Egos claw and scratch for Andys-jury votes

The idea of electing the jury for the 2010 Andy Awards is commendable: Instead of picking the same creatives who judge all the awards shows, open up the process to new voices. But come on, this is advertising. It means egos are at stake. While some ad guys are playing it cool, other heavy hitters are taking to social media to drum up votes among the faithful. Will McGuinness of Goodby, Silverstein & Partners put it this way to his Facebook network: "I was nominated for the Andy's jury. If you really value our friendship you'll vote for me." Ogilvy chief digital creative officer Lars Bastholm has urged his 2,200 Twitter followers not once, not twice but three times to vote for him. He even promised that, if elected, he wouldn't blow up the moon. Not to be outdone, TBWA\Chiat\Day chief creative officer Rob Schwartz is Twittering for votes and has set up a Posterous site, Andy Potential, to collect work he feels might be worthy, to show his serious side. Arnold's Twitter account is pushing executive creative director Pete Favat. But the best campaigns so far have to be the dueling text-to-voice animations from Crispin Porter + Bogusky ecd Andrew Keller and R/GA North America cco Nick Law. (See below.) Bastholm has also done one. It's all in good fun, although the end result will probably be a jury that's not that different from years past. Still, early returns hold out some hope for non-advertising people. Graffitti artist Banksy, former Talking Heads frontman David Byrne, designer Marc Jacobs and graphic artist Shepard Fairey have cracked the top 20.

—Posted by Brian Morrissey

Published on October 12, 2009 | Permalink | Comments (4)
Filed under Andy Awards, Award shows, Morrissey

'08 Hatch Awards vid tops '09 Hatch Awards

The fact that this six-minute opening video to the 2008 Hatch Awards won best of show at last night's 2009 Hatch Awards says a lot, perhaps good and bad, about the Boston creative scene, award shows and the ad industry in general. Cynics might sneer that it proves just how self-absorbed and solipsistic ad agencies have become, and how they've taken their eye off the prize, so to speak, in terms of driving product sales. I'd argue it's emblematic of the times—almost a defiant, fist-in-the-air, we-still-matter gesture from an industry that's become increasingly commoditized and marginalized by fickle (some would say sadistic) clients, UGC, the economic crisis and its own inability to adapt to the new reality. Considered as such, the navel-gazing video—by Fort Franklin, showing a creative struggling to create the 2008 Hatch Awards opening video—epitomizes truth in advertising, representing exactly where the business stands today. As for winning the top prize, I guess the industry took a look in the mirror and, in the truly spin-tastic spirit of advertising, ultimately liked what it saw.

—Posted by David Gianatasio

Published on October 7, 2009 | Permalink | Comments (6)
Filed under Award shows, Fort Franklin, Gianatasio

Portland says you really suck at advertising

Portland, Ore., wants you to know that its excellent advertising is far superior to your stupid advertising. And it's decided to take on all comers with a spinning insult wheel. Ant Hill Marketing's promo for the city's ad-awards show, The Rosey Awards, includes the wheel as a handout and part of the Web site. Assuming you're a creative, but not creative enough to come up with your own smack talk, you can spin to get insults directed at New York, Seattle, Atlanta, Minneapolis, Boulder, Colo., and San Francisco, among others. A sample? For Madison, Wis., they've got, "When it comes to advertising in Wisconsin, they make great cheese." Ant Hill also plans to send taunting letters to other cities' ad groups. I presume they'll include at least one thinly veiled jab at your mom. Want to join the game and add to the animosity in the industry? Tweet them, and maybe you'll win the "Smack of the Week." According to Rosey's ambassador Kim Bratner, Portlanders are "tired of being the best-kept secret in the United States." Whiners. I have a dream—a dream that one day we'll be defined not by our city of residence but by the quality of our creative. Except for the people in Denver. Those people are all freaks.

