THE BEST ADVERTISING OF 1996

By CONTRIBUTORS GINIA BELLAFANTE, RICHARD CORLISS, CHRISTOPHER JOHN FARLEY, PAUL GRAY, BELINDA LUSCOMBE, JOSHUA QUITTNER, RICHARD SCHICKEL, MICHAEL WALSH, STEVE WULF, RICHARD ZOGLIN

1 NISSAN "TOYS" Car ads were not generally driven by trenchant wit this year, but Nissan's spot amounted to topnotch satire of one of auto advertising's perennial themes: the right wheels always win you the babe. To the beat of Van Halen's You Really Got Me, a G.I. Joe look-alike leaves one playroom, hits the road for another in a sporty coupe and picks up a silver-lamed faux Barbie from her plastic manse. The crestfallen loser? A dull, preppie sort. The message? Drive Nissan or be Ken.

2 Levi's Wide-Leg jeans "Elevator Fantasy" If only those slacker flicks could capture Gen-X commitment fears with the precision and punch of this 60-sec. spot. Here, guy eyes girl in an elevator, and instantly their imaginations run wild toward dream dates, love dens and then, oh no!--a screaming newborn? When the doors open, lust shuts down.

3 Lipton Brisk Iced Tea "Frank Sinatra" A Claymation version of Ol' Blue Eyes hawking iced tea remains the year's cheekiest and most memorable celebrity endorsement. The Chairman's concert is over, the fans want more, but Frank wants out. What gets him energized for an encore? Not a Chivas, Clyde, but a swig of Brisk.

4 Jil Sander campaign The print ads for the German designer's line remain as spare and elegant as the garments themselves. Sander's ads focus simply on the clean cut of the clothes and, thanks to the eerily angelic lighting of photographer Craig McDean, the ephemeral beauty of the models wearing them.

5 Hewlett-Packard Home PC Pavilion "Sibling Rivalry" Using a pair of warring 10-somethings, this TV spot inventively shows us just how much an HP PC can do. Little sis wants her diary back, big brother won't budge, so she evens the score the way any '90s child would: the kid snaps a photo of her sibling playing air guitar, scans it into her computer and E-mails the image to his crush.

6 Energizer batteries "Woodchuck" The Energizer bunny hasn't died; it's just disappeared. Breathing new life into a campaign that for too long just kept going and going, this TV spot exists as a sly parody of its predecessors. Assuming the tone of a Discovery-channel documentary, the new ad presents a team of researchers who've devoted their lives to finding the tireless rabbit. Alas, all they unearth is a woodchuck.

7 Fidelity Investments "Time" How easy it would be to create a boring mutual-funds ad. But Fidelity's TV campaign isn't. To the tune Time Has Come Today, each ad displays a series of arresting images--many surreal--depicting life passages alongside grand technological advances. The ads are artful and pointed: the world moves quickly; invest now.

8 Polaroid campaign This year's print ads whimsically position the camera as not just a quick processor but also a great shatterer of delusion. In one of the ads, two parents speculate about their daughter's new college boyfriend. Surely, he must be respectable. The Polaroid-provided reality? He looks like a bassist for Babe the Blue Ox.

9 Coke "Pole Vault" In the most evocative of Coke's fine "for the fans" Olympics campaigns, a vaulter runs, the crowd roars and the voice-over intones, "Some athletes are born in greatness, and some athletes are forced into greatness by 50,000 screaming maniacs who are not going to take no for an answer."

10 Kenwood's "Centerstage Home Theater System" Aimed at the countless thousands who live in fear of connecting speakers, this wry print ad presents a male bimbo who confides that even he can hook up a Kenwood system in a matter of minutes. The system costs $400, the ad boasts, "which means that even if you're not a model, but just look like one, you can probably afford it."