We won a Cannes Grand Prix!!!

OK, it was a few years ago. Not tonight. Thought I’d clear that up. We won it for creating the Budweiser Whassup! campaign.

Congratulations to friend and former colleague Geoff Edwards who won a Grand Prix tonight for his Halo 3 work. Geoff is swilling back the champagne in Cannes as i write. Am i jealous? No way. OK maybe. Kudos also to frequent Escape Pod directorial partner Henry Alex Rubin, who nabbed several gold lions for his BK Whopper Freakout campaign.

What does winning a Cannes Grand Prix mean? It means you’re the Advertising World Champion for that year. I was blown away by how many ad folks actually show up there every year from all over the world. That’s what makes it the world championships. The world agrees that it is. The resulting publicity alone is mind-boggling. You get a taste of what fame is like.

It’s easy to get all puritanical and dismiss Cannes as a mindless waste of money and a distraction from the real work of moving products. But didn’t we kind of get into advertising, at least partially, because it struck us as a tad glamourous? And because it offered a chance to perhaps party just a tad. It’s showbiz! And Cannes is our Oscars.

The best advice I got the night of winning? To walk down the red carpetted stairs of the palais V-E-R-Y S-L-O-W-L-Y after the ceremony. That’s when all the ad journalists snap pix of you grinning like an idiot holding your hefty gold lion statue on marble. It’s as glamourous as advertising gets.

I hope Geoff took his time descending the steps tonight. Coz when you reach the bottom, the spell is broken and it’s back to being just another ad guy. albeit one with a cannes grand prix.

[update: turns out geoff won TWO grand prix. he got one for best integrated campaign too. think i need a lie-down]

Whopper Freakout wins at One Show

“What’s the one show?” i hear you say, perhaps.  The One Show is arguably the leading American creative advertising award show.  The actual awards are metal pencils like the one pictured.  It’s a big deal to win a One Show gold pencil.  (despite what the award-losing haters say!)

Anyway, one of our favorite pieces of advertising from recent times won big at the The One Show last night. Won lots of pencils.  It was created by Crispin Porter Bogusky on behalf of client Burger King and was directed by Henry Alex Rubin (of Smuggler).  The idea was mischievous in the extreme.  What they did was rig a BK in Las Vegas with hidden cameras and tell everyone who came in looking for a Whopper that BK no longer sold them.  With predictably hilarious reactions from whopper lovin’ Americans.  While most advertising suffers from being a rather one-sided contrivance, this was undeniably real and credible. And great viewing.   And, after you laughed hard at the resulting film, you invariably started thinking about having a Whopper.  Hmmm…whopper!  It worked in a very Pavlovian way.

So, congrats to all at CPB including our old compadre uber-producer David Rolfe.  And to Henry Alex Rubin, who we at The Escape Pod have had the distinct pleasure of working with in the past and hope to again in the future.  And let’s not forget Drew Santarseiro!