Check out the winners for in the magazine and newspaper categories inside. Some you've seen before, as there are a few winners from Cannes and other award shows from last year's award season. But there are also some new work you might not have seen before.

Last night the Andy Awards were handed out in NYC. This year's GRANDY Award and winner of the $50,000 prize went to Abbott Mead Vickers.BBDO for their "noitulovE" spot for Guinness. In addition it was awarded a Silver for Alcoholic Beverages.

The Richard T. O'Rielly Award went to Leo Burnett del Peru SSA, Lima for their "Magic 2" spot for Ponle Corazon - Peruvian Children Cancer Foundation. It also won Bronze for Music - Original Score, Silver for Public Service/Non-Profit and another Silver for Direction.

85th Art Director's Club Award winners have been announced. At a gala ceremony at The Art Directors Club gallery on June 8, 2006, the ADC will present this year’s winners with their Gold and Silver Cubes. Check out the gold winners inside.

Norways "guldtaggen" (the golden tag - geddit?) has been awarded and among the winners were Toyota Norway who together with the agency Media.com did their own live version of subservient chicken. Except in this case it was a subservient Toyota RAV4 Driver.
Viewers sent in their request to check how the car performed, many asked for dangerous stunts and pedestrian things like paralell parking, and someone even asked them to stick a pram in the back - all which the driver did as soon as the SMS request reached him and it played live on the site. Later they rounded up the best and nuttiest things done and sorted them into a replay archive.

Wieden & Kennedy (Portland and New York) won both AWNY's Grand Goods for Nike and ESPN in print and TV. Check out the Nike Women print here. Below to view the ESPN TV spot.

Read on for the Ugly.

It should come as no suprise to anyone that the coveted Golden Egg (Sweden) in the category alternative media went to King, Stockholm, for their "crop circle ads" in fields lying directly beneath the flight path of their target market. To sell SJ's cheap train fare, their ads bragged about the low prices in plain view of those who were in the airplanes above.

Cocoon Branding, Winnipeg CA won Best in Show for the Print category for their The Toban Experience poster series titled "Hunting & Gathering".

Ihaveanidea has decided to ditch the cold in Toronto and make a trip to the sunny Parker Palm Springs Resort in California to cover the Clios judging for the 2006 awards in May.
Over the next few days we will be posting commentaries, video interviews and candid behind-the-scenes footage as some of the top creative giants of the world decide the fate of thousands and thousands of ads, of which only a few incredible ones will receive the coveted Clio.
So check it out and see and hear some of the top creatives in the world talk about what they're seeing, what they're looking for, and what you could be doing to earn yourself a Clio in the future! See it all here, The Clios Judging Summit

06 April 2006 Future Lions Global Student Competition Announced
First-Ever Student Competition held at Cannes 53rd International Advertising Festival

In collaboration with the Cannes Lions Advertising Festival, AKQA has organised the first ever "Future Lions Competition" for advertising students around the world. The global student competition is now open and accepting entries. The goal of the competition is to showcase forward-thinking ideas and concepts created by the next generation of global advertising superstars. The Future Lions site futurelions.com includes an actionable creative brief, frequently asked questions, winning tips from AKQA's Executive Creative Directors, downloadable posters and an online submission form.

Last weekend the Asia Pacific Advertising Festival was held in Pattaya, Thailand. This year more than 4,000 pieces of creative work from over 400 advertising agencies in 39 cities around the region were entered.

Best in Films went to The Love Story series for Smooth E Baby Face Foam by JEH United LTD, Bangkok. Best in Print went to BBDO Bangkok for their Maglite Campaign. Dentsu took home the Best of Outdoor for NTT-Resonant Internet Portal Site "goo". And the Worst Boyfriend campaign for NZgirl by DDB New Zealand won Best Direct Marketing.

Aaaaah! I'm exited, the battle tee's have finally arrived, tailored to each Battle of the ad blogs 2006 winners choice of color and size - looking mighty tasty - shiny too!

Now I'll just spend the wee hours here co-ordinating the right shirt to be sent to the right addy, as Advertka, Brainstorm9, Ernie Schenck, Adverblog, Adrants, IdeaMill, Russel Davies, rm 116, Design Observer, Typographica, Being Reasonable, POP! PR, freshly re-designed TTR2, PSFK, Bannerblog and the Igors from Snark Hunting are all probably wondering where the heck their tee's are. On their way mates! On their way right now.

