The Escape Pod wins best of show in Chicago Ad awards

last night we found out we won best of show in our local award show. We had a blast and are moving a bit slow today. we won for our penny pranks campaign for wonderful client OfficeMax. this is a big award. no seriously. it’s a monster. it’s the stanley cup of ad awards.

this is the third time this decade i have been lucky enough to win best of show in Chicago. my first win with The Escape Pod. It never gets old! congratulations to all at OfficeMax and everyone at The Escape Pod. and of course une grand merci! to director Henry Alex Rubin of Smuggler and thanks also to our flame-haired penny defender Matt McCarthy. It feels good to beat the big boys. Don’t mean that in a vindictive way, just in terms of the accomplishment.

And speaking of that, best of luck to my old comrades at DDB Chicago who are nominated (twice) for an Emmy for best ad this weekend. Both Budweiser and Bud Light got nods. If by horrid chance you don’t win guys, here’s my suggestion. Leave immediately. don’t waste your time fake congratulating the winner. Head to Chez Jays in Santa Monica and get royally plastered in the privacy of the back room. It did the trick for me.

Are you exciting?

Legendary Chicago gangster Sam Giancana (above) was once asked to define what a vice was. He replied “If it makes your pulse quicken, it’s a vice”. In other words, if it’s truly exciting it gets your blood flowing.

We think the same criteria should be applied to advertising. Does your advertising make anyone’s pulse quicken? Most advertising, and most of everything, doesn’t excite anyone. It just sits there. Not even attracting attention.

So how do you create exciting advertising? Well for one, creating actually exciting advertising has to be the goal to begin with. If it’s not a goal, you’re pretty much guaranteeing that the output will be less than enchanting.

You know those exciting ads that you see from time to time? They are the product of everyone concerned being committed to creating something genuinely exciting. It’s never an accident. Never.

What a lot of marketers seem to forget is that being exciting is a competitive advantage. Because your competitors’ dull and lifeless advertising is what helps create the environment in which your exciting stuff really stands out.

When your advertising actually enriches people’s lives, they love you for it.  Your advertising becomes part of the the culture’s daily conversation.  It gets talked about in the media.  Free media!  You get interviewed by your trade press.  You get asked to talk at industry gatherings.  And oh yeah, you sell a ton of your product.

Being exciting is exciting.  And you only live once.

The Escape Pod’s ad for a presidential candidate

Lewis Lazare, the Chicago Sun-Times ad columnist, asked The Escape Pod to participate in an interesting competition. It was this. He asked us, along with several other Chicago ad agencies, to create a print ad for a presidential candidate. The kicker being that we would be randomly assigned the candidate we would promote. We had to agree to take part first. So we agreed. And we were ready to promote either candidate. We’re in advertising. We sell whatever we’re assigned to sell. That’s part of the fun.

We drew Barack Obama.

And we created the above ad. Our rationale was the following: people really vote against something rather than for something. And the Republican administration (both Bush and Mccain are Republicans) has been an undeniable disaster on several fronts. The economy being the most recent disaster. So we figured that’s something we should leverage. Encourage people to vote against a third Republican administration.

Just as we would have leveraged John McCain’s experience, war heroism, and guy-you’d-like-to-have-a-beer-with-ism had we drawn the assignment to sell his candidacy. And we would have railed against Obama’s lack of experience.

The more money a candidate has to buy media space the better. And a lot of Americans could do with a little catharsis after eight years of Bush. So we had the idea to create and sell something fun that reminds voters of the failures of the Republican administration. Kill two birds with one stone as it were. We are actually producing 125 of these plates that people can actually purchase from us. Via this website:http://plates4obama.com/

Mr. Lazare’s idea is to put the ads online and have the Chicago ad community vote on which one they think is the most effective.

Now urging you to vote for our entry would be wrong from an ethical perspective.

But we are in Chicago. The city that invented creative voting. So…