TED’s mission is ideas worth spreading. The dream behind TED Ads Worth Spreading is to find companies that want to communicate with their consumers in the same way that TED wants to communicate with its audiences. What makes ideas powerful is that they have a life of their own; an idea can reset someone’s worldview and even begin a domino effect as they pass it on to friends.
We have been tasked to discover and recommend the most compelling advertisements within the “Creative Wonder” category. Work that elevates the craft of creative in advertising. Work that is ingeniously clever or technically brilliant, using technology in ways we’ve never seen. These ads showcase compelling writing, amazing musical compositions, cinematic art direction or high-impact design, and make information beautiful.
From the moment we were briefed, we felt strongly that it was essential for us to open up our process and not remain limited to our own networks or point-of-views in discovering creative work that is meant to speak for and represent our category globally. We believe that creativity doesn’t happen behind closed doors or without collaboration. Even advertisements need an army to make them! Hence, this is our humble effort at ensuring that not only is the process of discovering these advertisements transparent and democratic but also a story onto itself.
Our goal is to emerge not only with unique, global pieces of creative but also an amazing story of the works, how we found them and why we recommended them. Through the conversation and dialogue generated, we hope to elevate our and our community’s outlook on advertising and creativity.
We hope you will join us in our journey on our blog. We’ve also partnered with Pinterest to let you explore the advertising that has been nominated so far on our board.
Sincerely,
P.S: Major props and thanks to Shanna Carpenter, William Mincy, Macdonald Predelus, Ricky Bacon and Amanda Van Caneghem for their support and help.