than 100,000 letters arrived praising the result, while listeners asked radio stations to play the song. People wanted an advertisement back in their lives. That is quite a return on refusing to give up.

McCann-Erickson; art direction by Harvey Gabor

Psyop gave an imaginary workforce personalities, machinery and a whole improbable world to care for. Look at the attention lavished on jobs that exist for seconds. That abundance is the gift: somebody kept inventing after the basic idea was already good enough. A vending-machine transaction received the affection of an animated feature.

Wieden+Kennedy Amsterdam; Psyop

Someone looked at a chicken and saw a better way to explain suspension. Then the handling, music and editing made that observation into a performance. Mercedes gave an engineering feature a sense of humour precise enough for Jaguar to answer. A tiny piece of animal behaviour became common ground for a very expensive argument.

Jung von Matt/Neckar

Jaguar paid attention to another company’s good idea, then found a reply only a brand called Jaguar could deliver. The imitation has to be convincing before the interruption works. That is the care behind the cheek. A car rivalry briefly became a running joke, with the audience enjoying the privilege of already being in on it.

Spark44 / Mindshare Entertainment

Clara Peller gave three words a force that polished salesmanship could never have supplied. Her impatience became everybody’s useful question, travelling from burger advertising into ordinary speech and presidential politics. Joe Sedelmaier let that remarkable voice lead. Sometimes the great creative decision is recognising the person who can make the line belong to the world.

Dancer Fitzgerald Sample; directed by Joe Sedelmaier

Chiat/Day hired Ridley Scott to give a computer launch the scale and conviction of cinema. The production takes its imagined world seriously enough for one act of defiance to matter. Its Super Bowl appearance became an event people discussed afterwards. Apple set an intimidating standard: a commercial could be part of the news it interrupted.

Chiat/Day; directed by Ridley Scott

Spike Jonze and FKA twigs treat the relief of getting home as something worthy of extraordinary invention. The choreography, shifting space and little changes in her expression all serve that feeling. There is technical ambition everywhere, held together by a very human performance. A speaker gets sold through the room music can make inside a difficult day.

TBWA / Media Arts Lab; directed by Spike Jonze

Google Creative Lab gave the smallest decisions enormous responsibility: what gets typed, what gets corrected, how long the cursor waits. Sound supplies the life beyond the screen. All that restraint lets you care about someone whose face you never see. A familiar search box becomes evidence of how much living passes through an ordinary tool.

Google Creative Lab

Iñárritu brings a filmmaker’s appetite for consequences to a football brief. The editing has to carry fame, failure and absurdity at the speed of a player’s fear. Every invented future gets enough detail to feel worth winning or escaping. Nike spent its spectacle on something supporters understand in their stomachs: how much one touch can mean.

Wieden+Kennedy; directed by Alejandro González Iñárritu

Wieden+Kennedy and Megaforce paid attention to the London young athletes actually inhabit: the journeys, the weather, the boasts, the sheer inconvenience of trying. The local detail gives the exaggeration its authority. These kids get the scale and invention usually reserved for sporting royalty. Their ordinary determination is treated as something a city can be proud of.

Wieden+Kennedy London; directed by Megaforce

John Woo brought action-cinema timing to players whose pleasure in the ball could carry a whole film. The choreography gives their skill room to feel spontaneous, which is a demanding trick in itself. Nike made elite football look inviting. Under all the star power is the reason a child might want to start playing.

Wieden+Kennedy Amsterdam; directed by John Woo

Dougal Wilson gives the cook’s hands, the heat and the changing ingredients the attention usually lavished on the finished plate. The camera makes everyday skill feel momentous. That is a lovely thing for a butter brand to spend its money on: making the person preparing dinner feel that their work deserves a proper audience.

Wieden+Kennedy London; directed by Dougal Wilson

Following Gorilla with another animal would have been the comfortable choice. Fallon and Tom Kuntz committed to a much smaller stage, where timing has nowhere to hide. Every pause and twitch has to earn its place. It is an extravagant amount of comic attention to give two faces, and exactly the attention the idea needs.

Fallon; directed by Tom Kuntz

Bakers built a full-sized Fabia from cake and confectionery over a supporting frame. A passing joke became a serious job for people who knew how to make things with their hands. Fallon let their concentration be part of the pleasure. Škoda’s promise of care acquired a wonderfully tangible form, right down to the edible details.

Fallon; directed by Chris Palmer

Before his blockbusters, Michael Bay directed a milk commercial with the urgency of a tiny catastrophe. The obsessive set dressing, the casting and the timing make one missing glass feel disastrous. Goodby Silverstein found a whole campaign in that everyday dependence. Milk became interesting at precisely the moment somebody had taken it for granted.

