Awards

This Sunday, November 15th, marks the end of the first ever crowd-sourced Andy Awards jury selection. That's a mouthful, but some top contendas include: Nick Law of R/GA, Kash Sree of Pereira O'Dell, TBWA's Jimmy Smith, Gerry Graf of Saatchi & Saatchi and Andrew Keller of Crispin Porter + Bogusky.

You can nominate anyone, and according to co-chairs Michael Lebowitz and Ty Montague, this way the most influential people will end up judging the work. Brilliant! So please fucking vote, as Montague's shirt in the video's placeholder image commands. He and Lebowitz are wearing different shirts in the video than the image displayed before you click "play." Kids these days — always trying to get away with something.

Why Elect The Jury? from 2010 ANDY Awards on Vimeo.

More: "Hive Awards Honor 'Unsung' Internet Heroes"

It seems a bit odd that on a day we're honoring real heroes, we get a press release about the Hive Awards, which refers to the "hive mind" mentality of the web and is designed for "the unsung heroes of the internet." Despite the weird timing, the Hives nevertheless seek to recognize those who might be getting short shrift when it comes to credit--namely coders, programmers, user experience designers, content strategists, information architects, you get the drift.

Call for entries kicked off today for Hive, which will award people within their industry silos. You can find out more about it here.

More: "Cannes Not Dropping 'Advertising' From Festival"

The Art Directors Club is shaking things up this week, as the creative org announced that it's eliminated the full-time CEO position and in turn, accepted Ami Brophy's resignation. Brophy was promoted from executive director to the chief exec post just over a year ago.

With the CEO position gone, the ADC Board of Directors voted to make management of all ADC programming and member services the responsibility of an executive director, yet to be named. In the meantime, ADC GM Olga Grisaitis will serve as acting director and oversee operations until the post is filled.

In a statement, ADC president Doug Jaeger says, "We are very grateful for Ami's contributions over the past two years, and wish her well moving forward."

More: "ADC's New Objective: Connect, Provoke and Be Fabulous"

Hot pink is the color of choice in ADC's new logo (above), which is part of the club's new mantra to "Connect, Provoke and Elevate." While we'll let you be the judge, one attendee was so shocked by the redesign that he basically walked out of the joint (but later returned for the open bar of course). Anyhow, last night, a crowd gathered to watch HappyCorp founder Doug Jaeger (and his usual built-in tie T-shirt) introduce the creative behind the new brand identity, Jacob Trollback, president/CD of Trollback + Company.

After watching a slideshow of the ADC logo's evolution, Trollback explained the meaning behind the work. In a statement, he says, "Companies and organizations usually use acronyms in their branding to distance themselves from their past. In our case, we wanted to do the exact opposite and embrace our origins and heritage."

Besides having a healthy supply of Hendrick's Gin, which was more than welcome, the cocktail party also promoted the launch of ADC CUBE, a new boys and girls club for past and present winners of the eponymous award.

More: "ADC Young Guns Winners Announced"

Despite Hill & Knowlton CMO/EVP Tony Burgess-Webb's suggestion that Cannes Lions should drop the "advertising" part from its festival title, the event's CEO Philip Thomas offered a curt "No, that's not correct" to our sister blog PRNewser when asked if the festival is doing just that in order to appeal to a wider audience.

Burgess-Webb's statements about the Cannes Lions stems from the low turnout in the PR category, which was added for the first time at this year's awards. "The number of the PR category entries that actually came from PR agencies was less than 43%, and the winning entry came from a Sydney-based ad agency. So from point of view of panel of judges--Hill and Knowlton had two judges on panel--it was pretty disappointing."

So Burgess-Webb held an event with the PRCA, invited 100 agencies to discuss how to attain Cannes gold and came up with this conclusion: "The fact is it's not an advertising festival, it's a marketing communications festival. Why not drop the whole title?"

More: "Cannes Lions Policy on Fake Ads: Stereotypically French"

Actor Alan Cumming played host and Ogilvy served as a lead sponsor for the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation's first ever Media Awards in Advertising, which honors individuals and projects in advertising for fair, accurate and inclusive representation of LGBT communities and issues.

