Best in Show 2008: When we were good, we were very, very good!

It was, as everyone grimly acknowledged, hardly a vintage year for British advertising. So looking back at the best ads of 2008 is not the most inspirational way to welcome in 2009, I admit it. The small group of contenders speaks more of adland's mediocrity last year than of the heady heights to which the offerings of the coming 12 months must aspire.

Oh, there are excuses. Risk-averse clients, the economic crisis, media fragmentation, the internet, advertising regulations. Take your pick and mix it with a dose of weary cynicism, which after all has much to answer for here.

Yes, it's not easy any more to make advertising that touches a nation, that mines a common cultural seam, that provokes. But, heck, the Americans regularly beat us to the advertising creativity punch last year and they have the same issues times ten.

The truth is that most advertising you will have seen over the past year was uninspired, dull and – perhaps fortuitously – quite forgettable. Quite a lot of it was execrable. Business as usual.

Still, as you'll see from the list below, British ad agencies did undoubtedly make some of the best ads in the world last year. Just not enough of them. "Best" means original, surprising, provocative, memorable, engaging, clear, appropriate, effective. That last, of course, is most important. Without it the rest have no value, at least in an advertising context, and that's something the ad industry is increasingly aware of: advertising has to show value, it has to actually work.

Too often adland gets accused of an insularity defined by a preoccupation with clever, lush imagery and bugger the sales targets. In fact, even if you're talking about advertising creatives, this is sometimes quite unfair. If you check out the advertising blogs you'll find one ad that particularly delighted the creative community last year. And it doesn't have a big budget, it doesn't have an exotic location and it certainly isn't going to catch Hollywood's eye.

But by God it's memorable and effective and quite mesmerisingly engaging. It's for a small Essex company called Rainham Sheds (the soundtrack: not "It's Raining Men" but "It's Rainham Sheds"). I admit I have no idea who made it, but I bet they were paid a tiny sliver of the sort of fee handed over to the big London agencies for some of the rubbish we had to endure last year. Watch it at rainham sheds.co.uk and learn.

Here, though, is my pick of last year's "Best in Show" ads, and for the record Bartle Bogle Hegarty notched up more "Bests" across the year than any other agency. More like this please in 2009.

Hovis

Miles Calcraft Briginshaw Duffy

A TV advertising extravaganza that proved just how powerful TV advertising could still be, 35 years after the original "Boy on a bike" Hovis ad enchanted the nation. This time round MCBD and director Ringan Ledwidge took 122 seconds to celebrate Hovis's 122 years in business with a romp through British history from the First World war via the Coronation, winning the World Cup, the Miners's strike to the millennium. Lush, beautifully crafted, the attention to detail is marvellous. Not just an ad about bread, but an ad about the power of investing in a long-term marketing strategy, about the power of long-format ads, and about the power of the TV medium, still, to take your breath away in a way that a banner ad never will. Advertising like it used to be. And it worked.

Nike

72andSunny

He may have ended the year by divorcing Madonna, but Guy Ritchie's collaboration with 72andSunny on this commercial for Nike was a triumph. This ad hits you between the eyes. Literally. It's long (two minutes) and it's got more impact than a size five on the back of the head. Filmed as though you're in the ad yourself, you are an amateur footballer who gets signed up by Arsenal and suddenly you are a superstar playing alongside Cesc Fabregas, Wayne Rooney and Cristiano Ronaldo, right there on the pitch, in the action. There is pain, triumph, adulation and girls. A goal.

Barclaycard

Bartle Bogle Hegarty

A feel-good ad for a credit card, in the middle of a credit crunch? An audacious idea that Bartle Bogle Hegarty pulled off with relish. This is a glorious commercial, beautifully cast and guaranteed to make you smile every time you see it. It features a bloke sliding round the sunny city on a giant water flume, paying for things on his Barclaycard as he goes. The Bellamy Brothers soundtrack is simply gorgeous. And it's all such a long way from the cold dark days of recession that it might even make you love your credit card again.

Drench

Clemmow Hornby Inge

Advertising as a nostalgia trip became a bit of a cliché in 2008 (see Hovis, above) but delving into associations from our past helped brands to overcome the challenges of media and cultural fragmentation. Drench did it better than most, bringing back Brains from 'Thunderbirds' and giving the boffin some bite with a slug of the mineral water. Brains is transformed from an awkward mover into a super slick dancer, no strings attached, thanks to Drench.