British Television Advertising Awards awarded Best Television Commercial of the Year to W+K's Impossible Dream for Honda. The Most Successful Advertising Agency award went to DDB London, and The Most Successful Production Company award went to Stink.

Cannes is about 3 months away, but today they have annouced Advertiser of the Year. The award will be presented to Erich Stamminger, President and CEO of the adidas brand, responsible for Global Marketing and of the adidas brand’s business worldwide.

Commenting on adidas winning the award, Erich Stamminger said, "We're honoured that the organisers of the Cannes Lions Festival have chosen adidas as Advertiser of The Year, the industry's most prestigious honour and a singular success for our brand.

Whenever my esteemed colleagues sat in various award juries - from Clio to Cannes - I always asked them what it was like. They often replied that it was boring, tedious, or just a lot of long hard work. Now that I've done my share of jury duty I know, it is - or rather it can be, but it's also a lot of fun. If you want to know what judging an ad award is like, do read on. I know one thing, (brand name left blank) can kiss all of our asses, as the jury moved them from one category to another, and had we not done that, they would have gone home from the awards empty handed. Can't reveal who they are yet though....

Because there is a lack of award shows, or some reasoning that still isn't quite clear, Mike Weber has decided to create the American Advertising Festival, which he hopes will become the next Cannes. Instead of a Lion the award is an Eagle. From the press release:

"I saw a void in the national award landscape" Weber says. "We're going to focus a lot of attention on the creative talent." In fact the tag line for the show is "Honoring the best advertising in America, and those who create it." Planned is a television show about select winning creative teams, a DVD compilation, as well as hosting mini sites for winning creative teams. Smaller details include even notifying the winner's local press. "An award is worth more to you if more people know you won it."

One unique twist to the competition is that it's online and all entrants participate in judging during the inital phase.

Next Friday, the 24th of Feb, I'll be one of the jurors of Danish Creative Circles Guldkorn 2006 to judge the best of the best in Danish advertising. More specifically, I'm in the cyber award (Digitale Medier) jury with seven other people and will work all Friday scoring and sorting the submitted work. Maybe we'll see some web-wide famous stuff like that Fanta subtitle a Bollywood movie site created by Ogilvy a couple of years back. Maybe we'll find something miles better even. I'm excited anyway. I promise to tell you all about it - except who the winners be - on that Friday evening.

So yeah, now would be a good time to start kissing my gluteus maximus. Did I mention that I want a champagne colored volvo p1800 ES by the way? ;)

Yes, it's yet another "viral" festival, award, thingie - the Huffington Post Contagious Festival is "a unique opportunity for talented designers, political activists of any persuasion, filmmakers and comics to reach millions of people with creative, viral online work. The contestants that create the best projects get Internet fame and the chance to meet with friends of Huffington Post from the worlds of entertainment and politics to discuss future projects and opportunities." Or a thinly veiled plea that you make some content for them. Whichever comes first.

The 2006 Mobius awards aren't online yet, but we do know who the gold winner is, it's Mike Hilburger, with "seatbelts" and you can view it here.

So , emptyboxawards@gmail writes to us as a shoulder to cry on:"We can't take it anymore. We're fed up. How many F&^%*@# advertising awards are there for creatives?"
The answer is of course a helluvalot, but nobody cares about 90% of them anyway. Remember what Joanne Lipman said. "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."

emptyboxawards@gmail continues; "That's why we are introducing the worst advertising awards in the industry. They're free, not worth putting in your portfolio, and if you win, your reward will be jack squat. Welcome to The 2006 Empty Box Awards. Awards you create during your lunch hour while billing the time to your client. Awards you create after slapping the dorky glasses off the nearest black turtleneck. Awards where you can savage other contestant's entries. Awards so bad they may actually become entertaining."

Uh-huh, well their snazzy URL emptyboxawards.com , registered via domainsbyproxy of course, leads to a blogspot page where the first thing they do is ask for your help in coming up with a topic. Say wha? You haven't thought this though at all have you? This could be funny, or it could flop - which do you adgrunts think will happen?

Some may argue that advertising needs another award show as much as Paris Hilton needs more media exposure. But that's not stopping John Michelet, president of Ad-Power, Inc., who has founded the Zephyr Award. From the press release:

The Zephyr Awards finally reward advertising for its persuasive power rather than simply its looks or cleverness.