• by Steve Smith , Staff Writer @popeyesm, September 9, 2010

The low barriers to entry and infinite space of digital platforms leave just about every media maven with a simple quandary; how do you keep track of the good creative out there? Clients of digital agencies famously ask, where can I see my ad? But given the targeting technologies at work in serving digital display this can be harder problem to solve than one would think. Awards are one relatively random way of getting exposed to creative that you don't happen upon in your everyday browsing. This week MediaPost announced the finalists for its upcoming OMMA Awards. We have posted the list, including several video categories that include screen grabs and outlines of the campaign.

I hope I am not alone in admitting that some of these programs were unknown to me, so I thought it would be a good opportunity to highlight and link to the actual creative itself.

All three of the finalists for Best Video Campaign represent genuinely clever examples of the online video adage -- funny works.

NBCU and Mindshare's ongoing series for American Family Insurance may be one of the most elaborate and polished branded entertainment series you might never have heard of. While it seems to have a lower profile than "Easy to Assemble" or "Back on Topps," "In Gayle We Trust" has attracted 3.6 million views so far. Niche but nice. It is a kind of light comedy where an insurance agent's portfolio of clients proves to be a collection of eccentrics clueless about their real insurance needs. Some familiar comic character actors make appearances, and the production values are very high. The segments are short enough to keep us on board, and the underlying message (You need more damned insurance) is delivered along with a real satiric view of national character types.

The Poise bladder leakage pads campaign is one that did enter mainstream and media consciousness. After all, Whoopi Goldberg's video montage describing "spritzing" in her pants is irresistible. And the choice of spokesperson was perfectly matched to the task at hand -- making the audience comfortable with a difficult topic. The answer -- make the issue of bladder leakage seem as common as, well, erectile dysfunction -- and we all have that, don't we? Whoopi's career has been based on coating hard-edged perspectives in humor and likable personality. Perfect. She gets the job done here. Matching the right celebrity personality with the right target audience and product still gives you the most bang for the buck.

While Whoopi's endorsement of Poise was a good match, the Chart Karate campaign for the Reuters Insider premium video news service was all about dissonance and comic misfit. Sure, using the old martial arts motif to depict the competition among financial data and analysis services seems to be on message, and certainly strokes the sensibilities of numbers crunchers. But come on! The videographers at The Concept Farm knew what they were doing when they digitized charts into a classic martial arts scene or had a ninja middle manager deliver a flying kick to a colleague's boring pie chart prezzo. If bureaucratic culture has developed any one comic trope above all others in the last decades it is the mock heroics of the cubicle dweller. But like all formulas, they work when the maker is committed and executes well. The effectiveness of this campaign is in the persistence of the theme over numerous videos that come at the brand theme. And of course the main message is that video is superior to static data as a channel for information. The series appeal to us video dweebs as well.

The OMMA Awards winners will be announced at a ceremony in New York on September 27.