Search results matching tag 'awards'

If the shoe fits, win it! She Says Golden Stiletto Awards

2292853 — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 17:06:00 GMT

This year’s She Says Golden Stiletto Awards (the second year for the awards honouring women in digital advertising) brought together top talent in London's digital advertising industry to celebrate female achievements in creativity, and showed that there is growing appeal for the organization, and its mission to showcase female talent in the digital sector.

She Says Golden Stiletto Awards is the only award ceremony of its kind that is for women, and judged by women working in the advertising industry, with judges for this year’s nearly 30 entries including:

Johannah Bailey, Programme Director Global Communications - Unilever

Liz Sivell, Creative Director at R/GA

Ida GronBlom, Senior Creative - Wieden + Kennedy

Toni Smith, Managing Director – The Viral Factory

Elspeth Lynn, Executive Creative Director – Profero

Charlotte Mcelany, Senior Writer – Creative Review

At the awards ceremony, held October 29 at the Getty Gallery who are sponsors of the awards, finalists showed a selection of digital advertising projects that demonstrated how the online medium can offer multiple layers of engagement for all types of demographic audiences. Women-led digital projects included an augmented reality campaign for BMW, an online/offline campaign that got 100 participants dancing for 24 hours in a “music phone dance-off” to promote the Samsung Beat DJ music phone, and a charity campaign for British Red Cross to change your online status, that had zero budget and seven days to plan.

The awards event itself attracted women from all aspects of the digital industry, including animator Sarra Hornby who spends hours working with paper and cotton thread to create animated shorts for commercial use. Although her work was not in the finals, she said that the She Says gathering offered her a powerful networking community to increase her professional career.

It seems cities beyond London are hungry for the same level of woman-to-woman professional interaction, as branches of She Says are now springing up in New York, San Francisco, LA, Vienna Paris, Sydney and Brighton, and more than 1,500 women are members. SheSays was launched in March 2007 by two female Creative Directors (Laura Jordan Bambach from Glue and Alessandra Lariu from Agency Republic at the time) who noticed that there weren't many women in top positions in digital agencies. She Says offers women in the creative and digital industries free networking and mentoring opportunities at monthly events held across the world with the aim getting more women into the industry and to the top of it.

This year’s Golden Stiletto Award winners include:

First place: Modern Foreign Languages

Second place: BMW Z4 airbrush

Third place: The Last Call

Commended: Look beyond the label

See photos from the award ceremony here.

Glad to see women winning,

-Lisa

Travolution Awards 2009

980070 — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 11:13:00 GMT

I’ve now thankfully recovered from a fabulous evening at The Dorchester thanks to Simon Ferguson and Charlotte Davies at Travolution.

The event has now grown into the much larger surroundings since its inauguration a couple of years ago, and had garnered 450 of the top Travel digerati to attend.

Emily Maitlis from the Beeb was our hostess for the evening and after an opening salvo of gags (including one about what brand name the merger of Cunard and Aer Lingus might create – very...erm...tongue in....erm...cheek!) she managed to hold court and keep everyone’s attention right until all the awards had been received.

The Travolution Achievement Award went to Stephen Kaufer, President and CEO of TripAdvisor and the one to watch, who I’d been jolly impressed with when I met him in New York at AdWeek last week, was Alex Gisbert from Expedia.

For a full line up of winners check out the Travolution site.

Thanks again to Simon and Charlotte for asking me to do a bit of judging, and no thanks to Phil Stelter from Bigmouthmedia for pressing that last Whisky Cocktail into my hand at 1.30am which rendered yesterday pretty much a write off! :-)

Why some awards aren't a waste of time and money.

1319935 — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 15:51:00 GMT

The biggest criticism laid at the door of the big awards events is that they are a money spinner for events companies and celebrate only the most selfish or the most sophisticated self promoters. Sir John Hegarty and Steve Henry tell us that more than 90% of the work out there is rubbish. Obviously all of you are trying to do something about that. On the awards front, this year's BIMA awards have had a rethink, for the better.

