Today, newcreatives.com launches a call for participation for its 2006 'newcreatives award' competition.
Young, global creatives can compete for the best ideas for ALESSI, the renowned, high-end Italian 'Factory of Design'. The participants will look for the most impactful ideas in support of Alessi's soon-to-open US Flagship store on Greene Street, in Manhattan's fashionable SoHo District. (The store will open in mid-September of this year), as well as focus on branding ideas for the US market.

Interested creatives of all disciplines (advertising, graphic design, product design, free artists, photography, web design, film makers, fashion designers, illustrators, etc), up to the age of 30, and with a maximum of 3 years of professional experience, can get their copy of the briefing by confirming their participation at award@newcreatives.com.

The competitors will have a month to complete a 2-category task on "How beauty can affect your daily life". Mid-September, an international jury of professional advertising and design creatives will select category winners, who will get a free trip to NY and will be invited to the newcreatives award ceremony and winners' exhibition in the new Alessi store in NY. At the award ceremony, the Grand winner will receive an additional $1000 in Alessi products.

Directed by Jerry Brown at Sticks+Stones, written by Trevor Miller, John Colquhoun this Adidas spec ad shows a young man run a four minute mile. It won "best spec spot" at the 2006 AICP Awards. See it here.

Earlier this year both AWNY's Grand Goods for print and TV. Now the WIN Awards will be giving Nike their Advertiser of the Year award at the award ceremony on October 25th in Los Angeles. Early call for entries to the WIN Awards is July 31st with final entry call deadline August 31st. More info here if you want to enter.

Judges include: Janet Champ, Kathy Hepinstall, Melinda Kanipe (Ogilvy & Mather, NY), Audrey Huffenreuter, (McCann, NY) and Emma Hill, (BBDO, Clemenger, Melbourne).

Last Friday the Midsumer Awards were held at The Savoy in London. The jury consisted of: Chairman Mark Roalfe of Rainey Kelly Campbell Roalfe, Steve Jones of DDB London, Stuart Outhwaite of Mother. Charity Charity of JWT, Andrew Petch of Publicis, Mark Hendy of Ogilvy, and Gary Anderson of Fallon. Best International Director went to Michael Wong of The Sweet Shop. Palme D'Or for Best Production Company went to Stink. Best Director was taken home by Ne-o. of Stink And Abbott Mead Vickers BBDO won Most Successful Agency.

Grand Prix for Most Outstanding Commercial was awarded to Sony Bravia Balls by Fallon, directed by Nicolai Fuglsig of MJZ.

Emmy nominations came out this morning. But we don't care about the TV shows...here are the nominees for outstanding commercial.

Clydesdale American Dream - Budweiser

Production Company: PYTKA
Ad Agency: DDB Chicago

(more inside...read on)

Last Friday the CAANZ AXIS awards were held honoring New Zealand creative. "SkyCity's New Zealand general manager of marketing, Jill Birch, says the campaign which took top honours at Axis used a different approach to advertising. Advertisements of playing cards were placed on buses, in magazines and other media for players to "collect" into a winning poker hand."

Chairman's Best in Show went to "Let's Play Poker" campaign for SKYCITY Casino Auckland by ColensoBBDO.

Best of Show at the IPA Best of Health Awards 2006 went to an anti-smoking advertisement by Clear Marketing Communications for ASH (Action on Smoking and Health). The full list of winners can be viewed at the BestOfHealthAwards website. Read on to see the ad.

Dr Lee Boon Yang, Singapore's Minister for Information, Communications & the Arts paid a visit to D&AD's Congress at Old Billingsgate in London on Tuesday: It was the fourth week of the D&AD New Blood exihibition. (more inside)

The Friday night jungle drums spoke the truth - Guinness 'Noitulove' is this years Grand Prix winner in Cannes.

Guinness - Evolution / Noitulove

The team at AMV/BBDO, London who brought back the "good things..." line and director Daniel Kleinman can pat themselves on the back now.

