JEFF GOODBY’S ANDYS DIARY: DAY 2
Thelegendary Jeff Goodby, Co-Chairman, Goodby Silverstein & Partners,San Francisco, is providing the CB Blog with exclusive diaryinstallments from Final Judging of The ANDY Awards in Mexico over thenext few days.
Campaign Brief,Campaign Brief Asia and Bestads are international media partners of theANDY Awards, which undoubtedly has the world’s hottest jury, chaired byMark Waites, creative partner of Mother.
People think judging shows like this must elicit petty competition on the part of the judges, but in my experience that’s hardly ever the case. Yeah, you get a judge now and then who gets close to a gold for himself or her agency and perhaps speaks inappropriately, but that’s very rare. Instead, what I’ve seen – honestly – is a widespread belief that judging is more like curating a series of snapshots of what we’re proud of as an industry at this point in time.It’s almost like who did the work is less important than showing the right stuff. This group seems to be operating very much in that spirit.
This is partly, I think, because our chairman Mark Waites comes from an agency so integrally associated with doing the right thing in beautiful, unexpected ways. It’s also because we don’t want all of you ragging on us later on about what wins.
We saw the cutdown print, TV, and Internet categories today and there is some very admirable stuff. I don’t
like to point up a charity piece as my favorite thing this early, but I’m afraid that’s what’s happening. There’s a terrific campaign for the Surfrider Foundation that gathers together actual trash from famous beaches, then packages it in foam trays and shrink wraps it like grocery store display food. They sell this “catch of the day” as a fundraiser in places where real food is sold. They also display it in print ads, posters, and on the web, where they auction the stuff off like eBay. The effect is startling – and moving.
Other thoughts today:
• DOES IT REALLY HAVE TO DO THAT?
There are a lot of campaigns with interesting surfaces that turn out to have nothing to do with the advertiser or their product. Honda, for instance, is represented by a stunt in which those warning bumps on the highway are made to play music – but it’s not Honda music or even anything remotely connected to Honda. An HSBC spot shows an Indian cop charmingly directing traffic and helping people in time to an aria from “The Marriage of Figaro,” but again, it has little or nothing to do with the advertiser. I guess this has always happened, when you think about it. Why am I surprised?
• IT WOULDN’T MAKE MY MOM BUY CREST, HOWEVER.
The Crest campaign that illustrates that you can say almost anything with a great smile (bulldozer guy wrecks the kids’ playground to put up a power plant, guy tells his girlfriend they both have head lice, etc.) is hilarious, if a bit lengthy. One wonders how long it actually ran.
• THE KIND OF BUSINESS IDEA THAT OCCURS TO YOU HERE.
I think I will create a bank of ready-made video cards, to be used for a small fee when making entry films. They will say things like: “Our site crashed twice in the first day” and “The response was tremendous” and “We had over a million unique visitors.” You can’t imagine how many of those there are.
• INGENIOUS IF YOU DO IT, WRONG IF OTHERS DO.
People are entering commercials that happen to feature athletes in a category entitled “Best Use of Celebrity.” Shit, my own agency did it, with the split screen campaign we did for the NBA. Lots of Nike spots entered this way. Does this sound right to you? Not sure.
• THE CHAIRMAN ON THE TIVO.
Mark Waites opined that this is curiously the only media business that has had a box invented explicitly to thwart its noxious existence.
Finally, beach reading (which I am now doing little of) has uncovered Lewis Hyde’s amazing book, The Gift, a study of how creativity is absolutely dependent upon a spirit of graciousness and generosity, and is suppressed by anxious jealousy and ownership issues.This was a stance beautifully championed by the elegant Saatchi man, Paul Arden, who wrote:”Somehow the more you give away, the more comes back to you. Ideas are open knowledge. Don’t claim ownership. They’re not your ideas anyway, they’re someone else’s. They are out there floating on the ether. You just have to put yourself in a frame of mind to pick them up.” Or as Bob Dylan once said: “I didn’t write those songs. I just wrote them down.”