I declare an interest here, as I'm on the committee. And we've made a few changes that are relevant and useful to entrants. We've made it a criteria for judging to give feedback to every single entry. No other creative award does this. We've also made the cost of entry accessible. Not just to entering work, but also to attending the event, which will be a big party bash rather than an expensive sit down do. We've gathered a list of luminaries that might be worth putting work in front of. Best of all, we've made the judging criteria simple - equally weighted across strategy, creativity, interactivity and effectiveness. And awards will be made for craft skills as well where the work is particularly cleverly executed.

Need proof? Here are some of the judges. Paul Hammersley (The Red Brick Road), Robert Campbell (Campbell Lace Beta), Will King (King of Shaves), Gareth Jones (Revolution), Kelly Wright (Warner Bros.), Jody Smith (Channel 4), Adam Powers (BBC), Alex Smith (Microsoft). Need to enter? Click here.

See you in November.

Follow me on Twitter

Vote for best blog in BIMA awards. (Not necessarily this one).

1319935 — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 17:20:00 GMT

Enter now people. This year the Best Blog awards will be decided via a public vote in two rounds. In the first round BIMA will take nominations for your favourite blogs and in the second BIMA will shortlist the nominations and publish a poll to allow the community to vote for their favourites. Entry is open to any blog as long as the content is not offensive in any way. Industry bloggers, are of course a jolly polite bunch, and will no doubt vote for others rather than for themselves!

go here to have a go http://www.bimaawards.com/categories/best_blog/

PS you don't have to vote for me. I'm on the awards committee already :)

PPS Embed the link below in your blog if you'd like people to vote for you.

Are advertising agencies protesting too much?

1714221 — Sun, 21 Jun 2009 22:56:00 GMT

Methinks all this talk of cancelled parties and an empty Croisette may turn out to be a case of agencies which doth protest too much.

In a year of mass redundancies, most have been keen to show that they are acting with sobriety and cutting back on the expense of jetting a whole load of people out to Cannes and keeping them fuelled with a continuous supply of drink, parties and, less importantly, food.

The only party I know of is the Massive Music "No Party" on Noga Beach on Wednesday night and it's true that, while our Cannes Week diaries at Campaign are usually rammed with invitations before June has begun, this year we have been quite concerned that we might actually have to buy dinner for ourselves at some point.

But I just wonder if there may be a rush on last minute flights to Nice later this week. All of a sudden, up will pop the chance to meet with a client or a prospect out here or - hope upon hope - the possibility of picking up a prize, and execs will find themselves supplied with an entirely plausible justification for a trip down to the Cote d'Azur after all.

And, yes, our diaries are now full to overflowing, with late invitations still coming in this week-end.

So, sitting in my credit-crunch bedroom tonight, having seen nothing yet of Cannes except the rain, I predict a quiet start to the week and a pretty packed finale. I hope I'm right.

Pics

2427159 — Thu, 07 May 2009 07:42:00 GMT

Dunno about you but I’ve had a frantic week.

Getting near deadlines on the book I’m doing.

And I’m aware that this is supposed to be a “creative’s” blog – whereas I tend to ramble on about more strategic issues.

So this week, something nice and easy.

The equivalent of one of those shows Chris Tarrant used to do
(before he found more and more odd ways of giving people money).

I.e. a selection of ambient ideas which I really like.

Somebody called Mondo Pasta. Probably done for awards. But I love it.

Ditto. (Although not for pasta, but for some hair conditioning product called Rejoice, apparently.)

I can’t just keep writing “Ditto” after each one, can I ?

Maybe I can.

Love this. I worked on this product once.
We did a couple of interesting virals.
Wish we’d thought of this as well.

If you zoom in you’ll see on the 3rd building that
this is for retirement insurance.
Personally I think it’s a better ad for paint.

Yea. Another nice one probably done for the juries.

But the thing about all these is that they surprise you.

You don’t expect them and they make you think.

In a world in which most marketing communications are formulaic and just very expensive wallpaper, these ideas are great exceptions.

What's going to win the Digital awards this year?

1696774 — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 21:56:00 GMT

It's about that time, not quite squeaky bum time, because lets face it awards are not as important as football but all the votes for the big awards shows, bar Cannes, will be in. If you were a betting man you could do worse than check out Michael Lebowitz's top 5 campaigns of the year that he picked out for Forbes magazine.

