Hasta La Creative!

You may have heard that current and former Fallon creatives are melting down their precious hardware.

According to Creativity, the award show statues will be made into a nameplate for the new office Fallon moves into next month. “We think it’s a cool alternative to filling a lobby with a shelf to showcase awards,” said Fallon’s new ECD, Al Kelly.

Atom Pechman of Form From Form will do the honors.

Kelly said, “We talked to a lot of metal workers who wouldn’t do it, and he was the one guy that got excited and accepted the challenge. He’s a real artist and he’s going to melt them all down and pour them into a special mold. One of the challenges has been that metals have different melting points. Gold melts at a different temperature than bronze. If you’re not careful and you mix different metals, the whole thing could explode.”

This whole episode reminds Kelly’s former boss, Scott Goodson, how much things have changed in the ad biz.

Now that the digital world has usurped the traditional one, the legacy agencies like Publicis’ Fallon have been overshadowed by agencies like North Kingdom, Daddy and Far Far, Deep Focus, Albert Ken on the other extreme. In addition a new breed of agency has been born out of the bedrock of the legacy Fallon brand – start up entrepreneurial agencies like Persuasion Arts and Sciences led by Fallon mavericks Mark Johnson and Dion Hughs, Brew, Adrian Ho’s firm, not to mention Toy. There are great memories connected with that time in the 80s.

There is a great quote: “The richness of life lies in the memories we have forgotten.” This fun stunt by Al brings a lot of that back.

Hold it, shops I’ve never heard of are overshadowing Fallon? I feel lost all of a sudden.

Jack Mello of the Clio Awards alerted me this morning to the list of winners in this, the 49th year, of said gala. As I poked around the ftp site looking at work, I encountered something unexpected–no, not a wicked print campaign, Ralph Steadman. Turns out the artist is appearing today at noon in the Gansevoort South Hotel in South Beach as part of the festival. His appearance is sponsored by Saatchi.

I like the idea of a Humanitarian Lion, and I know many ad people want to do meaningful work, if only to wipe away the stench away.

What say you, would you, or the agency you work for, take part in something like this? Would your clients?

The 2008 ANDY Award winners have been announced.

The list is short, but sweet. And no real surprises.

Get the Glass is still on a roll, and deservedly.

The interactive fun of Uniqlo makes it’s annual appearance at the awards show, the bastards.

That crazy Norwegian multi-user live commenting thing that Ash showed us a while back made it through. Fun.

And Simpsonize Me has picked up recognition for being a bloody good example of what viral actually is.

Check out the rest of the winners here.

This is nuts. From Brand Republic:

Roger Makak (pictured), the creative ranked number one in Campaign Brief Asia’s recently released rankings, has been exposed as a work of fiction created by Saatchi & Saatchi Singapore.

Speaking to Media, Campaign Brief Asia publisher Kim Shaw said: “From our point of view we’re disappointed that this agency chose to use a false name for work done by someone else.”

According to Shaw, Makak is actually a nom de plume for the agency’s regional creative director Andy Greenaway, who said: “He does exist, but not in the form you might think. He goes bananas sometimes.” Greenaway added that more would be revealed in one week.

“I think they were trying to dupe the whole industry and then come out with some fantastic award concept at the end that would appeal to other ECDs,” said Shaw. “But, of course, because he ended up winning our rankings it’s come out very quickly that this guy doesn’t exist.”

Not sure who the guy pictured is, but wow. I wonder how many headhunters and award show-obsessed CD’s saw this dude’s name and said, “I’ve got to call this guy. With all those awards, he must be the next edgy rock star.”

This year, the advertisers are better known than the movies. –L.A. Times

For brands looking to persuade a mass audience, tomorrow night, “Oscar Sunday,” is prime time.

General Motors, MasterCard, American Express Co., JC Penney Co. Inc., Coca-Cola Co., Mars Inc.’s M&M candies, McDonald’s Corp., L’Oreal and others all ponied up $1.8 million to ABC for a 30-second spot, an increase of nearly 6% from the previous year.

Yet, some would question the investment.

“This year we don’t have ‘The Lord of the Rings’ or any other big blockbuster, nor do we have any great enthusiasm about the host Jon Stewart,” said Kelly O’Keefe, an advertising professor at Virginia Commonwealth University.

“The show is bigger than the individual movie titles,” said Geri Wang, senior vice president for prime-time sales at ABC. “It’s larger than the sum of its parts.”

Indie darling, Juno, was the only film to pull in more than $100 million at the box office last year.

I like both of these. I’ve wanted to rumble with a bear suit guy for a while now. I’ll live vicariously through this vid.

This one ends up looking like Amy Whitehouse in the end.

OneShow has extended the entry deadline until February 8th. Enter Now>

Pay special attention to the entry requirements for the two banner categories – fixed and dynamic space, standalone versions / asset files have to be supplied on cdrom

Hopefully this means that OneShow will be distributing the shortlist / winners on CD using the actual ad assets, instead of video capturing them.

There’s just one week left to Enter One Show. Which when you rank it among all the awards out there is in the top 3 you need to enter.

Enter now at www.enteroneshow.org

This year’s judges is a who’s who of the interactive crowd. In fact that’s probably the most solid interactive jury I’ve seen in a while. They’ve even managed to track down four females which is impressives as usually these are sausage fests.

Enter the 2008 One Show Interactive and have your websites, online videos, mobile campaigns and more put to the test. One Show Interactive is the most prestigious award show in the industry, and the judges are some of the most respected and sought after creatives in the industry. They come from all corners of the globe to lift the bar higher by honoring a wide variety of work from multinational advertising giants to small regional shops.

-The deadline for submissions is January 31, 2008.

Winners will be announced during the One Show Festival, which is held from May 6 to May 9 in New York City.

Australian Creative magazine are again running their Hotshop award for 2007. This time they remembered to include “Digital/Interactive” in the official entry form!

It’s $110 an entry and entries close Jan 23, 2008 so plenty of time to get a sexy looking entry together. Last year there were around 11 interactive agencies who entered. Let’s see if we can boost that up for this year.