Awards

Ben Silverman and Tyler Durden–sorry, Edward Norton–were among the judges for this year’s Firefox Flicks competition, which of course is brought to you by Mozilla, which announced the winners during the Cannes Film Festival. The jury including Mozilla staff, film industry folks and more picked six top entrants, whose work will eventually be incorporated into global marketing campaigns for the browser. Without further ado, see the showreel above and check out more info on Mozilla’s blog here.

Launch a social media campaign that will build your brand and deliver results in our online Social Media Marketing Boot Camp starting June 7. Speakers include Abigail Cusick (Bravo Digital), Gregory Galant (Sawhorse Media), Alex Leo (Thomson Reuters Digital), Jim Tobin (Ignite Social Media), and many more. Read the reviews.

“Circulo Creativo Latino de Estados Unidos” is an organization that seeks to increase and foster interaction between US-based Hispanic creatives. This year, the CCLEU held a competition that asked young creatives to create a PSA of sorts encouraging eligible members to join the organization, with the winning entry earning its creators an all-expenses paid trip to the Cannes Lions Festival.

The winning entry (above) comes from art director Said Fayad and copywriter Marc Duran, two employees at Wing, a WPP-owned subsidiary of Grey that specializes in work that targets a Latino audience. “We’re Better Together” is a phrase contrasted with probably the worse piece of three-word advice any movie character can take, the infamous “let’s split up.” Maybe best made fun of in Joss Whedon‘s recent horror/satire Cabin in the Woods, “let’s split up” never works out for the would-be victims of film.

Sure, one could argue that Fayad’s and Duran’s spot’s effectiveness relies on borrowed interest from the various films and TV shows it features. But, for pop-culture and horror movie buffs (I’m looking at you, Kiran), identifying where each clip originates is what makes “We’re Better Together” so much fun.

Somehow, yours truly was able to hit up three events last night (yeah, we know, it’s a hard knock life, but I’m getting old), the last being the CLIO Awards, which once again took place at the American Museum of Natural History way the hell uptown and under dreary skies in NYC. Regardless of the gloom, we felt rather uplifted from MC/plastic surgery advocate Joan Rivers and her self-deprecating humor. Despite what seemed to be laryngitis, the comedienne rallied on and made the requisite Kardashian jokes, showed off her starring spot in a BF Goodrich ad from the 1800′s and presented the Grand Clio to Volkswagen.

Please allow us to apologize for the shitty image, but then again, it was standing room only and our section was booked. Anyhow, it was heartwarming that outgoing Ogilvy & Mather chairman Shelly Lazarus spoke highly of one of her “best friends” and CLIO Lifetime Achievement Award winner, Piyush Pandey. With his brilliant Rolly Fingers-esque moustache and all, Pandey was humble even after Lazarus dubbed the 30-year O&M vet the “godfather of modern Indian advertising.” From then on, through the reels, multiple presentations, etc., we somewhat started to glaze over, so before you do, check out the full CLIO 2012 winners list here. By the way, we once again loved the Spinal Tap-ish labyrinth to get to the show, which gives us an opportunity to view taxidermy at its finest.

 

 

Even though this year’s ANDY Awards are said and done (and thanks for bucking the trend of the traditional ad awards show), R/GA would still like to help the winners gloat. The “agency for the digital age” has unveiled the myANDY app, which lets you, yes, download your trophy to your iPhone. If you’re feeling the need to rub your prize in a bit further, feel free to watch the video above. We’ve been told that only actual ANDY winners will get access to download the app, which makes sense.

Now that he’s done pontificating about Pinterest for the time being, our regular contributor and HUGE senior marketing strategist Josh Seifert returns in time for awards season. As the headline suggests, our scribe points out how digital has evolved, but digital awards–eh, maybe another story.

With this year’s marketing awards season in full swing, I recently took a closer look at what’s winning awards in digital these days. With full credit to everyone who recently took home a CLIO or a Webby, I have to admit that digital awards have become a bit of a head-scratcher for me. If awards are meant to recognize excellence in the medium, I’m not sure what’s going on.

