Jeffrey Hedquist, President and Creative Director of Hedquist Productions, Inc. in Fairfield, IA, who runs the Sow's Ear Award for the worst radio commercials is challenging industry copywriters to turn the worst radio commercials in North America, winners of the Sow's Ear Award, into effective radio commercials.
Rather than simply point of the problem, Hedquist, a CLIO, Andy, One Show, Effie winner, plans to solve the problem, "Now that the worst radio commercials have been chosen by popular vote, let's show how these Sows' Ears can be turned into Silk Purses." Further explaining the contest and turning the whole thing into a self-promotional bonanza for his company, Hedquist said, "If your rewrite is chosen as the best, we'll cast, direct, record and produce your creation for free. You'll win a free 1/4-hour consulting teleseminar with me. We'll give you a Free Jeffrey Hedquist radio commercial voice-over for the client of your choice. We'll publicize your work, give you credit in live seminars, in our newsletter and on our web site. That's more than $2,000 in value."
If you're up for the challenge, re-writes are due by January 15, 2006. Get the details at Sows Ears Awards.
The Art Directors Club has launched ADC Young Guns 5, its fifth biennial competition for young professionals ages 30 and under working in advertising, publishing, graphic design, illustration, photography, film and video, packaging and environmental design, experimental fashion and interactive media. Notice of ADC YG5 appears on the Club's 85th Annual Call for Entries, just issued, and full details are on the ADC's awards website. The entry deadline for ADC YG5 is February 1, 2006.
If you're in need of some Holiday cheer and you're into the whole media schmooze-fest social scene, Gawker has compiled a list (from WWD.com) of the many media-related social events this season for your party going pleasure. Teen and Lucky kicked off the season last night with parties at La Esquina and Hotel QT respectively.
To promote the 2006 CLIO Awards, an elaborate website, which looks like some sort of under-the-radar, clandestine, government operation, called Creative Liberation Intelligence Organization has been created. The site is full of goodies such as what appear to be actual prank calls by a guy named David Brock to agencies humorously asking for creative execs to review his book. Brock butchers names and even asks for the retired Hal Riney to review his work.
There's tons of other great stuff like an Idea Tracker which is a sort of global idea detection map, a cryptograph that lets you email messages, the ComposiTron 3,000 which lets you create your favorite creative persona, a Microfiche library that contains info on the judges, a Dossier section which has, we're sure, cool stuff but didn't have time to dig in and little stickies peppered around the site promoting the May 14-17 2006 dates for the show. Good stuff.
Donny Deutsch will announce the 2005 "Media Person of the Year" on his CNBC show, "The Big Idea," this Monday, Dec. 5. Each year, I Want Media runs a poll to find the "Media Person of the Year" defined as the figure who had the most impact on the media landscape. Last year's "Media Person of the Year" was the Daily Show anchor Jon Stewart.
This year's 10 candidates, submitted by the site's readers are CNN's Anderson Cooper; Gawker Media's Nick Denton; Google's Larry Page and Sergey Brin; Apple's Steve Jobs; Author Judith Miller; media mogul Rupert Murdoch; Craig's List's Craig Newmark; Viacom's Sumner Redstone; Howard Stern and Martha Stewart (who was named the 2002 "Media Person of the Year").
I'm voting for underdog Nick Denton. You should too. He, and blogging, have significantly altered the media landscape in recent years. The online poll closes this Sunday evening.
In support of its upcoming Word of Mouth Basic Training conference in Orlando January 19-20. the Word of Mouth Marketing Association has launched a blog called WOMBAT or Word of Mouth Basic Training. The blog includes a newsletter and podcast as well. In its first week, Ketchum's Paul Rand and Intelliseek's Pete Blackshaw shared tips and advice on word of mouth issues while author Jackie Huba launched the site's podcast series.
IDG World Expo has released details of the "Syndicated Media Environment" conference track at Syndicate, scheduled to take place December 12-14, 2005 at the Hilton San Francisco. This track will discuss how new syndication and social media tools such as RSS, blogs and podcasts are being applied by old and new media companies.
The Syndicate conference shows how syndication and social media tools such as RSS, blogs and podcasts are helping to change the way businesses do business. The "Syndicated Media Environment" track is one of four tracks and a timely topic following recent news of more and more people accessing TV shows on BitTorrent and pulling the programs down as an RSS feed. David Berlind of ZDNet explained that once a TV show is digitized and loaded into BitTorrent, "not only are the broadcasters completely disintermediated from the distribution of their content, so too is their adverstising business model." We tend to agree.
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If you've done time in advertising, you know advertising award shows are nothing more than ego boosters for our fragile personas and a chance for us to get a group hug from our fellow industry mates. The Phoeniz Addys aren't trying to hide this truth with their call for entries promotion called Ego Stroke 5,000, a device that sends ego boosting thoughts into the brain. Of course it's just a cheesecake pan with a bunch or wires attached but it does the job. The promotion was created by Riester~Robb.
Neil French's sudden non-appearance at a Singapore AdAsia conference, held November 21-23, isn't news. What's news are comments he made in a Singapore newspaper article run a day prior to the show in which he tried to claim it's not just woman who are "crap" because they make time for family, it's men too. French claims, according to Ad Age, children are "incompatible with the long hours needed to become a top creative." Egoistically proving his point and hinting fatherhood is for wimps, French told the paper he hasn't seen his only child, an eight year-old boy in months. Keep smokin' that cigar, Neil but humbly suggest you give that Harry Chapin song, Cats in the Cradle, a listen. It's got an important message for you.
Of course, one could claim the above is written from an overly PC, American viewpoint. If you flip the coin and acknowledge cultural differences between America and Singapore, where French has spent most of his career, French comes out smelling like roses as indicated by a comment reportedly made by a creative who said, during a dinner attended by French and, we assume, the Ad Age reporter who reported it, "You have to look at this through a cultural filter. In Singapore, its still legal to beat your wife." While we find that hard to believe, we're not making it up.
ihaveanidea.org has partnered with Imported Artists Film Co. to launch its third annual creative competition titled the TigerGaming Advertising Challenge. The competition, now to the general public and not just advertising students, will ask contestants to take a relatively new brand, TigerGaming, and make it famous by running the winning idea as a television spot produced by Imported Artists.
The contest promises over $40,000 in prizes. The Grand Prize winner gets their winning idea shot and produced by Imported Artists Film Company and $1000 cash. Second Prize winner(s) will get Apple's video iPod, while the Third Prize winner(s) will receive an iPod nano.
The judges will be representatives from TigerGaming.com, Imported Artists and ihaveanidea. To be eligible entries must be received on or before Friday February 24th 2006 to ihaveanidea. Winners will be announced on Friday March 10th 2006.
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