—Posted by Rebecca Cullers

Published on June 26, 2009 | Permalink | Comments (12)
Filed under Award shows, Cullers

Another reason you're not in The One Show

Now that it's done selling the naming rights to its in-house basketball court (I think Stephen Colbert won), BooneOakley turns its attention to building attendance for The One Show Festival in New York. To reach shops that might skip the event, three high-concept, print-heavy and very in-jokey ads (see them here, here and here) posit the existence of a secret society called the Ones that determines the work accepted into the show. Copy at one point notes that names like Goodby, Silverstein, Graf and Hegarty appear "year after year after year," while references to Minneapolis adman Bob Barrie in One Show annuals are so hard to find, "a NASA supercomputer burst into flames" trying to calculate his appearances. It's fairly amusing. More amusing was the infamous "leaked" One Club memo that, by some estimates, shows that the group takes in something like $800 billion in annual entry fees. They also charge $700 for an all-access festival pass. At those prices, the Ones won't do it—it's more about the Benjamins, and even larger denominations.

—Posted by David Gianatasio

Published on April 16, 2009 | Permalink | Comments (1)
Filed under Award shows, BooneOakley, One Show

Oh, Jesus Christ, another pathetic scam ad!

The plague of scam ads will likely never quite leave the award-show circuit. Still, some take the cake. The Dubai Lynx, a Middle East offshoot from the folks who run Cannes, is dealing with a mini-scandal after a Qatar shop called FP7 won awards for a print ad depicting Jesus taking a picture of a group of nuns. The ad was supposedly for Samsung, which was none too amused when it found out it was using the Son of God to hawk cameras. (Samsung does use sheep in ads, just not, apparently, shepherds.) This will cause the usual hand-wringing about how festivals fail to do the bare minimum to determine if an ad actually ran anywhere. The more interesting question, for me at least, is what other products the industry can get Jesus to endorse. Via AdPulp.

—Posted by Brian Morrissey

Published on April 2, 2009 | Permalink | Comments (1)
Filed under Award shows, Dubai Lynx, Morrissey, Samsung, Scam ads

Michael Lebowitz on One Show Interactive

Michael Lebowitz, founder and CEO of Big Spaceship, is jury chairman for The One Show Interactive. During the four days of judging, he filed daily reports from the jury room for AdFreak.

Day Four: Friday, March 20
  The final day was by far the most inspiring. Many discussions of where we are and where we hope we're going as an industry. Jurors felt strongly about individual entries and advocated for them with conviction. Everyone believed in what we're doing, collectively, to advance this industry. But no one lost their individual perspective, professional or cultural. I was proud to be part of this group.
  The major theme that emerged from these four days is that the work increasingly defies categorization. It's marketing, it's innovation, it's product, it's social—all at once. Ideas, insights, strategy, craft are inseparable. It's an exciting time.
  • I got as many jurors as I could to give me their final thought on the last four days. They sum it up it better than I ever could:
  • Ashley Ringrose: "A lot of work that makes you jealous. Which is good."
  • Dominique Trudeau: "In a world of automotive greenwashing, Fiat eco:Drive is authentic and useful."
  • Tim Barber: "The app steps up, and the microsite steps aside."
  • Flo Heiss: "The quality of digital is picking up again. A great shift from advertising to marketing to product development. And there were a lot of hairy entries."
  • Joakim Borgstrom: "I want to live in a banner."
  Read more

Published on March 20, 2009 | Permalink | Comments (1)
Filed under Award shows, Big Spaceship, One Show Interactive

Michael Lebowitz on One Show Interactive

Michael Lebowitz, founder and CEO of Big Spaceship, is jury chairman for The One Show Interactive. He is filing daily reports from the jury room this week for AdFreak.