For the love of all that's holy people, this has got to stop. Clients - buy braver stuff. Creatives - write better stuff - you can brush up on your radio writing skills with our tutorial. Execs - go for the big picture with campaigns and please scratch the list of "words that must be in script" down by at least half.
US creatives stop whining about radio being hard you have 60 frickin' seconds most of the time. Thats ages! Why, when I write radio I'll be lucky if I get twenty seconds, and usually the list of "words that must be included" take 30 seconds to say- and the brands "sound logo" plays for at least 5 seconds, probably ten. I so wish I was kidding.

Else radio will never see another winner than the increasingly annoying "Real men of genius" campaign, formely known as the "real American heroes" back in the nineties.

Grand Prix for Press went to FCB Johannesburg for a newspaper ad for Lego entitled "Periscope".

Contenders, start your engines - adgrunts, place your bets. What commercial will take home the Grand Prix?
To refresh your memory, links&screendumps to some of last years greatest ads inside. It's our shortlist - all the ads are on the real lions shortlist. Follow me!

The Amnesty ads we showed you on Monday which were created by Jesper hansen, Olga Bastian and Jesper Isholm from BBDO in Copenhagen won a bronze lion in the press category. Congratulations guys - more press winners to follow tomorrow. See these ads inside.

For those of you who were sad that the LynxJet by Universal McCann, Sydney didn't win Grand Prix for Direct, you'll be happy to know that it did win Grand Prix for Media Lions. It was awarded for best use of mixed media. The campaign was launched in two distinct phases. First the myth of the LynxJet was created with viral and gals who walked around promoting the airline. Then the myth was played into with a website, mobile 'Mile High Club' lounge, and spoofing traditional airline ads.

Finally, after all that nailbiting we know who won what. Inside a few of the lions direct winners. No, the Lynx stewardesses didn't get the grand prix.

I love timezones, because today it's already tomorrow in Australia - even though it's still today here. Get it? Neither do I - but somehow the The Australian managed to post news dated Tuesday June 20, 2006, today (Monday June 19) and reveal that the Lynx Jet campaign won two golds and a bronze in the Cannes Lions Direct category. But here where I'm sitting (same timezone as Cannes y'all) we won't know the results until 12:00 tomorrow.
Still, congratulations to Lowe Hunt for nabbing so many in one category.

The campaign, which attracted complaints in Australia for being sexist, won two golds and a bronze in the direct marketing competition and narrowly missed out on winning the top prize, or Grand Prix.
It also won two Lions in the inaugural Promo section of the festival for sales promotions and has been nominated as a finalist in the Press, Outdoor and Media Strategy competitions, the winners of which will be announced later this week.

The creative posse Jesper hansen, Olga Bastian and Jesper Isholm from BBDO, Denmark, are pretty happy today as they just learned that their Amnesty press ads are on the shortlist in Cannes.
The stark black and white press ads ran as recently as April and the beginning of May in city newspapeers like Metro Express, while the TV ads appeared on TV5 and Kanal 4. See the ads inside.

Lots of fun stuff going on (web-wise as well) in Cannes this year as Adcritic Creativity magazine has a Cannes Lions blog and a Corbis Creativity cafe in the Majestic Hotel. You can stop by for morning smoothies which may or may not cure hangovers, drop in for some back to the nineties oxygen breaks at lunch and get your WiFi fixes, XBox matches and world cup doses as required there. Sounds good. Register here for all access.

DDB and Campaign magazine have gotten together to produce the Cannes Private View website where you'll be able to find all things Cannes comes Cannes Lions time.

Delegates at Cannes can send MMS images to it (much like we did here a couple of years back, remember?) but it's much better than the old photolog. See, you register with your name, agency and cell phone number so that the photos are uploaded and organised by agency. Everyone can add comments to it, and the best picture and caption as judged by site visitors will win airline tickets to Cannes and party invitations provided by DDB and Tribal DDB (airline tickets for UK residents only unfortunately! BooHoo!).

To whet everyones appetite here's a short promo film to boot.

"Hollywood has its Oscars. Television has its Emmys. Broadway has its Tonys. And advertising has its Clios. And its Andys, Addys, Effies and Obies. And 117 other assorted awards. And those are just the big ones."
- Joanne Lipman, 1987

Reporting from one of the awards Joanne didn't mention - inside you'll find Kelly award winners and some notable shortlisted ads from 2006. Yummy.