The Webbys are possibly the highest profile digital awards and, honestly, have done a great job of raising the profile of digital in websites, online film, interactive advertising and mobile, in too many subcategories to count. Each year, I log in to vote in the People’s Voice Awards (usually at someone else’s behest) and, after arbitrarily casting a few votes, quickly become bored and abandon the site. The field is simply too broad, maximizing the number of winners (and entries), at the expense of the overall relevance of the awards.

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Like every other award show these days, the Webbys couldn’t wait to reveal its big winners way ahead of the actual event itself. In a category that should probably be of most interest to you, dear readers, the Webby Awards picked BBH as its Agency of the Year for its 16th annual affair. What won the voters like Bob Greenberg and AKQA’s Rei Inamoto over, as you can imagine, was the agency’s work for Google including the irresistible “Dear Sophie” spot (above) that first aired a year ago as well as Google Music among other projects.

BBH picked up nine Webbys in all, topping other agencies that won multiple honors including W+K (7), DDB (5) as well as 72andSunny and BBDO, which each picked up three. Other interesting non-advertising honorees at this year’s event will be comedian Louis C.K., who was awarded Webby Person of the Year as well as Instagram for Webby Breakout of the Year. The actual 2012 Webby Awards will take place on Monday, May 21 once again at Hammerstein Ballroom in NYC. Peep this year’s full winners list here.

Last night, the folks from the AICP threw down multiple parties in Chicago, NYC and Santa Monica to announce the 2012 shortlist for both the main show and the Next Awards, which will take place on June 12 at the MoMA in New York. AICP president/CEO Matt Miller says in a statement, “This year more than ever we have witnessed the evolution of the collaborative process. Because so many projects included companies working together to in roles that defy traditional definition, we have decided to forgo a formal tally, as there is really no fair way to determine the level of contribution to each project.”

As expected, the Chipotle “Back to the Start” and “Dear Sophie” Google spots topline the commercial list. Your full shortlist can be found here.

With the One Show festivities almost upon us, the organizers at the One Club need some help. Since we’re cool and the gang with them, we figured we’d help and let you know that they are looking for volunteers, specifically in the areas of bag-stuffing and ushering. Yep, enticing, but your incentive? Free tickets to one of the events and perhaps pizza as well. Come on, folks, we’re talking pizza here. Anyhow, if interested, give them a ring here.

Is a Pencil worth dying for? We have had no idea that the One Club prize was worth so much, but we’ll applaud the 8-bit nostalgia provided to us by Mullen and said organization. This effort, which was built on HTML5 and was one of the most recent efforts led by  recently departed chief digital officer Mauro Cavalletti. The clip provides us the story of “vigilante” Jon Scraper, a man without a cause, but knowing the ad industry, one who has his balls in the vice of a client. Credits after the jump.

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Well, if she can warm the cockles of one such as Edward Boches, whom she tried and failed many years ago to serve as an assistant to at Mullen, perhaps she can win you over too. We’re talking about one Lisa Taylor, currently a “freelance integrated copywriter” who spent a few years as an ACD at Arnold and is now up for a Webby for her “Cover Letter Customizer” effort. Anyhow, as she’s running way behind, Taylor sent us the note below as a plea to help her gain votes. We, being fair and slightly unbalanced, promise not to cast our own. We’re just passing the word along and trying to help a girl out. See the note below:

“Dear AgencySpy people,

I’m a freelance copywriter. The self-promotion website I created with the help of some awesome friends,coverlettercustomizer.com, is nominated for a Webby Award.

While I’m psyched to be nominated, I’m currently in 5th (and last) place for the People’s Voice portion, despite @malecopywriter‘s supportive tweets. If I’m going to lose, I want to go out with a bang, preferably a bang that gets Edward Boches to vote for me. (And according to his tweet, he did this morning.) Now, I’m hoping to get yours.

Voting ends April 26th.

http://taylorwriting.com/2012/04/cover-letters-nails-and-a-rejection-letter-from-the-office-of-edward-boches/

http://pv.webbyawards.com/ballot/3

Thank you for your time and consideration.

Sincerely,
Lisa”