Farfar, the agency where creatives suddenly fled and then Isobar shut it down quite abruptly, has won yet another coveted award for their "Nokia Signpost". DA&D garnered it a gold.

Not quite as ironic as the Andy award it won the same day that the ad agency closed, but it does signal that the world biggest signpost might be getting an award in Cannes as well. Anyone care to bet?

The way it looks now, the Nokia signpost is taking a collective final bow for Farfar on the award circuit. Encore! Encore!

#Karen26 as she was known on Twitter, the "Danish mother desperately seeking..." the father of her son August which created quite the viral splash last year is going to Cannes. Grey, the ad agency that created the ad and were fired later, stand behind the campaign which never actually ran in full.

Yes, there was to be another ad with this one. One that tied the whole shebang together. Perhaps even a hilarious punchline. I don't know, I haven't seen it. Judging half a campaign might be hard, but Grey does have digits to show off. In one week “Danish Mother Seeking” was Googled over 83,000 times. Within 48-hours of the film being uploaded to YouTube in September 2009, the video of the young mother looking for the father of her child reached YouTube’s ‘top-ten most viewed’ list. Lets not forget that #Karen26 trended on twitter that weekend. Will it bring home an award for "Best Use of Social Media"? Who knows - but it is undeniable that she went viral.

Tim Mellors, Vice Chairman and Worldwide Creative Director, Grey Group, says:
“The public responded in their thousands, offering messages of support to the young mother. The documentary style proved incredibly convincing and peaked people’s curiosity about life in Denmark. It led to more than 20 user-generated video responses and spoofs with over 400,000 views.”
After just five days, despite its impact, the film was pulled from YouTube by Visit Denmark; the website was shut down in a wave of controversy. In this short time frame, the film resulted in 2,578,961 video views on 466 websites in 216 countries.

Now, I wasn't a fan of #Karen26, I wrote this is what you did wrong Grey and GoViral, but I'm even less of a fan of the journalists that seemed hellbent on getting Ms Kiilerich, the CEO of VisitDenmark to resign because they mistook Youtube's recent film feed for TT so I had a quick chat at the kitchen table: Bambusing about Karen26 & Extrabladets need to shift blame. Even ad agencies spoke out against Karen, ad agencies who should defend new ideas, because we don't want scared clients too afraid to try new things (and new media). What really went wrong here wasn't the virality of it all, but how the client handled its sudden spotlight. Since Karen was meant to be a teaser, VisitDenmark should have stonewalled the press with "no comment" until they were blue in the face.

Lets see if she can get as much attention in Cannes as she did when she appeared on youtube.

Congratulations Rachel Wolak and Andrew Dobbie - winners of the Cannes 48 hour competition.

Andrew Dobbie (25), who works at JWT Manchester in the United Kingdom, and Rachel Wolak (28), who works at Crispin Porter + Bogusky in Colorado, USA, have won the viral ad competition to promote WaterAid and will become ‘Team YouTube’, the 40th team to compete in this year’s Young Lions Film Competition in Cannes.
The competition received 530 entries and over 75,600 votes in two weeks. A panel of worldwide creative leaders assessed the quality of the ads over the last week and selected Andrew Dobbie and Rachel Wolak as the winners based on the overall creative execution of the brief and the videos' public votes. They will now unite as ‘Team YouTube’ and will receive an all expenses paid trip to Cannes to attend the International Advertising Festival and join 39 other teams from around the world to compete in the prestigious Young Lions Film competition which offers a fantastic exposure for young creatives looking to carve a role in the advertising or film industry.

Most major brands are leveraging and knowledgeable (or at least trying to) of popular social networks like Facebook, MySpace and Twitter in their advertising efforts and initiatives. I believe Nielsen released a study showing an increase in online ad buys (and not to mention the traffic these Websites receive!) v.s. the decrease in print and broadcast ad buys (Don’t quote me exactly on the study as I’m having a hard time locating it.)

Although brands are leveraging social profiles in advertising, there are a select few that decided to create their own “social community.” However, they didn't do a good job on branding or advertising them properly.

In fact, in just about ten weeks after launching its own version of MySpace, Wal-Mart shut down “The Hub."

I thought it was getting pretty cold down here yesterday. Ad depicted: Pond's White Beauty UV Protection Cream from Ogilvy & Mather Indonesia

The organisers of the 57th Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival are delighted to announce that this year’s prestigious Advertiser of the Year award will be given to the Anglo-Dutch consumer goods giant Unilever, owner of many of the world’s best-loved foods, beverages, home and personal care brands.
This important accolade is presented to advertisers who have distinguished themselves for inspiring innovative marketing of their products and who embrace and encourage the creative work produced by their agencies.

So I'm not much into award ceremonies since.... well let's face it, they are the same. Celebrities walk down the "red" carpet and then sit down and win awards that a bunch of people selected for them?

But when a friend told me that Pharrell Williams would be actually speaking for a keynote Q&A at the 2010 CLIO Awards, I may have a different point of view... Yeah I know, celebrities and awards are cliche, but I'm a huge N.E.R.D, Neptures and Pharrell fan, overall.

Th deal: At midnight (GMT) on Friday 14 May, Cannes Lions will post a brief on YouTube for a 60-second ad for a charity. In the next 48 hours you need to shoot your ad, edit it and get it online before midnight on Sunday 16 May.

Making the video is just half the job. You’ve then got one week to drive as many people to your video as possible. Do whatever it takes: embed it, blog about it, tweet it. Just make sure you get people talking!

