So, I'm Up for an Award

Just found out that my CPB Shred School site is up for a People's Voice Webby Award.


Wanna help a brother out and cast a vote for it? Yeah you do.

Just click over to http://pv.webbyawards.com, register (yeah, bummer), choose Shred School from the drop down menu at the top and give us your vote. I'll split the prize money with you. Promise.

Thanks.

The Lion, The Future and the Young

I've been meaning to write in here for a while, but I've been insanely busy (hey, what else is new?). Insanely busy, as in sleeping a max of four hours a night if I lucky. But life (in general) is good.

In fact, recently three friends and I were asked to shoot and edit together a video for this year's Future Lions competition. I'm really pleased with how it turned out. But really, I'm more pleased with reliving the entirely experience every time I watch it. It really makes me want to go back to Cannes again.

Future Lions Winners: Where Are They Now?

Speaking of going back to Cannes again . . . Miss Liza "F'ing" Behles just won a Young Lions award and is going back to Cannes in June! She's the first person to win a Future Lion and a Young Lion. Insane. What a badass. Congrat her.

And if you're a student, DO FUTURE LIONS. It can change your life. Seriously. Do it. Now. Right now. Go. Go do it right now.

Bye.

CMY-OK with me!

Co-founder and CCO of The Brandy Agency and personal friend and art director/illustrator extraordinaire and silent lover and tall guy Brandon Rapert informed me of some pretty exciting news yesterday. One of the campaigns we did at the Creative Circus will be featured in the March issue of CMYK magazine. Pretty rad. Check 'em:


These puppies are intense. If you dig them, check out the rest of Brandon's stuff over on his site. The dude is sick. And he's available for hire. Love him. Hard

Wild on Cannes: The Article

While we were in Cannes last month the fine fellows over at ihaveanidea asked us to write them an article about our impressions of the event. It just got posted today, and you can read it here.

Hopefully that'll serve at least partially for the follow-up that I promised. It doesn't really tell you everything about the week, and it was written with the IHAI audience in mind, but it'll at least give you a flavor for the week.


Hope you enjoy. I did!

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!

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.

I'm a Luerzer

So, I just found out yesterday that one of my ads made it into the April issue of Luerzer's Archive magazine. That's a huge honor as Archive is an international magazine, and only four student ads make it into every issue. It's one of the major industry pubs.

Oddly enough, it's not my favorite campaign. It wouldn't even go in my in-progress portfolio. But hey, we got into Archive! It's still awesome.




Big props to my awesome art director Mia Deng.