For the first time in 2013, Target grabs the Ad of the Week honors with its brand new cause-related campaign for back-to-college, “A Great Thing: Kate” (Ace Score: 636). This ad marks a huge transition for the brand not only with the way it scored with consumers, but also in the way that Target has promoted this partnership with FEED, an organization that builds a set donation into the cost of each of their products. One of the ads from the campaign “A Great Thing: Kate” scored 22.5% above the norm for Discount Stores and is the highest scoring ad in the category from the last 90 days. Additionally, this is the highest scoring Target ad of all time. You can see in the image below that the component scores were through the roof, especially Information and Change, which achieved that coveted “over 700” status.

Ladies loved this ad, giving it a combined score 33% above the norm of 521 and more than 100 points higher than the men. Females 36-49 in particular scored the ad nearly 200 points over the norm.

The respondents who left an optional verbatim comment mentioned the brand “target” 34% of the time, a huge accomplishment in terms of brand identification. Not only did people mention their intent to purchase more products based on the message in the ad, but they felt that they learned something new.

Another ad from the same Target FEED campaign “A Great Thing: Mike” came in second place on our Ad of the Week list with an Ace Score of 610, which is 17% above the category norm.

Philanthropic ads are no strangers to the list because of their appeal to the masses as well as their ability to change consumer’s perspective on huge corporations. Social consumerism is a growing trend among these large brands so we don’t doubt that we will see more of these ads on our top lists.

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

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