John Smith's: 'Monsters' (00:03) – UK
Gold winner in 2003
Peter Kay was one of the country's most popular standup comedians and a couple of years into Phoenix Nights when he made a series of ads for John Smith's bitter including this much-loved commercial which has him trying to comfort a worried child over the phone.
Agency: TBWA London
Director: Daniel Kleinman
John West: 'Bear' (00:48) – UK
Gold winner in 2001
Who can resist a grizzly bear doing the Ali shuffle? This ad not only topped a list of the funniest commercials of all time compiled by advertising industry magazine Campaign in 2008, it managed the same feat when US journal Adweek made its own list in 2010 so it's an obvious choice for this compilation too.
Agency: Leo Burnett
Director: Daniel Kleinman
Canal Plus: 'Closet' (01:23) – France
Gold winner in 2010
If you haven't seen this ad before then you're in for a treat. The all-action sequence at the start doesn't suggest for one minute that it could be leading towards one of the best punchlines you'll ever see in a commercial ... but it is.
Agency: BETC (Paris)
Director: Matthijs van Heijningen
Orange: 'Snoop Dogg' (02:39) – UK
Shortlisted in 2008
This is a campaign that was so consistently funny that it would have been possible to choose almost any commercial from it but we opted for the ad featuring Snoop Dogg because of the sheer number of gags. The rap star proved an adept comedy performer alongside campaign regulars Brennan Brown and Steve Furst as they battle it out in the recording studio.
Agency: Mother London
Director: Bryan Buckley
Old Spice: 'The Man Your Man Could Smell Like' (03:47) – US
Grand Prix winner in 2010
Isaiah Mustafa was a minor US football player before embarking on a pretty fruitless acting career and then Old Spice happened and his life was transformed overnight. He became one of the most recognised faces on US television and the commercial won the Grand Prix at Cannes – widely considered to be the industry's biggest accolade.
Agency: Wieden+Kennedy (Portland)
Director: Tom Kuntz
