$5,000 YMCA Ad Featuring Butter-Devouring Woman Wins Award
By: Marissa Brassfield
Published: June 27, 2011

A $5,000 YMCA ad won top honors in the "low budget" category at this year's Association of Independent Commercial Producers show, an accolade that earned it a spot at the film archives of the Museum of Modern Art in New York. The ad featured a young woman blindly eating a butter stick in front of the television as if it were a candy bar, and was made for the YMCA of Greater St. Paul and Metropolitan Minneapolis.
The $5,000 YMCA ad was created by the Preston Kelly agency and produced by Drive Through TV. Actress Jennifer Edwards estimates that she ate about two full sticks of butter during filming, even though she was able to spit it out between takes. The ad used 42 sticks of butter, which weighed in at some 25 pounds. Check out the winning ad below: