Summer Bummer

Lest anyone forget that it's still summer, here's another little reminder.


The future of advertising right there, ladies and gentleman.

The Cavnas Project: 9 Pieces, 9 Days, 1 Canvas

Inspired by a piece of advice from David Angelo of David&Goliath I received in Cannes and a visit to the Musée d'Art Moderne et d'Art Contemporain in Nice, Liza and I embarked on the Canvas Project.

The idea: Make a new piece of art every morning for nine days on a 5' x 7' canvas. Once done, photograph it and start over again the next morning. Each piece built on top of the previous day's.

The whole experiment was really therapeutic. for me. It's been good to let go of work. Whether I really liked that day's piece or really hated it, I knew we had to throw it away the next day. It was liberating in a way.

Below are nine days-worth of work, all on one canvas. (Click to enlarge.)

Day 1: "The Concept"

Day 2: "Vogue"

Day 3: "Holy Jorts!"

Day 4: "Bearnica"

Day 5: "Rockin' Z"

Day 6: "A Funny Thing Happened on the Way Back from Reno"

Day 7: "PartyTime."

Day 8: "Fourth of July"

Day 9: "Nine Hours in a Small Room with Lots of Aerosol Spraynard"

Ahahahahaha

Happy Fourth.

(Sorry, Liza.)

Do you know what's weird?

Going out and being the interesting, crazy, noncomformist—albeit a little bit awkward—"artsy" guy.



I'm so used to only being around people at the Circus or meeting crazy folks at Cannes that I feel I've lost touch a bit with reality. (Or at least reality as the populace understands it.)

Tell the two different groups that you're doing a nine-day evolving art project on the same canvas to explore the transience of ideas and compare the reactions.

It's good to get out sometimes. If only for perspective.

Bonjour

Just checking in from France.

Cannes has been incredible thus far, and it's still rolling for three more days.

I'll be able to update properly when I get back Stateside. Oh yes, there will be an update.

Roooooar!

The last 48 hours have been completely mad.

The reason being, Liza Behles and I just found out that we won an AKQA Cannes FutureLion for our Toyota Prius digital campaign. That's Cannes as in Cannes.

Not only did we win a little lion statuette, but so did two other fellow Circusians, Katy Graham and Karen Gereffi. That's severely impressive when one considers that only five of these puppies are handed out in the entire world. And beyond that, this is the second year in a row that the Circus has had two FutureLions teams. That's 40% of the FutureLions in the world.

So, after our obvious eruption of excitement, our next thought was, "How are we going to get to Cannes by Monday?" None of us quite had the $1,500 to shell out on just the airfare alone. "What's the best way to raise funds?" we thought. A bake sale!

We immediately set out to make an e-flyer to send to everyone we could possibly think of. Here she is:




At first we didn't get any responses. But then, just 20 hours after we found out we had to get to Cannes, the floodgates opened. Through the amazing generosity of others, we suddenly went from, "How the hell are we going to get to Cannes?" to "I can't believe we're going to Cannes!"

Beyond that, our bake sale got picked up as a news story on a number of advertising blogs, including AdRants. It's pretty awesome to think that our idea got in front of that many eyeballs in that fast of a time. I guess it's our first successful ad.

We still can't believe it's happening. I've only slept two hours the past two nights trying to get ready to leave by Sunday. It's 10 pm, and I just ate my first meal of the day. I don't really know what's going on right now. But I do know that if I show up to the airport Sunday night I'll somehow magically wake up in France the next morning. It's unbelievable.

A HUGE thank you to everyone that's helped us out, financially and otherwise.

An enormous thanks to Kara Taylor, Mark Tutssel, John Condon and Debbie Bougdanos at Leo Burnett who were ridiculously kind enough to buy a dozen of our cookies to cover our plane tickets.

Super big thanks to Ajaz Ahmed and Lars Bastholm and the whole crew at AKQA as well as MaryAnn Frerman from 22squared who are helping us out with accommodations and travel.

Also, mega thanks to our friends Dave Holloway at Publicis, Jannie Gerds of Matheson Gerds Advertising, Jeb Quaid at DDB and Duane Hawkins with the Creative Circus for helping us out too.

Lastly, we're forever in debt to all our friends at the Creative Circus who have helped us over the past two days as we scrambled to get our act together. If you liked the photos, they were done by Bobby Prokenpek. He is amazing. Please check out his stuff. Also, thanks to Susanne DeLoach, DC Washington, Dan Balser, Heddy Lunenfeld, Berwyn Hung, Judy Hertz, Beth Ann, Kim and everyone here.

(Also, Kasia Haupt gave us one strawberry, one raspberry and two orange Jolly Ranchers and a blue raspberry Pixie Stick. I think we only have the strawberry left.)

We've really been completely overwhelmed by everyone's generosity and commitment to helping us get over to France.



Next time you hear from me I'll be in Cannes!

Happy Friday

School is now open 24 hours. I didn't leave till 5 am yesterday, and it looks like it might be an even longer one tonight.

But, for your (and my) enjoyment I'm posting this Alka-Seltzer ad from the Ukraine. It is brilliant.


The more time I spend with this the more I love it. Also, the poor English just makes it that much more amazing. Absolutely brilliant. (Perhaps not on purpose?)

A comic strip

I don't know what this means. I woke up, and it was the first thought in my brain.

Student Show Wrap-Up

Friday was the Creative Circus Student Awards Show. It's always a festive time with ego made or broken with just a few words from the presenters. It's basically like the One Show except instead of amazing scallop and seaweed ceviche and an open bar we get slices of Jimmy John's subs and some Cokes.

Actually, it's really not that big of deal. But, any award feels good to win. Congrats to my illustrious if sometime misguided friends Kasia Haupt who took home Student Choice Art Director and Best Art Direction awards and Bobby Prokenpek who nabbed a Circus record 22 photography awards along his way to also winning Student Choice Image and Best Image awards.

I did alright for myself. I ended up getting a few things including Best Copywriting (completely undeserved, seriously), Best Concept and Best in Show.

But that's now what I'm most proud of. What was truly an honor to win was the first-ever Worst in Show. Advertising department head Dan Balser pulled me aside the other day as he was tabulating scores to tell me that one of my campaigns for Culprit fishing lures received one of the worse scores he had ever seen: a 3 out of 10 from the judges. As a result, the new category of Worst in Show was created just to punish Brandon Rapert and I for such callous disregard for tasteful, thoughtful advertising. I am truly more proud of that award than any of the other ones that I received on Friday. To have made the single most despised piece of work in the entire show, it's truly an honor.

Below are the winning (or losing) pieces for your consideration.




I still think they're funny. And if you know about fishing, you'll understand the benefit of having a lure with erratic action. Apparently the judges didn't.

How evil does this look?!

Check out this video someone sent me. It's perhaps one of the most creep/evil-looking things I've ever seen. And from a cell phone!

Crazy video, huh? Well, guess what. It's a viral video. A great one in fact from Droga5 for Net10. The first time I saw it I just thought it was actually just a crazy YouTube video. It wasn't until a second viewing that I realized that it actually was a viral. Very cool, Droga5. Kudos.

It's really interesting to see how they've taken the idea of "no evil" and interpreted it in so many different ways. They have the heroes documentary spots as heartfelt, the villains as slapstick and then this new viral as downright scary. Great to see how a big idea can be pulled in so many different directions. They won a gold at One Show for TV campaign for the villain series. Check out www.no-evil.net to see the other spots in the campaign. It reminds me somewhat of what Geico did running multiple campaigns to target different markets. But this is also far more cohesive and, frankly, better.

Big, big day for me

Advertising didn't know what hit it today. Or, more likely, it didn't even notice.

But either way, I've made two appearances in the industry-important media today.

The first is a small feature in international advertising mag Archive.



One of four student ads chosen for the issue so that was pretty nice of them.


And one of the other four ads was also done by the illustrious Steve Nathans and Jon Morrow. Congrats guys.



Secondly, my copywriting compatriots Liza Behles and Kyle Cavanaugh had the honor of sitting in on a podcast with freelance creative director and Creative Circus department head Dan Balser. He hosts a fantastic show entitled Don't Get Me Started in which he picks the brains of advertising's top creatives. And then he talked to us.

If your interest is piqued click over to Balserville.com and change your life.

Work out

More from my forthcoming series of comics. This is from Friday, scanned in today.

A comic strip

Maybe I'll start doing this every day. It'd be a good exercise.

When I think about it, most of my humor is based off of disappointments and awkward silences. I wonder what that means.