Goodby Silverstein & Partners; directed by Michael Bay

Betty White gives the joke her full comic authority. BBDO had the sense to build around it, making a familiar feeling instantly recognisable without turning it into a lecture. The idea was strong enough to keep changing its cast. That is generous campaign writing: a clear premise with room for the next great performer to surprise you.

BBDO New York

Charles Stone III made a short film out of the way his friends spoke to one another. Budweiser kept him in the director’s chair, and that particular, ridiculous affection survived the move into advertising. Soon other friends were borrowing the greeting. Something made between a few people became a way for millions to recognise their own friendships.

DDB Chicago; directed by Charles Stone III

Jonathan Glazer gave a beer commercial the conviction of a myth. The photography, effects, voice and pounding rhythm all pull towards the same moment, without tidying away its strangeness. That is the ambition worth admiring. The time it takes to pour a pint became a reason to make a film this fierce and beautiful.

AMV BBDO; directed by Jonathan Glazer

Daniel Kleinman and the effects team turn an outrageous timescale into a joke that feels perfectly timed. Each transformation has to carry the eye cleanly into the next, while the final indignity needs almost no time at all. Guinness’s long-running promise still had room for invention. Someone found a whole prehistoric world inside the wait.

AMV BBDO; directed by Daniel Kleinman

Jonathan Glazer took Sony’s colour promise to a Glasgow tower block and made the production an event in its own right. The paint eruptions have to work as a composition, not merely an expensive mess. That is the audacity here: engineering something enormous, then shaping it with a musician’s sense of timing and release.

Fallon; directed by Jonathan Glazer

Wieden+Kennedy and Smith & Foulkes found optimism inside an engineer’s dislike of bad diesel engines. The animation and song give dissatisfaction a cheerful, constructive energy. It is an unusually generous thought for a car campaign: the thing that annoys you might be the thing you improve. Technical ambition gets a tune you can carry away.

Wieden+Kennedy London; directed by Smith & Foulkes

Smith & Foulkes make every transformation feel like the next thought arriving. That takes exact animation, timing and an affectionate eye for how people handle things they are curious about. Honda’s history becomes a pleasure to explore. The care in the filmmaking gives engineering something a list of achievements cannot: the feeling of wanting to have a go.

Wieden+Kennedy London; directed by Smith & Foulkes

Daniel Wolfe’s two films had to match closely enough for viewers to change worlds at will. Every gesture, composition and cut belonged to both stories. That is a remarkable amount of filmmaking devoted to one keypress. The original let the audience perform the edit; this case film preserves the ingenuity of giving them that power.

Wieden+Kennedy London; directed by Daniel Wolfe

Aardman made a world small enough to film through a microscope attachment on a Nokia N8. Frame by frame, the animators gave that tiny space a heroine worth rooting for. The phone helped make the proof of its own camera. An extraordinary amount of patient human work turned a technical feature into a little adventure.

Wieden+Kennedy London; Aardman

BETC and Matthijs van Heijningen understand the vanity of filmmaking because they clearly love the work. The performance, effects and lavish film-within-a-film details keep earning the joke before the ending earns it again. Canal+ gets an advertisement made with the appetite of its audience. All those hours spent watching cinema have become something worth watching themselves.

BETC; directed by Matthijs van Heijningen

Michael Gracey and the animation team had to give an impossible cast the timing and swagger of accomplished performers. A funny pitch only gets you as far as the first few seconds; the choreography has to take over. Evian committed to the whole ridiculous performance. That much care can give even bottled water an exuberant personality.

BETC; directed by Michael Gracey

The acting refuses to wink. That is what gives this ridiculous Skittles idea its wonderfully uncomfortable force: somebody cared enough about the writing to follow the wish into its consequences. The ordinary office makes the absurdity feel worse, and funnier. A sweets commercial has the nerve to let its central character be genuinely unhappy about sweets.

TBWA / Chiat / Day

Lester Speight gives Terry the conviction of a man performing an essential public service. Around him, the office keeps its straight face. That contrast needs committed performances, carefully staged physical comedy and a director who knows when to cut. Reebok spent its football energy on the grievances of people at desks. The paperwork finally had a champion.

Rawson Marshall Thurber; starring Lester Speight

Lucky Generals made every celebrity earn their place through the particular way they would fail at helping. The writing is tailored, the performances sharp, the edit impatient with anything that slows the joke. Amazon’s assistant benefits from a wonderfully well-cast argument for ordinary competence. A famous voice is easy to hire. A useful comic role takes work.

