The best of British advertising has been a long-running Twin Cities favorite

Successful advertising turns our desires, needs and fears into action, spurring us to make a purchase, cast a ballot or send a donation. And nobody does it quite like the British, long celebrated for the irreverence, dark humor and just plain silliness they bring to the sell.

Apparently, folks in the Twin Cities revel in the silliness. Upward of 25,000 Twin Citians, the largest U.S. audience by far, will sit through more than an hour of nonstop commercial messages for products we'll never see in our stores during the screening of the best of British advertising, the annual Arrow Awards show running at the Walker Art Center from Dec. 5 to Jan. 4.

Apparently, we've decided that watching a clueless American football coach fumbling as he tries his hand with British footballers, following an unsmiling homicide detective as she strong-arms colleagues to dress up for a Christmas fundraiser, or witnessing a SWAT team rescue abandoned jars of Marmite, the "love it or hate it" British condiment, fits our idea of a visit to a world-class art museum.

While the Museum of Modern Art in New York began showcasing British television ads in the early 1980s, the Walker has been screening the award-winning commercials for 28 years and was the first to bring the ads out of museum galleries into a theater setting, according to Sheryl Mousley, the Walker's senior curator of film and video. The Walker is the only U.S.-based organization and the only museum that is a financial sponsor for the Arrow Awards.

In addition to previewing up-and-coming directors cutting their teeth in advertising, Mousley thinks U.S. audiences, toughened by hard-sell commercials, respond to the "playfulness" and "innocence" found in British adverting. The ads don't make viewers feel inadequate without the sponsor's shoe, car or fragrance. Instead, she said, they "tell little stories" of people interacting around a product, with characteristic British humor and sometimes a bit of an edge. She said that the large Twin Cities creative community, including national ad agencies located here, helps account for the Arrow Awards' outsized popularity.

Robert Campbell, chairman of the Arrow Awards, describes the British approach to advertising: "We have a great sense of irony and never take ourselves too seriously."

As head of Outsider, his own London-based production company, Campbell observed that many U.K. companies that advertise are smaller, meaning that top management is involved in the ad buy, which gives agencies more freedom to take chances.

Campbell, who spent time in Minnesota and Wisconsin in his 20s, credits the Arrow Awards' popularity here to the region's cultural roots where a British sense of humor goes down well. "People [in Minnesota] really enjoy the joke. They have a wonderful sense of humor," he said.

While Campbell credits the Walker's sponsorship with lending international recognition to British advertising, he also sees his industry as an important cultural force, appropriate for a museum. "Advertising is a great anthropological search engine [that] reflects the mood of the nation. Look at advertising when it all went rotten in 2007 and 2008" compared with today, he argued.

Mike Caguin, chief creative officer at Minneapolis-based Colle + McVoy sends his team to the Walker screenings every year to examine how the best spots "move people to tears or laughter." The outing gives the ad pros a view of what's trending in music, humor and imagery.

The Twitter- and texting-saturated culture feeding shorter attention spans is pushing advertisers to tell a short story "quickly and effectively that has entertainment value," Caguin said. The British award winners showcase great advertising that is able to strike an emotional chord, whether in a six-second spot or a two-minute commercial, he added.

While U.S. advertisers are still more conservative than their British counterparts, Caguin sees their influence inspiring U.S. advertisers to take a chance and poke fun at themselves, which he thinks "is good for the States."

British advertisers tend to be "a little naughtier and play by some different rules," added Minneapolis-based Carmichael Lynch CEO Mike Lescarbeau. He believes the British embrace advertising as the art of persuasion rather than the science of predicting human behavior.

With sponsors and ad agencies centered in London, the U.K. market is smaller and more homogeneous than the U.S., added Lescarbeau who previously worked in London and was a past judge for the Arrow Awards. No one wants to be accused by their social network of producing boring ads, he explained, spawning "a cultural predisposition to do creative work."

Effective advertising also adapts to changing audience demands. "Millennials shift the expectation for advertising to be more interesting, intriguing and relevant," he said.

Brad Allen is a Minneapolis freelance journalist and former investor relations executive for companies including Imation Corp. and Cray Research. His column appears ­monthly. His e-mail is brad@bdallen.com.