There's little use denying it: despite its disturbingly DOS-formatted name, advertising firm TBWA\Chiat\Day has cranked out some pretty amazing ads for Apple over the years. There was, of course, the groundbreaking "1984" commercial, which introduced the world to the Macintosh (at least by name and mood; the most relevant bit of hardware present in those 60 seconds-- before Apple added the iPod, of course-- is the sledgehammer) and which routinely gets ranked as one of the very bestest ads ever made by anyone for anything ever. More recently, the "Think different" campaign of the late '90s won an armload of awards, despite violent protest riots by militant literalist grammarians and the fact that it didn't advertise a product or service and its inaugural minute-long TV spot never once mentions the name of the company it's for. (There's a logo, though. Just don't blink at the end.)

We don't disagree that these are some seriously excellent ads, but they're undeniably touchy-feely pieces selling a mood and a brand, not a specific product on said product's merits. There's nothing necessarily wrong with that, but it does make it tough to quantify the ads' effectiveness; all we can say for sure is that the Mac is still alive and kicking twenty years later, and Apple didn't crash and burn in post-Amelio 1998-- so, presumably, missions accomplished?

Regardless, now TBWA\Chiat\Day has just won an award (and a sizable pile of cash) for a series of Apple print ads whose efficacy can be measured reasonably well. Faithful viewer frozen tundra led us to an Adweek article which reports that the Magazine Publishers of America have bestowed the $100,000 Grand Prize Kelly Award on the makers of the "Apple iPod 'Silhouette' campaign that shows people dancing with iPods against brightly colored backgrounds." Score! Suppose the Silhouettes get any of that hundred grand? They should, considering how many iPods they've managed to sell.

While the Silhouette ads at least do sell a specific product and even show it in use, they still manage to refrain from listing technical specs and features-- so why are they so darn effective? Well, according to one of the judges, they show that "you don't have to spend a lot of time talking about features to get people to make a human connection with your product. Also, one of the core values for Apple is design. To reinforce that without ever talking about it, just by art direction, is an incredibly smart and effective device." Wow. See, we would have attributed the campaign's effectiveness to the pretty colors, the visual equation "PERSON + iPOD = SHAKE YOUR GROOVE THANG," and the fact that most people don't like to read. Oh, and the catchy slogan that appeared on a few of the posters, "iPOD'S UNREPLACEABLE BATTERY LASTS ONLY 18 MONTHS." Maybe that's why we're not in the ad business.

Anyway, even if we don't know why the ads work, they clearly do work, because iPods are the market leader by a wide margin. So hearty congratulations to TBWA\Chiat\Day for another job well done and for winning a pile of cash and all that; mostly, though, we're happy for the Silhouette people. We hear that this honor has already done wonders for their careers and the offers are just pouring in. Two of them have signed to shoot a pilot for a doomed remake of "The Odd Couple" for ABC, one's just been cast as Tybalt in a high-profile production of Romeo and Juliet in Chicago, and three of them have been offered small roles as ninjas in Spider-Man 3. And, of course, we can't forget this fall's Broadway all-Silhouette revival of "Bring in Da Noise, Bring in Da Funk." Why, those crazy kids just might make it after all!