Olympics of Advertising – Day 3

You probably can’t tell by the fish belly white color of my skin, but
today concludes three days in Hawaii. While the appeal of riding
bicycles between local watering holes with David Angelo and Ian Grais
or taking surfing lessons with Margaret Keene was strong, the desire
to get home in time to see my two sons play in their respective
championship basketball games was stronger.

We judged a couple hours this morning and there’s not much new
insight. Things followed much the same pattern with there being a few
bad pieces, a lot of good ones and a handful of great ones.
Fortunately, I had Mila Kunis in my head telling me which ads to vote
for. Turns out she speaks to me through TV commercials and has a huge
crush on me but doesn’t want anyone to know because the papparazi will
talk since she’s a big movie star and I have a wife of sixteen years
and loud children. So right now, we’re only communicating through the
television.

Suffice it to say, Mila was really impressed with the work and wanted
me to tell you that if one of your pieces is recognized in the annual,
you should be very proud of yourself and probably ask someone in the
immediate vicinity of your office for more money. Genuinely, the One
Show has become the Olympics of advertising with 65% of the entries
coming from outside the US and creatives traveling literally from all
over the world to judge. The internet, guerilla marketing, promotional
and event marketing and reality television have allowed our industry
to flourish creatively in ways that we honestly unimaginable only a
few years ago.

Now, if this makes you concerned about the basic literary and design
craftsmanship of that the One Show is rooted in, let me give you an
example that will help you rest easier. It actually comes from one of
my fellow judges.

Thirasak Tanapatanakul, (AKA Guy) of Creative Juice, created a piece
for the Thailand Yellow Pages, where he used Google Maps to shoot an
aerial shot of the region. Okay, so far, not too terribly complicated.
Then, it appears like he colored all the rooftops yellow. Until you
look closer. At which point you start to feel a nauseous wave drift
over you as you realize how smart/determined/effing mad he is. What
Thirasak did, was cut out the appropriate Yellow page ad for each Thai
buisness and affix it to the appropriate roof on the shot. Thousands
of them. It took him four months to complete this labor of love. So
next time you get tired of noodling with a layout, think of Thirasak,
hunched over a cityscape with an Exacto knife and little tiny pieces
of yellow paper.

Having talked a bit about the work and Mila’s discerning voice in my
head, the last thing I’d like to mention are the judges themselves. If
you’re like me, you always imagine these crass, self-important
windbags looking dismissively at the work and saying anything they
didn’t do sucks. But the fact is, the men and women I judged with were
some of the nicest, most genuine and thoughtful people I’ve met in
some time. This extends right through the One Show staff of Mary
Warlick, Kevin Swanepoel, Tiffany, Emily, Joni, Jeff and his wife
Gretchen. These are good people who invest themselves year after year
in making sure the One Show is the premiere creative advertising
competition in the world.

I know that sounds glib, but think about it. The One Show has
outlasted most agencies and a hell of a lot of clients. Most
importantly though, no one has ever rushed the stage and stolen the
awards. Why? Because they’re motivated by quality rather than money.
Because the judges really care about the work. And because, well, if
someone ever dared put a hand on a pencil they didn’t deserve, Mary
would beat their ass.

See you in New York.

Court Crandall – Ground Zero / Los Angeles

One Show Judging – Hawaii – Day 2

Today, I woke up, the sun was shining, the birds were chirping and the waves were crashing just beyond my window. Then I went into a dark room and looked at cinema advertising and integrated campaigns for eight hours. I don’t know how to describe the pain to you of listening to hours and hours worth of agency set ups that all start with some form of, “The problem was X– people were homeless, the earth was warming, sales of fruit roll ups were stagnant… enter us, the savior. Within days, through complicated Bernie Madoff like mathematics, we arrived at a quotient that told us how many people attended our event, what blood type they were and how this affected sales.”

My favorite was one video that described “Sixty percent of the agency participating in their stunt.” Okay, aren’t you supposed to at least get all of your own people to participate? In my kids’ school, 60% is a D-.

The redundancy of the set-ups, aside, there is truly some fantastic work being done all around the world. I mean fantastic. So if you’re sitting there thinking, “We did this really cool thing and I’ll be stunned if it doesn’t win,” the fact is, you probably did do some really cool thing. And five years ago, that thing might have won best of show here. But today, the bar in integrated campaigns and innovative ideas is dizzyingly high.

Just to give you an example of a couple things that stood out for me personally today– One was an effort to drive tourism to the Queensland area of Australia. Instead of doing a typical tourism campaign, they took out an ad promoting, “The best job in the world.”

They offered a six-month salary of $150K to be the caretaker of a beautiful island on the Barrier Reef. The only catch, was that you had to blog about your experience. Needless to say, the stunt drew applications and news coverage from all over the world. The simplicity and genius of this idea baffles my mind.