Lucky Generals; directed by Wayne McClammy

Wieden+Kennedy gave the Olympic stage to the work that happens before anybody is watching. The repeated journeys, washing and early starts accumulate until a medal carries the weight of other people’s years. That is careful, compassionate editing. P&G found a place for household work inside sporting greatness, and for the person who so often disappears from the photograph.

Wieden+Kennedy

Michael Gracey gives a school performance the scale of a spectacular musical, then keeps returning to the faces that make it matter. The children’s concentration and the parents’ pride hold all that production together. Sainsbury’s found room for the small part as well as the star turn. Somebody cared that every costume could have its moment.

Wieden+Kennedy London; directed by Michael Gracey

Spike Jonze earns sympathy for an object through camera height, weather, music and patience. Then the ending spends that sympathy on a joke. The craft is so good that the feeling survives the insult. IKEA gets its provocation, but the abandoned lamp gets something too: a performance you remember, without a face or a single word.

Crispin Porter + Bogusky; directed by Spike Jonze

The words have to arrive at exactly the right speed: demanding enough to pull you forward, readable enough to keep you trying. Wieden+Kennedy put the creative effort into that calibration. Honda’s invitation to push further becomes a small achievement on your side of the screen. The audience gets to supply some of the energy itself.

Wieden+Kennedy London

The absurd casting only works because a serious team makes the demonstration possible. A professional driver, an adapted wheel and a very small assistant turn steering effort into something you can grasp immediately. Volvo Trucks gave an industrial feature a mischievous sales pitch. The engineering is still the point; the hamster makes it a pleasure to understand.

Forsman & Bodenfors

BMW commissioned proper short films for the internet before YouTube existed. Guy Ritchie, Clive Owen and Madonna committed to the entertainment, with the car earning its place through the action. The Hire gave advertising a substantial example of a different bargain: make the film good enough and people will come looking for the commercial.

BMW Films; directed by Guy Ritchie

Tom Kuntz gives the cats the composure of conspirators. The effects matter, but the joke depends just as much on the pauses, the looks and the confidence of the narration. Wieden+Kennedy built a whole comic threat around a bottle of milk. The affectionate attention to feline behaviour makes the impossible addition feel alarmingly plausible.

Wieden+Kennedy London; directed by Tom Kuntz

Wieden+Kennedy gives the person cooking the pleasure of being an inventor. The attention goes into movement, texture and the moment an ingredient becomes something else. It is a generous piece of persuasion: dinner can be work and still deserve imagination. Lurpak finds its place by taking the cook’s small acts of creation seriously.

Wieden+Kennedy London

The team filmed people in their own kitchens around Britain. That choice gave the work something a perfect set could not supply: personal spaces and movements that belong to the people making them. Sainsbury’s paid attention to a little private pleasure. The affection is in letting an ordinary cook be recognisably, gloriously themselves.

Wieden+Kennedy London

Storyboards and unfinished effects usually disappear so the final image can look inevitable. Wieden+Kennedy gave them equal billing. The drafts make the ambition visible, and the finished shots show what people managed to carry through. Honda’s tribute to making things includes the people making its own advertisement. Their work gets to be part of the attraction.

Wieden+Kennedy London

Goodby Silverstein and Bryan Buckley made the cost of the Super Bowl slot part of the creative idea. The deliberately modest performance needs exact timing for that expensive admission to land. E*TRADE bought the right to tease the extravagance all around it. A financial-services commercial found its argument in the very money being spent on your attention.

Goodby Silverstein & Partners; directed by Bryan Buckley

Seb Edwards and adam&eveDDB give an enormous career the intimacy of a family memory. Every change in age, costume and room has to carry you a little closer to the child at the piano. All that production works towards a very small moment. John Lewis found its Christmas story in what a gift might set in motion.

adam&eveDDB; directed by Seb Edwards

Julian Frost gives these doomed little characters more personality than their brief lives strictly require. Each disaster gets its own careful piece of comic timing. McCann Melbourne and the people behind the song make an earnest safety message something you can enjoy hearing again. That is a considerable kindness to a public announcement. A railway safety warning has no business being this hummable.

McCann Melbourne; directed and animated by Julian Frost

Kim Gehrig and Wieden+Kennedy give each sporting moment a job to do. The order, the cuts and Serena Williams’s delivery let a familiar insult gradually change hands. Women’s anger, ambition and delight receive the attention a great performance deserves. Nike lets the athletes supply the evidence. A word meant to make them smaller ends up looking rather small itself.

Wieden+Kennedy Portland; directed by Kim Gehrig