I judged the Art Directors Club with Michael this year, he was chairman of the One Show and I'm pretty sure headed up Viral at D&AD so there is nothing out there he wouldn't have seen. One piece of work that I hadn't seen on his list was a great banner for Axion a belgian bank. The concept is wonderfully simple, stick a band in a banner. Use the space restriction to your advantage. I really like this. I am on record as saying that banners are dead as a creative medium. This is the only banner campaign I have seen in a year or so that I wish I had done. Maybe there is life in the old dog yet?

What makes it all the more galling is that Flo and I had this idea a few years ago. It was kind of different, it was a mini band that lived in an app that sang the news and stuff like that - but close enough for us to know that we can never resurrect it. Another one bites the dust! And another example of the fact that it's easy to have ideas - what's hard is making them happen. Congratulations to the agency in Belgium for doing just that, I'm sure they will be on a podium near you soon.

Preliminaries

2427159 — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 20:45:00 GMT

Hello.

I’m going to treat this initial blog as a soft launch. Because I've been told that all the publicity - the massive war-engine of publicity which Campaign has at its disposal – is to be deployed next week.

So this week, we’re not expecting anyone to log on at all.

So, please look at this as a kind of preliminary taster.

A kind of "pre-come" column, if you will.

A preliminary and preparatory outpouring – but not the actual, honest-to-goodness, genuine thing.

So, anyway - I was at the Creative Circle Awards bash last week. Although I was only there because my old mate and former boss Dave Trott was being given a lifetime’s achievement award, and I wanted to honour the bloke.

It’s always good to see Dave and he was on great form as ever.

Just not quite as feisty as I’d have liked. Because Dave taught me all I ever knew about being feisty.

The person who WAS feisty was Alan Carr, the paid-for entertainment.

It’s interesting seeing famous people try to host these awards dos – because they usually think the whole thing is about as important as an Under-12s 5-a-side rounders tournament, where your kid isn't playing.

And they rip the piss out of it, and then wonder why the people they’re taking the piss out of, don’t find it hugely funny.

I’ve seen really good comedians looking shell-shocked and dazed as they joke away at the industry’s expense and get a less than rapturous response.

Which is hilarious, if you’re in the right mood.

Although I was once on the wrong end of it myself. A female comedian who’d been paid to host a Radio Awards night introduced me as the Chairman of the Judges. As I walked on stage, she said “Doesn’t he walk funny – it looks like he’s shat his pants”.

I kid you not.

To be honest, it wasn’t the happiest hour of my life doling out the awards after that. Me and the female comedian smiling into the camera as the plucky winners picked up their gongs – I think my grin might have looked a bit forced.

You know when you start thinking – oh god, maybe I HAVE shat my pants ?

There’s no subtle way to check really.

But it reminds me of a story about Dave Droga. Nothing to do with his pants, obviously, because Dave's hygiene is second to none. But he once told me he was chairing some awards do in Perth - and he was insulted for an hour and a half by a glove puppet.

So, these things happen.

But, having spent a bit of time away from the ad industry, I must say that I enjoyed Alan’s cynical take on the whole thing enormously.

So – when a nicely provocative ad for HSBC won a well-deserved award, Alan said something about how they’d “only lost £2billion that day – it must be working”.

He moaned about how bloody depressing charity ads were, reducing the audience to hoots of laughter as a Barnardo’s ad played out its emotional angst on the screen.

And most astonishingly of all, when he came to hand out the Platinum Award, and the spreads for the Harvey Nichols Bristol store came up on screen, he looked aghast and said “That’s not it, is it ?”

You don’t get that happening at the Oscars, do you ?

“And the winner of Best Picture is – No, that’s a mistake isn’t it ?”

But this extremely casual attitude, I would argue, pretty much sums up the general public’s view of advertising.

I’m gonna talk more about this – if this blog carries on. Because when you spend some time out of the industry, you realise that only really, really outstanding marketing cuts through.

That old Lord Leverhulme quote about 50% of his ad budget being wasted, and him not knowing which half it was – that’s bollocks really.

95% of marketing budgets are wasted.

And if Lord Leverhulme was around today, I’d tell him that to his face.

I’d say “Lord Leverhulme, me old mucker, you’re out by 45%. Go back and work it out again.”

We’ll talk more about this - and about whether there’s still a role for conventional advertising – in later blogs.

