These ads certainly had better aesthetics than most, but something dies inside me when an advertisement is considered art. I also don't understand why you would view buying Old Spice as a charitable donation.
Take, for example the Philips "Carousel" Ad[1], which was for all intents and purposes a high-budget short film that happened to be paid for by Philips as a way to promote their support of the depicted cinematic aspect ratio.
They aren't all cinematic genius, but it's tremendously disingenuous to write ads off entirely due to some perceived taint associated with selling a product.
It's like the people who spent upwards of $500 on the Humble Indie Bundle: providing positive feedback to encourage things like it to happen in the future.
Treating it as a donation doesn't make sense, of course, and I have to agree that advertisements shouldn't be considered art, except in the most dramatic examples. Perhaps the meaning of art is a bit narrow, though; advertisements can certainly be artistic.
People didn't spend $500 on the Humble Indie Bundle so they would put out more ads did they? They wanted to support indie games, no?
The commercials and publicity put Old Spice in their mind when they went to buy that type of product.
Old Spice isn't trying to prove it has a good product. We know that. Rather, it's reminding us to make that choice Old Spice.