Day Three: Thursday, March 19
  Hey, it's Ash here from BannerBlog, filling in for Michael, who had a family emergency, and blog posts don't fall high on the list of things to do when they happen.
  Well, Thursday was day three and the first time we as a jury had all judges as one unit and, as opposed to Cannes, all judging is done anonymously. We all have handheld devices (very hi-tech), and we all vote with little visible influence from anyone else. It's still a rating from 1-9.
  With 160 pieces to get through, we had a quick pace to maintain, and I believe we got through 85 today. So, on schedule. Pieces which everyone had seen previously or were simple to grasp were much easier than the more complicated and larger projects. There were some that caused much debate, like Diesel's campaign. Some argued "this is the purpose of the campaign," and rightly so. Probably the biggest confusion and discussion was around categories. Also: "Is this a banner?" "Why is this in community?" "What is a campaign?" were all echoed. Although in a room full of interactive CDs, a question like "What is a campaign, a series of microsites?" surprized me. See Iain's tweet on this.
  Campaign overview videos again are a must, and unless your campaign, site, game, app, widget or whatever is obvious, you need a campaign overview video. That doesn't mean a 10-minute epic; it just means, "Tell me WTF this is about so I can explore more and not miss anything."
  Read more

Published on March 19, 2009 | Permalink | Comments (1)
Filed under Award shows, Big Spaceship, One Show Interactive

Michael Lebowitz on One Show Interactive

Michael Lebowitz, founder and CEO of Big Spaceship, is jury chairman for The One Show Interactive. He is filing daily reports from the jury room this week for AdFreak.

Day Two: Wednesday, March 18
  Today was a bit tougher. Bandwidth got tight and people got restless waiting for downloads, but more strong work emerged. As we're all a little more worn out, I'm going to keep this post short in hopes that tomorrow, as we delve into the discussion portion of the process, there will be much to say.
  Some of today's entries that really stood out to me were:
  • The Bruce Lee ping pong viral video for Nokia. Seen it before. Love it more every time.
  • A wildly clever and subversive campaign out of New Zealand called The Stealth Banner that involved sneaky media buying and a time-bomb banner. The industry should take notes on risk taking. Brilliant.
  • Two equally good campaigns using WiFi hotspot names as contextual advertising messages.
  • Another great use of space played with ASCII cars driving through the URL in the address bar of the browser.
  Read more

Published on March 18, 2009 | Permalink | Comments (0)
Filed under Award shows, Big Spaceship, One Show Interactive

Michael Lebowitz on One Show Interactive

Michael Lebowitz, founder and CEO of Big Spaceship, is jury chairman for The One Show Interactive. He is filing daily reports from the jury room this week for AdFreak.

Day One: Tuesday, March 17
  This morning I talked about how we're entering what I think of as the third age of the commercial Web. In the early days, we had to figure out how to do everything, so it was focused on technical wizardry and pushing technology as far as we could. Then, the digital folks had to prove that their production values could be as high (and higher) than traditional TV spots, which seemed to culminate (and set a high bar) last year. This year, my hope is that we'll see more focus on the insights that drive great digital ideas. Ideas that play to the strengths of the medium, and evolve it.
  So far, the work at this stage is quite thoughtful. And the consensus among the One Show Interactive jury seems to be that quality is high.
  If there's a theme emerging for me, it's the significant challenge of creating work that manages the delicate equilibrium between leaving room for people to connect without getting beaten over the head with "advertising"—and becoming so esoteric that there's no significant brand connection.
  Read more

Published on March 17, 2009 | Permalink | Comments (2)
Filed under Award shows, Big Spaceship, One Show Interactive

Steffan Postaer at Dubai Lynx: day seven

Steffan Postaer, chairman and chief creative officer of Euro RSCG Chicago, is sending us daily updates as he judges the Dubai Lynx awards this week.