.... in short, spam the hell out of everyone with it and beg @adland to retweet it, same procedure as last year, Miss Sophie? Same procedure as every year, James.

The entries will be judged by Chris Baylis, Chris Baylis, Executive Creative Director of Tribal DDB Amsterdam. Edmund Choe, Executive Creative Director, Greater China, Saatchi & Saatchi. Colleen DeCourcy Chief Digital Officer TBWA\ Worldwide and Brian Elliott, Founder, Chief Executive of Amsterdam Worldwide.

This is the Cannes Lions official youtube channel where the brief will appear. Good luck.

Are you in the book? I don't see you in the book. / Hudsucker proxy

We know some things that are in the book, that is the D&AD book. In Ambient both HBO's cube and Jung Von Matt's flyvertising are in the book. The "liverpool wall" for Virgin Trains created by Elvis Communications is also in the book - the poster was actually a large digital screen, and interactive in that a copywriter watched who walked past and wrote messages tailored to them and the situations. Lines included "We're faster than that number 45 bus", "Hey roadsweeper guy, we get to London in a tidy 2 hours and 7 minutes" and "...any marriage proposals?"

The Andy judges voted Gatorade's "Replay" spot from TBWA\Chiat\Day as the absolute best in show this year, the single representative of all the work entered in the show that year. It was also recognized in the Branded Content category as well.

Photographer Sylvain Dumais (http://www.dumaisstudio.com) took this image for the upcoming Shift Disturbers event in Toronto. A mash-up of advertising and design people for, as they put it, a half day of inspiration from the gods of creativity. Speakers include Stephan Sagmeister and Nick Law.

If you're anywhere near Toronto on May 25, get your butt there. For more info: http://shiftdisturbers.ca

You might laugh, or just be saddened by the film above, but take this from it: the FITC Toronto is one of the largest and longest running events of its kind in the world and in its nine years it has been an information blitz of presentations, demonstrations, panel discussions (and of course parties), topped off with an award show. Maybe if you attend such events you won't be oblivious to the changes around us. ;)

Get your tickets here - and do note that Adland readers can get a 10% discount by using the code "adland" when you checkout from http://fitc.ca/toronto

When you write loving poetry to breasts, you really can't go wrong - even the people voted the Pink Ribbon campaign campaign their favorite of the year.
Seyoan Vela, ECD at Grey Amsterdam, comments on national behaviours in voting for ad
campaigns:

"Last night at the Dutch Press Association awards our Pink Ribbon campaign was voted the nation's favourite press campaign of 2009 by the Dutch public.
This award win is slightly unexpected because you always think the funny ads are going to win the public vote. This just goes to show that sometimes the public do know what they're talking about."

Also in the campaign, these commercials (in Dutch here) in English below the fold.

The Nominees for the Osocio’s Best Campaign of 2009 announced, and you may all now place your bets on who might win.
This is a tough one folks, the message from the gyre has one of the most haunting images I've ever seen, and the Yes Men Just add water for Bhopal Medical Appeal kicks ass in that yes men way... The very best ideas seem to thrive in non-profit campaigns.

Loooks like the SVA did well at the Young Gun awards, or better than well, they cleaned up as ten of the 25 YoungGun International awards were presented to recent SVA alumni and current students.

What's more impressive though is that nine of the 10 winning campaigns came out of the same class - Unconventional Advertising - taught by Frank Anselmo, an award-winning former creative director at BBDO and executive creative director at KNARF. Commenting on the awards, Anselmo says, “A YoungGun award is a true door opener for students. The fact that SVA won 10 of the 25 awards is mind-boggling. Where is the ‘School of the Year’ award?” The Unconventional Advertising class at SVA is an intensive, concept-to-execution, detail-oriented course that emphasizes concepts executed outside of the traditional print, TV and interactive mediums.

Funniest #Eurobest tweet was from always hilarious Finchfactor:

Colin Lamberton from Grey Amsterdam attracted more than 12 people to a 9.30am #Eurobest slot. Thats 450+ people in hangover years.

---------- The Types at Award Shows ----------

Looking slightly shellshocked, Antoaneta Metchanova from Ogilvy Paris had the pleasure of trying to figure out how to get all those awards home last night. "I'm here all alone! How am I going to carry this?" Clearly keen on sharing the fun with her colleagues at Ogilvy she was texting everyone about it, and wishing they were with her in Amsterdam, not just for the ability to double as award-carrying helpers. "Can we take pictures of them? I should have brought a camera."
An award-winning damsel in distress, how could Adland not help her out?

"It's a pretty crazy time at the office, we're all very busy, and I'm actually here [in Amsterdam] for work, so I came straight here, and this is how it worked out...."
-"So your lack of sleeping is not from being out partying at the agency open houses last night?" I probed "Not at all, I wish, but we are very busy, it's a crazy time at the office. It's good, the creative energy is up, and I guess this is the proof," she waves to her heavy souveniers, "It's a little overwhelming, but it's cool." Arranging the awards for a good photo she recounts what they are all for "...and this one is for Agency of the year which is pretty overwhelming."
- You're going to have to get an extra suitcase" I sum up, and she laughs; "Yes, I think I'm going to go shopping tomorrow, I can't wait to share - bring these to the agency on Monday, it's going to be cool."

Congratulations again to Ogilvy, Paris and Antoaneta Metchanova for winning agency of the year at the Eurobest 2009.

Grand Prix

Gold Eurobest

Grand Prix

Gold Eurobest

Grand Prix Campaign

Gold Eurobest

Gold Eurobest Campaign