Last week marked the first Ad of the Week winner based on new award criteria. For some time now, we’ve been awarding Ad of the Week and subsequently Ads of the Quarter and Year based on the highest Ace Score for a given period. Exceptional creative certainly is evidenced by high Ace Scores. That being said, exceptional creative is also relative to the category it competes within. There are inherent biases in many categories that result in lower scores on average. To produce an ad that stands apart from all others is the mark of great creative. Therefore, our Ads of the Week will now reflect the advertisement to have earned the largest percentage gap from the categories’ 12-month norm.

For the first time in Ad of the Week history, Adidas tops the list with its innovative ad “Change,” which scored 15.2% higher than the Footwear category norm. Not only is this a huge milestone for Adidas, but also for the Footwear category in that this is the first ad from the category to make the top of the list in the last 3 years. This spot demonstrates the benefits of the “Adidas Boost” technology that helps cushion the impact for runners. The Information and Desire component scores had the highest score gap to the norm, followed by Relevance.

All male age breaks scored the ad well above the norm, but it was the 16-20’s that scored it 22% above the 90-day category norm. Females 21-35 were right behind as the second highest scoring age/gender demographic group for this ad.

The impact of the ad becomes clearer still within the 207 optional verbatim responses. “Change” not only caught their attention with the demonstration at the beginning but many felt that they learned something new about the brand. The ad had broad appeal among athletes and non-athletes, as well as both males and females.

It is worth mentioning that Daily’s Cocktails had two :15’s in the top 5 this week with ads featuring frozen alcoholic pouches. “Cocktails” came in 14.4% above norm and “However You Do Happy” was 10.6% above. Perhaps a sign of a summer state of mind, both scored high in Relevance and Desire.

To watch this year’s winning Ads of the Week by Category Overachievers, click here.

The highest overall scoring ad for the same week period is for LG appliances with “Clean Your Oven in Minutes, Not Hours” with an Ace Score of 621.