Day Seven: Tuesday, March 17
  And so I've come to the end of my duty as juror for the International Advertising Festival in Dubai. As I prepare for tonight's awards ceremony, followed by the long, long journey home (I leave at 2:30 a.m.!), I barely have time to compose this last post.
  Unfortunately, I cannot discuss any of the winners, as the show is still a few hours off. Unlike Cannes, where leaks about prizes are commonplace, here they manage to keep a tight lid on matters. Complete secrecy maintains a level of excitement for the contestants, and I don't want to spoil it. What I can say is that the finest work was found among press and posters. Why remains a mystery. Perhaps creatives are not beholden to local vendors for achieving their campaigns. As reported here (somewhat controversially), the television category was hit and miss, with more of the latter. As is the case in most such festivals, radio was the most challenging. In the end, numerous well-deserved medals were given in all categories. The ceremony should be a hit.
  Even if some of the work is not to international standards, Dubai Lynx is by far the most sophisticated regional show I have ever experienced.
  Read more

Published on March 17, 2009 | Permalink | Comments (1)
Filed under Award shows, Dubai Lynx, Euro RSCG

Euro's Postaer to blog Dubai Lynx awards

We're please to welcome Steffan Postaer this week as a guest blogger who'll be sending us reports from the Dubai Lynx awards at the Dubai International Convention And Exhibition Centre. Postaer, the chairman and chief creative officer of Euro RSCG Chicago, is one of 10 judges reviewing TV, print, outdoor and radio at this year's awards. (He is also the author of the novels Happy Soul Industry and The Last Generation, and he filed reports for us from Cannes last year.) Dubai Lynx honors advertising from across the Middle East and North Africa region. We'll be posting Steffan's diary entries as we receive them.

—Posted by Tim Nudd

Published on March 10, 2009 | Permalink | Comments (2)
Filed under Award shows, Dubai Lynx, Euro RSCG

Win ad awards, attend weird gay sex parties

What the hell is going on in this video? It's called "The Importance of Awards in Advertising," and according to the e-mail we got, it was written and directed by someone called Jim Hosking to promote something called the Australian Writers and Art Directors Association. "Awards bring sexy friends, money and even music," says our insane narrator. Just not in the form that you'd prefer any of them. Disturbing.

—Posted by Tim Nudd

Published on January 14, 2009 | Permalink | Comments (10)
Filed under Australia, Award shows, Freaky, Nudd

No one with talent wants to be your friend

Mother London has created an amusing call-for-entries campaign for the Andy Awards, in which you can send bogus friend-requests to your buddies from top ad-industry creatives. When the recipients of the friend-requests click on the link, they get ridiculed for even thinking that Jeff Goodby (or whoever) knows who they are. Of course, whether or not you'd actually want to be friends with some of these people is another matter.

—Posted by Tim Nudd

Published on December 10, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (1)
Filed under Andy Awards, Award shows, Mother, Nudd

Design the official T-shirt for Cannes 2009

Uniqlo, the Japanese apparel company that swept the advertising award shows this year with its entertaining blog widget, is teaming up with the Cannes International Advertising Festival for a contest to select the official T-shirt of next year's festival. The company, which won Grand Prix honors in both Titanium and Cyber, is inviting people to submit designs for review by the 2009 judges. The design, of course, must be original and include a lion, the symbol of the festival. While only one design will honored as the "official T-shirt" of the event, 10 entries will be sold as T-shirts next summer in Uniqlo stores. Past festival T-shirts usually only got worn out of necessity (lost luggage and blazing heat topping that list). Maybe these will actually make their way back home with the attendees.

—Posted by Eleftheria Parpis

Published on December 1, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (2)
Filed under Award shows, Cannes, Parpis, Uniqlo

Take a One Show Pencil out for a test drive

Oh, that cheeky BooneOakley. The agency's promotion for The One Show 2009 call for entries is designed to "encourage potential entrants to experience firsthand the unending bliss of owning a Gold Pencil (for one week)." Applicants who register at the soon-to-be-launched oneshowtestdrive.org will get to "test" Gold Pencils for a week. Also: "Pencil-testers will receive congratulatory phone calls from world renowned creative directors, designers, interactive directors and film directors including John Butler, Dave Lubars, Eric Silver, Court Crandall, Sally Hogshead, Ari Merkin, Joe Duffy, Bob Greenberg, Noam Murro, Kevin Roddy and Ty Montague." Perhaps a few of the testers will feel compelled to devise creative ways to tell those big-wigs where to stick their precious Pencils. You can't expect modesty and self-deprecation from the creative department. That's more of an account management sort of thing.