Among the big winners was Subaru, which won the Corporate Responsibility Award, as well as Orbitz in the TV-Mainstream Market category for the "Golfers" spot while Absolut nabbed Outstanding Advertising-Print for "Will You Marry Me?" You can read the full list of winners here.

More: "ADC Young Guns Winners Announced"

The Art Directors Club handed out its annual Young Guns prizes to emerging whippersnappers last night. For the first time, ADC Young Guns-Moleskine grants were awarded, including $1,000 to top-ranked Siggi Eggertsson of Germany and $250 each to runner-ups Fx&Mat of France and American Mario Hugo (hey, money's money).

Along with getting a chance to design original artwork for NYC's new hipstery Ace Hotel, the winners' work, which combines pro and personal pieces, will be on display at the ADC's Chelsea abode until November 6th and will eventually become a part of the group's permanent online collection next month.

More: "ADC Issues its Own Scam Ad Statement"

In recent weeks, the major award-giving bodies of the ad industry have revamped their rules regarding fake or scam ads. The ADC was particularly harsh, stating "your secret is NOT safe with us". The OneClub has a sliding scale, delineating increasingly severe punishment for different infractions. They both place blame the agency though, which is a point you'll want to remember — because Cannes says its your fault.

Cannes Lions issued their statements on the same day as the ADC, and wow are they weak. Leave it to the French advertising award show to, you know, not have balls — rather a satchel where they store the money they get from agencies participating in their program. What once was a lion is now a sickly cub:

"We believe that banning agencies from entering on a wholesale basis is unfair on blameless individuals. There are many people who work in agencies who may not be involved with an erroneous entry and therefore should not be penalised. Our policy will be to ban the individuals named on the credit list if a scam is discovered."

Convenient! Banning an agency would undoubtedly cost the Lions some much needed moola. Recall, a single film entry brought in nearly $1000 this year. Too bad many fewer shops participated. But, seriously, what the hell are they doing with that money and why wouldn't the world's foremost advertising competition take a stand against the agencies? Two plausible answers:

A) they can't afford not to
B) they can't afford not to

The Cannes folks want you to know that they feel their job is "to set the benchmark for creativity in communications, to celebrate creativity and to reward the industry for outstanding creative work." Actually, that's the role of the advertisers who provide the creative, and the other creatives who judge that work. It's a two way street, and Cannes is nothing more than cobblestone.

Let's not forget that the majority of the work celebrated at Cannes has already won tons of stuff elsewhere. Meaning: the benchmark is set by the ADC, OneClub, ANDYs et al.

Though the Cannes Lions are lauded as the highest mark in advertising, at some point we have to ask "why?" As of this moment they certainly aren't deserving such a title, given their incapability to better the business — to level the playing field to include only the work that was truly produces.

Rather, they promote the same snake-oil-sales tactics that have given this business a bad name. This is me spitting in their general direction (doubly insulting due to this damn head cold).

Via CannesLionsPress

More: "ADC Issues its Own Scam Ad Statement"

In light of the One Show and D&AD putting their feet down about scam ads, the Art Directors Club is following suit with its own statement about this sordid subject.

While touching upon program guidelines that include "more elaborate authorization and confirmation details required from both agency and client," the ADC issues some words of warning that read as follows:

"Your secret is not safe with us. If we find an entry to be fake, the agency and client in question will be disqualified. Then, for the first time starting this year, we'll take the additional step to communicate directly with other industry awards organizations and inform them about the scam ad so they too can be on the lookout and take action. We call upon other awards organizations to reciprocate.

ADC realizes some interesting creative ideas never get approved or run. In cases like this, agencies may enter the work in the ADC Annual Awards Playground category, created four years ago specifically for work that for one reason or another never got approved by the client, or never ran."

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More: "JWT at Center of Cannes Scam Ad Snafu"

It looks like RGA's CCO Nick Law has latched on to the text-to-movie software used by CP+B's Andrew Keller for his ANDYs pitch. In this brief clip, Law offers his own rebuttal/pitch in the form of a virtual, one-sided tete-a-tete with his industry colleague. Any bets that we'll see a few more of these to come?

More: "Andrew Keller Wants to Be Your ANDYs Judge"