For now, I’ll leave you with a story I heard about a Creative Director leaving the Grosvenor one night, with an armful of awards. The taxi driver who picked him up asked him what had been happening that evening, and the CD said “It’s an awards do for the advertising industry”.

“Blimey”, replied the cabbie, “whatever will they think of next ?”

Anyway, that’s enough for the pre-come column.

Hardly seminal, maybe.

But I do hope it’s going to be sticky.

Mark Wnek's awards rant

1696774 — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 17:18:00 GMT

On the back of Adweek giving R/GA digital Agency of the Year Mark Wnek wrote a drug like rant about the whole awards system and it being bullshit.

I have to say I know a lot of people don't like him (don't really know why, or care, little before my time) but I think he's spot on. I have cut and pasted the full text from Brian Morrissey's blog, which is very good for those of you wanting to know what's going on in the US digital scene. I haven't changed the formatting at all. I think a good narcesque fueled peice of prose should just come as it is...

"I have flu and am bored so here's a feverish rant for you: there is a big problem with the (Anglo-?) American/capitalist need for winners and losers. Somewhere along the line advertising got ensnared in the Oscars/Hall of Fame mentality of ostentatiously awarding skin-deep flashiness as opposed to true, largely unsung fundamental business-affecting performance. Most of the conversations I have with anybody connected to the so-called creative community in ad agencies come around to awards or award-winning work at some point. It has come to the point where agencies at the very least equally develop work for the consideration of advertising juries as for clients and consumers.

"There are creative people in the ad industry who are famous. Are there any famous people in other trades like building or plumbing? The digital community hasn't grown out of this utter bullshit. The digital community has grown up via solving genuine business problems and has an undiluted dedication to creating concrete, game-changing and lasting platforms and connections. Frankly, the medium is irrelevant. The only thing that is relevant is coming up with the right solution at the right time in the right way while being beholden to nothing - BUT NOTHING - but the business/communications/consumer/reputational challenge the paying client is struggling with.

"Such solutions are most often unglamorous. Particularly in the short term - which is why all the best digital people use the word 'lasting' a lot. The great thing about Bob G and R/GA is not Nike Plus. Nike Plus is just a natural outcome of a company that has been thinking deeply and unostentatiously about helping clients with their business for years rather than playing to the crowd (something which, by the way, Crispin were also doing for years before anybody was even talking about them). As a grown-up I would LOVE to see agencies honored for genuinely thinking about (if not feeling for) their clients and their problems rather than being good at promoting themselves via awards junkets.

"Olive Garden (yes, Olive Garden) has a positioning which, as you know, is 'when you're here, you're family'. I don't see anyone jumping up and down and claiming credit for that. It's not Nike, of course. But Olive Garden has had 54 uninterrupted quarters of growth. 54. Clearly there's a business situation at work and a whole collection of supplier (yep, that's what we are, suppliers, not superstars) relationships that is well and truly working. So what I would dearly like to see someone have the balls to do is to have one Agency of the Year and reveal the whole range of complex, unsung, lasting, bottom-line affecting ideas and behaviors - strategic, technological or otherwise - that it brought to bear. Man these antibiotics are weird."

You go Mark. I'll try to remember that while I judge some awards this week.

Is it the brand, or is it the brief?

1319935 — Fri, 28 Nov 2008 11:04:00 GMT

At the British Interactive Media Awards (ps got one for Intel woohoo) last night Nike and AKQA did really well – congratulations to them for an outstanding showing. I was asked by another Client at the event how helpful it is to have Nike as a brand to play with. Poke did well with Orange too, another brand that has a certain award friendliness.

Years ago I was watching a focus group through a glass wall, with the moderator showing some work we had made for a car client. (I’ll keep the names quiet to protect the innocent). Then he showed a host of competitor pieces, and everyone lit up. We thought, and post-prodded consumers came round to the idea too, I’m pleased to say, that our work was really good. Different, provocative, even. But it didn’t get a gut reaction.

Chatting to the moderator afterwards, he said, well, it’s the brand, They just see those (dull, bland, ordinary) cars, and when they see the other (cool, sporty, dynamic) cars, they, well, just light up.

I guess it’s all of our concern to create work that sets the long-term values and tonality for brands that give them privileged status with the consumer. Is it so much harder to win awards with more ‘challenged’ brands?