—Posted by David Gianatasio

Published on November 4, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (3)
Filed under Award shows, BooneOakley, Gianatasio

Cadbury's gorilla actually a total lightweight

DDB Stockholm, the agency perhaps best known for its weird McDonald's ads, whipped up this eye-catching, stomach-turning poster for the Roy Awards, which they tell us is "one of Sweden's most prestigious awards for commercials." It's also a major booze fest—so much so that not even Cadbury's gorilla can hold all the liquor down. See the full poster here.

—Posted by Tim Nudd

Published on September 23, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (1)
Filed under Award shows, Cadbury, DDB, Nudd

Your creative work makes Gerry Graf vomit

The Andy Awards has set up a call-for-entries Web site called the Instacritique. You’re invited to upload your work and get various reactions from five well-known creative directors, as well as a guy on the street. As you can see above, Gerry Graf does not respond well to ads that aren’t up to snuff. (Feel free to skip the upload step, and click on a motivation instead, as the site doesn’t seem to do anything with the images.)

—Posted by Tim Nudd

Published on October 17, 2007 | Permalink | Comments (5)
Filed under Andy Awards, Award shows

Elderly creatives jazzed about ‘Ego Bingo’

Here’s an ad (click to enlarge) from Leo Burnett promoting The Advertising Club’s 2007 International Andy Awards. The whole campaign has a lottery theme, the idea being that the Andys are so competitive, you might have a better chance of winning the lotto (or other games of chance) than the Grandy Award. Wrinkly creatives who are nearing retirement age (if there are any in this business) may appreciate the bingo theme here.

—Posted by Tim Nudd

Published on November 28, 2006 | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBack (5)
Filed under Andy Awards, Award shows

Andy judges and the photos they love

Bob Scarpelli of DDB is transfixed by this photo of a young man mourning the death of John Lennon. “Twenty-five years after his death, it is easy to say that I remember exactly where I was when I heard the news,” Scarpelli writes. “It is not as easy to say what one man’s most honest ideas, feelings and passion meant to me and my generation.” Scarpelli’s musings are part of a collective contribution from Andy Awards judges to an online charity initiative called “Change Me,” created by Getty Images. Scarpelli, Mark Tutssel, Tony Granger, Jeff Goodby and other judges each selected an image that inspires them and wrote about it for the “Change Me” Web site. (To find the ad folks’ entries, click on “Join the worldwide discussion” and then scroll through the “Icons” section at the top.) The photos are hugely diverse, and include entries from celebrities far and wide (William Hurt, Jessica Alba, Claudia Schiffer, Matt Damon, etc.). The idea is to emphasize that imagery has an overwhelming power to create change. (Sometimes the images are so good that the words get in the way. Writing about a mug shot of Vincent Gigante, Jeff Goodby refers to the late mobster as Tony Gigante.) Ordinary people can also send in entries; for each one selected for the project, Getty is giving $10 to Friends of the Global Fight Against AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria.

—Posted by Tim Nudd

Published on April 17, 2006 | Permalink | Comments (1)
Filed under Andy Awards, Award shows

Not quite the last judgment, but close

Artist Fred Stonehouse channels Hieronymus Bosch in his (and Leo Burnett’s) cool call-for-entries poster for the 2006 International Andy Awards. (Click on the image to see a big version.) Judges are gods; midlevel creatives (including “ass kissers”) are in purgatory; “hacks” are relegated to hell. Sounds about right. Stonehouse kept the original 6-foot-tall painting, but keep checking eBay—you never know when it might show up.

—Posted by Tim Nudd

Published on October 17, 2005 | Permalink | Comments (0)
Filed under Andy Awards, Award shows