One Reason to Make Your Subsite Sing: the After Party

When I was told I'd get ringside seats at One Show Interactive Ceremony on Friday night, I didn't realize they actually meant ringside.

What a spectacle. Amidst agency eccentrics and exhausted One Club employees, wrestlers ran across the floor, occasionally lay things to waste, and vanished again. (The podium had to be replaced at least twice.)

There was also some Pulp Fiction-style Meet the Gimp action.

One Show Interactive honors standout work in mobile, multi-platform advergaming and online -- including banners, rich media, self-promotion and nonprofit. And while Wednesday's One Show ceremony was once the Festival's crowning glory, Interactive is increasingly eclipsing its popularity.

And for obvious reasons. Right now, TV and print are not where the hype is. Don't you want recognition for that subsite and widget you painstakingly threw together? Five dollars says next year Interactive will recognize top cross-platform apps (think iPhone and Facebook).

I covered most of the action on Twitter. (Gotta say: websites look so much better a hundred feet above you, without the laggage.) Big winners included R/GA's "Nike Zoom," Whopper Freakout by Crispin Porter + Bogusky, AKQA for its Halo 3 work, netthink for "Impossible is Nothing" and TBWA\Media Arts Lab for Apple's "Don't Give Up," "Quote" and "Mac Contextuals."

"Client of the Year" went to Nike, which scored agencies worldwide one Gold, one Silver and six Bronze Pencils.

"Best in Show" went to Japanese retailer UNIQLO for UNIQLOCK, put together by Projector -- a group of sulky, and occasionally gorgeous, Japanese dudes at the table beside me.

UNIQLO is kind of like Gap for the Land of the Rising Sun. On the UNIQLOCK site, from what I can tell, robot-like girls in pedal pushers tell users what time it is while dancing to Fantastic Plastic Machine.

Seriously.

See part of Projector's thank you speech, read out loud from a set of little cards.

All winners and info on judges are located at the One Club website.

Now that you've relived the ceremony with me, watch a fat guy in a diaper (not ... quite ... sumo) throw some "Mexican" wrestlers across the room.

You're probably wondering what this whole Mexican wrestling thing was all about. When the show started, Kevin Swanepoel of the One Club said Lucha Libre bears many similarities to advertising. He said something about them both being inventive, courageous and bold.

...along with the whole "staged, ostentatious LIE!" factor, I totally get what he's saying.

Around 10:30 or so, audience members and award winners drifted to the Nokia Theatre lobby, where they were treated to more free drinks than any of us deserve at one time. I hung out with Brendan from Grey and Germany-based writer Julia Fuhr, who introduced us to some agency guys from Sweden. (See Brendan and one of Julia's fanboys.)

Along with Chris from the One Club and some other drunk folk, we piled into a cab and headed to the Panik After-After Party at Tribeca Grand. The place was sweaty, slick and packed to the neck with revelers. Deejays included SebastiAn, The Shoes, Yuksek and Brodinski.

It's a good thing everybody was already trashed and feeling friendly, because drinks at Panik averaged around $12 a glass. I guess it didn't matter considering everybody makes a big show of expensing these fetes anyway: "Here's to Uncle Leo!"

One Club's Joni Davis, at right, wrapped an arm around me and said only Texan girls learn properly how to have fun -- then proceeded to school me on the dance floor. All. Night. Long. Without even breaking a sweat.

The beat went on until four in the morning, and even then the crowd showed no signs of waning. I developed a proximity infatuation for Benjamin Palmer from the Barbarian Group, which had less to do with his merits and more to do with his strange evanescent glow. At some point the deejays were so drunk that they started swinging the starburst chandeliers over our heads.

I froze mid-wiggle and tensed up to watch, waiting for a horrific accident to happen, but nothing ever did. By the time I set foot back on New York's dewy damp streets, I thought I could see the sun.

An Armenian guy and his Italian buddy stopped me on the street and asked what was going on in the Tribeca Grand. "It's a party for the ad industry," I said.

To their confused expressions, I added, "Advertising, media ... agencies."

Armenian Guy's eyes lit up. "Ah. So like the circus people," he said.

I thought about that for a second. Maybe it was the drinks, the fatigue or the sumo wrestler with the big grin, but that seemed to make sense. "Yes," I decided finally. "Just like circus people."

See more photos. The better ones come courtesy of Ric Kallaher, and you can see a full selection of those on his website.