Another very strong idea was done to get children interested in visiting the new dinosaur exhibit at a local museum. In this case, casts were made of all the individual bones of a T-Rex and then buried in surrounding towns. Clues were distributed, the local news got involved, etc. In the end, all the bones were recovered and excavated, mostly by children, and returned to the museum where they were reassembled.

The biggest difficulty as a judge became one of deciding not  so much when something was good and when it was great, but when it had gone too far. It’s a strange thing to be in business that’s about pushing limits and have to determine whether a piece, while clearly successful, had crossed some line that just made you feel, well, icky.

In a lot of ways, our profession is now taking fewer cues from cinema and more from reality television. And today, I witnessed everything from a campaign where pedestrians were assaulted with sound waves that were literally blasted from a cannon to a live heart surgery on national television sponsored by a margarin company.

I’d like to relay more anecdotes, but while blogging is fun, drinking with the other judges is considerably more fun.

Court Crandall – Ground Zero / Los Angeles

A group of incredibly talented people.

Today is the first day of judging. I am surrounded by a group of incredibly talented people. I am also surrounded by four walls and two windows. The widows frame Hawaii like two larger-than-life living postcards. They taunt us.

Ian Grais staring longingly out the window


We begin judging print. Or as the foreign judges call it, press. Print or press, there is a ton of it. The winners jump off the table immediately. There are three campaigns in particular that have stuck with me. A campaign for scrabble, a campaign for a talk radio station and a public service campaign from our friends at MTV.

MTV campaign

We break for lunch.
Next up, TV.
We don’t make a dent.
We break for dinner.
We have twenty minutes to get ready for dinner.
I spend twenty-five minutes writing this diary entry.

Ari Weiss, Goodby, Silverstein & Partners / San Francisco

One Show Judging Hawaii – Day 1

It’s been fifteen years since I last judged the One Show. We had just started Ground Zero when I got the call from Mary Warlick. I’d like to say I dropped everything, but the truth is, we really didn’t have much to drop at the time. So I enthusiastically accepted her offer and set about packing for Puerto Rico. I was determined to only bring the basics: Day clothes, night clothes, bathing suit, tennis racket, Discman (That’s right I said Discman), CDs, speakers and, um… Rollerblades™. Okay smarty pants, how the hell else was I going to cruise around the complex between judging if not on blades? I don’t recall whether I had the fanny pack on while I was, you know, tearing it up, but it’s possible. It’s possible.

Ripple dissolve to 2009. This time, I’ve packed everything in one carry-on. It’s about speed, it’s about efficiency and most of all, it’s about not trying not to look like a complete jackass on wheels.

Being based in LA, I’m with the half of the judging staff that was sent to Hawaii. (The other half having gone to the Dominican Republic, home of Red Sox great David Ortiz.) We’re staying at the Turtle Bay Resort, which you may have seen in one of the most underrated movies of last year, Forgetting Sarah Marshall.

Seriously, as romantic comedies go, I believe it’s one of the best. The writing is smart and funny, it’s got great heart and Russell Brand is hysterical. Just check out this clip of his audition.

Oh, I almost forgot, Mila Kunis is silly hot. Don’t worry, I cleared this comment through my wife back on the mainland.

But now is not the time to fantasize about Mila Kunis you sicko. Now is the time to focus on advertising– The best advertising in the world.

And you’re probably wondering, did the judges vote for my thing. Obviously, I can’t speak for the other folks, but in my case, yes, I did. Okay, I voted for your one thing. The other four were kind of weak. Especially the one with the jousting monkeys– that just didn’t seem appropriate at all for a senior care facility.

In truth, we saw a hell of a lot of work today and most of blended together the way it typically does in award shows. I can say, however, that the stuff that stood out did so not because it was particularly funny or emotional or impactful, but because it either utilized a medium in a new way or used the thirty-seconds of commercial airtime to set the ball in motion for an idea that would gain momentum through PR rather than GRPs. In short, advertising is no longer about being creative within the parameters of a print ad or TV spot, but about using these as a catalyst for a much larger idea.

I’ll talk more about this tomorrow, but it’s late now and I’ve got to get down to the front desk to see if I can rent some Rollerblades. ™

Court Crandall – Ground Zero / Los Angeles

Judging One Show Interactive — with David Abbott, Bill Bernbach and Ed McCabe.

A funny thing happened on my way to judging the One Show Interactive today in New York. Due to an overload of the broadband system, fellow judge Ty Montague and I left the very modern and wonderful IAC building and wound up doing our judging duties in the cozy confines of the One Club itself at 21 East 26th Street.

It would have been largely a non-event save for the fact that the room we were in had a wall of fame. Literally.

The One Club Creative Hall of Fame photo wall.