Levi's

Bartle Bogle Hegarty

Not many advertisers stay married to the same ad agency for 25 years. To mark the anniversary of their relationship, BBH and Levi's produced four new films around the idea of Live Unbuttoned. And they're every bit as sexy and provocative as you'd hope. There's plenty of seductive unbuttoning crotch shots. And they're all a long way from the more innocently sexy ads that BBH produced for Levi's in the real glory years (Launderette, Creek and so on). Sadly they were only available online in the UK. Visit 501.com/premiere. It's worth the trip.

VW Golf

DDB

VW and its ad agency DDB also celebrated an anniversary last year: 40 years together. And it couldn't be more appropriate that the longevity of the relationship was celebrated by a clutch of brilliant ads. This one was my favourite, but they were all superb. It's for the VW Golf. The stop-start sound and film are mesmerically synched and edited with a razor, and the result is compulsive: proof of the transformative power of an interesting soundtrack.

Orange Gold Spot

Mother

This ad's here, really, as representative of the entire Orange Gold Spot campaign from Mother that have been telling cinema-goers to turn off their mobile phones for the last few years. The account has just joined the rest of the Orange ad business at Fallon but Mother's ads featuring Hollywood stars pitching movie ideas to hapless executives obsessed with mobiles has been one of the very best campaigns of recent years. Mother went out on a high with this spot starring Dennis Hopper pitching his movie on a bus. It's as beautifully written and acted (of course) as ever.

Lynx

Bartle Bogle Hegarty

BBH has produced some fantastic ads for Lynx over the years. This isn't one of them. This is a website (created by a traditional ad agency – which is quite something in itself). And it's a brilliant one. The site – www.lynxeffect.com – is crammed with clever chat-up tools, such as a "fit girl finder" and advice like, "Alcohol and chocolate make for a lady-wowing combination" that you can download on to your mobile. There are plenty of sexy pics and the whole thing is beautifully crisp and user-friendly. Getting laid has gone digital, it's official.

Pot Noodle

AKQA

Ads that looked suspiciously like other ads (fingers crossed, maybe no one will notice) was something of a theme in 2008. So AKQA made an ad for Pot Noodle that was a piss-take of rip-off ads. Does that make it a rip-off too? With a nod to Honda's "cog" and Guinness's domino ad, AKQA set its viral on a grotty-gritty housing estate and instead of dominos (or car parts or books) it uses fag packets, fridges, mobile phones, microwaves, wheelchairs in a chain reaction that ends up with boiling water tipping into a Pot Noodle tub. As rip-offs go, it's pure class.

BBC Olympics

Rainey Kelly Campbell Roalfe/Y&R

The BBC made some fantastic ads last year. The trailer for its Olympics coverage, created by RKCR/Y&R with the help of Gorillaz co-creators Damon Albarn (who composed the addictive soundtrack) and Jamie Hewlett (who directed the spot), was the best. A lovely animation based on the Chinese folk story 'Monkey King' (you might remember watching the crazy TV series at teatime on BBC1 as a child), it's a riot of colour and life and rewards a lot of viewings. And as it turned out, the Olympic hype, for once, was justified.

McDonalds

Leo Burnett

Is there any connection between the pressure that's been brought to bear on fast-food advertisers and the ever-improving advertising being done for McDonald's? It's certainly true that in 2008 McDonald's boasted some of the better ads in its category. This ad is simply, feel-good lovely. We see smiley parents and kids getting dirt under their fingernails, sowing seeds, building fences – fashionable stuff like that. All to a happy-happy, whistling soundtrack that you won't easily shake off. It's wholesome. It's lovingly shot. The truth is, it's wonderfully middle England and middle class – exactly where McDonald's would like to be. There are fewer fat people there.

Toshiba

Grey

For sheer technical wonder (just like Toshiba's LCD TVs, apparently), Grey's ad for Toshiba left adland breathless. It uses a souped-up version of a technique called "bullet time", which basically shows people repeating the same action, a bit like a stuck record, while others come and go around them in real time. It's mesmerisingly watchable, which is more than you can say for most of the stuff you can actually view on a Toshiba LCD TV.