Yep, as Ty and I were hunched over out laptops looking at the current state of digital creativity, there was David Abbott. And Bill Bernbach. And Ed McCabe. All staring down at us.

Amil Gargano was there, too. Along with Phyllis Robinson, Roy Grace, and Diane Rothschild.

And modern legends, Jeff Goodby, Rich Silverstein and Dan Wieden. And of course, my boss Lee Clow was there, too. (Looking very retro.)

It was surreal.

Yet for me, personally, quite comforting. After all, One Show Interactive can mesmerize a man. There’s all manner of genius design and ingenious technology. There are apps that blow you away. Websites that dazzle. Project summary films that can make the most mundane idea seem like the most magical.

But just when I went astray and was seduced by some form of digital snake oil, a glance over at David Ogilvy snapped me back and forced me to make sure there was a selling idea amidst all that flash, code and oh-so-modern sans serif type.

At the same time, I began to wonder if the legends would appreciate the work we were seeing? Could they even imagine how far we’ve come from the good ol’ days of TV, print and radio?

I’m pretty certain Bill Bernbach would have appreciated some of the Uniqlo Dry Motion stuff. There’s an idea here, a demonstration, and it’s beautifully art directed.

I think Ed McCabe would be impressed with the BMW rampenfest. Volvo Rush? Maybe.

I could see Ralph Ammirati loving some of the Nike microsites. So cleanly art directed and brilliantly functional.

Of course, I imagine Leo Burnett would be proud that the shop that bares his name is still relevant and doing some smart things.

And as for the modern legends, well, like the Energizer Bunny they just keep going and going. The agencies that bare the names Goodby, Silverstein and Wieden each had some beautiful pieces that I saw.

So there you have it. The past, present and future of advertising.

In one place.

In one afternoon.

In one show.

By Rob Schwartz – TBWA / Los Angeles

One Show Interactive Judging First Thoughts

This year I’m judging the One Show Interactive Awards. I’ve done it once before and they’re a really good summary of what’s going on in the advertising and comms world when it comes to digital stuff.

This year they’ve asked if we’ll blog about our experiences. Initially I was a bit sceptical as I’m just as likely to want to shout about how much I hate something as am I to cheer about things I love. Which isn’t really in the spirit of things like One Show. Equally it’s not fair to blog about individual bits of work, certainly before the results have been announced. So as I was trawling through the 180 or so first round pieces of work I kept wondering what I could say. And after about seeing 20 things I realised that there were a few trends in the work and also trends in the way that I could feel myself reacting to the work.

So I captured them in an ‘in and out’ list. This may not reflect the marks that things got or what the final results might be. They’re just observations on the things that felt fresh and interesting vs the things that felt a bit tired and slightly out-of-touch.

Here’s my list.

I’m sure some of my feelings are to do with the wider context that we all find ourselves in. Moments of joy and niceness just felt so much more enticing right now.

But given that a lot of the work is from a pre-crisis time maybe some of it’s had an unlucky bounce? Or maybe we’d just reached a time to wave a sad goodbye to the glut of mega reflective full screen cyber-futuristik experiences of yore..?

Iain Tait – crackunit.com / London

The economy hasn’t yet taken it’s toll on the creative confidence.

Götz Ulmer & David Baldwin (chairman of the board of The One Club.) Frederik Jansson, Forsman & Bodenfors, Cecilia Dufils, Scholtz & Friends

The first round of One Show judging was brilliant as the work truly represents the industry from all over the world. I saw a great span of tonal differences of which a few were stunningly creative executions on a universal level. One can easily see why this is such a prestigious award to win. Tones of stuff to go through proves that the economy hasn’t yet taken it’s toll on the creative confidence and I felt great responsibility in choosing the right work to make it through to the final judging in NY.

I’m looking forward to meeting up with the judges again and selecting what we believe is the most brilliant work of 2009.

Cecilia Dufils, Scholz & Friends, Stockholm

Judging through this “LENS”

Susan Credle, BBDO / New York & Rafa Antón, Leo Burnett / Madrid judging print, Day 1.

I sat down with an ad student the other day who said, “I just don’t know what good advertising is anymore.” Interesting because sometimes I’m not sure either. With all the creative tools we have in our virtual tool box these days, it’s hard to separate technology and new for new’s sake from conceptual work that builds a brand or, at minimum, delivers a message from a brand in a compelling way that results in a behavioral change of the consumer.

With so many exciting opportunities out there to reach people and engage, it has never been more important for us to recognize and celebrate the importance of insightful creative that makes the brand or the message more important, more relevant, more meaningful. The One Show stresses the importance of looking for the conceptual thinking in the creative as well as work that delights or entertains or pulls us in or breaks new ground. I’m looking forward to judging the final round through this lens.

Susan Credle – BBDO, New York