Hasta La Creative!

With Portfolio Night 11 drawing nearer, we’re starting to receive an increasing amount of content from agencies who are either hosting or just celebrating the fact that their city’s taking part in the annual global recruiting/review event. We’ll try to keep the coverage to a minimum since we actually have no stake in PN 11, but a few entries have caught our eye over the last week or so including Doner’s tribute to Eminem and 8 Mile.

The latest interesting submission comes to us from Sid Lee New York, which is serving as Big Apple host for this year’s event. As mentioned in the headline, the agency has decided to create a speed dating atmosphere for creatives complete with speed-dating style tables (with tablecloths) and chairs), ’90s-style name tags (whatever those look like), ’90s dating videos playing on a projector (think those old “Great Expectations” commercials), breath mints, disco ball, a car keys bowl for creative directors to leave business cards and even a photo/”kissing” booth. Considering the ’80s-style promo above (with a track that sounds like M83) and the disco ball, though, we’re not sure what decade Sid Lee is exactly waxing nostalgic about. Whatever the case, the agency will try to play Cupid in its NY PN 11 installment, which takes place at the Art Directors Club on May 22 in Chelsea. Get full info here.

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Since we’ve never been able to make it out to Cali for the annual, now-bloated Coachella festival (we went with “Couchella” this year), we’ll instead enjoy this birds-eye view–literally–from one Chris Crutchfield. The 6’7″ director/actor/motion graphic designer who strapped on a GoPro Hero 3 to give us a “Coachellavated” perspective of the musical extravaganza.

The project was creative directed by Scott T. Chan and produced by his L.A.-based creative studio Whirled, which is perhaps now best known for its annual “Zeitgeist” work for Google. Seeing as we’ll probably never make it out to Coachella though we’ve been saying otherwise every year, we will gladly take this three-minute diversion from the usual advertising news as we head into the late afternoon. Speaking of Coachella, Jimmy Kimmel and his crew getting attendees at this year’s fest to lie about liking bands that don’t actually exist.

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As the opening moments states, viewer discretion is advised with this lengthy promo from RPA and Tool, who for the fourth year in a row are teaming up to hype the Newport Beach Film Festival. If you haven’t seen Corbin’s Bernsen‘s epic, award-winning (ok, not really) The Dentist saga or better yet The Marathon Man, consider this clip called “Mandible” the Cliff’s Notes version.

Again, this is not for the squeamish (though as a horror fan it’s not all that shocking; as a guy who’s got a dentist appointment next week, that’s another story), but in a statement regarding “Mandible,” RPA creative director Scott McDonald says, “We wanted to demonstrate the power of film by taking audiences to a heightened state of emotion and then pulling them back to reality, reminding them that they’re watching particles of light on a screen.” Perhaps what we’re seeing is how RPA felt during the recent Honda review, but who knows, they came out of it pretty OK and so will you. The Newport Beach Film Festival begins April 25 and runs through May 2. Enjoy the show, kids. Credits after the jump.

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With the 92nd ADC Awards Gala now in the books (winners list here), we bring our our final entry from the event courtesy of the Art Directors Club’s director of content + communications, Brianna Graves. As she boards the plane back home, she managed fill us in with this brief, somewhat gushing on-the-scene recap.

One would have been hard pressed last night to forcibly wipe the grins off the faces of the attendees of the ADC 92nd Annual Awards Gala.

The majesty of the Frank Gehry-designed New World Center, home of the New World Symphony, cast a magic spell from the moment that guests approached the red carpet outside (albeit, in a drenching downpour and tornado warning), then had their photo taken inside before enjoying cocktails, light hors d’oeuvres and a little mixing and mingling prior to the Gala. The mood was lit around the New World Center Atrium by ADC partner Float4 Interactive, who covered the screens above with light and color.

Inside the main performance hall was no less stunning. The venue itself, with incredible sound, performance and lighting capabilities, set the tone of the evening. But when ADC Executive Director Ignacio Oreamuno took the stage to welcome his guests not only to the 92nd Annual Awards, but also to a new era, a new standard and a new future of the Art Directors Club and its Annual Awards, the tone of the evening was solidified. ADC was presenting nothing but the best.

Ariel Adkins, ADC membership associate and author of Artfully Awear, dazzled the stage as the Pantone trophy girl. She accomplished a record number of costume changes designed with a distinct Pantone color in mind, and synced with a complete relighting of the stage and performance hall designed by Float4.

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As many of you probably know, the Art Directors Club decided to take its hardware, talents, what have you from New York City to South Beach for its 92nd Awards Show. So, in case you missed lingering around the ADC Gallery in Chelsea, we have some first-person perspective from the event in warmer climates courtesy of the organization’s director of content & communications, Brianna Graves, who offers her recap of one particular moment that she dubs “Stageside Craft.” Recap of Day 1 in video form above. 

A could-have-been disappointment turned into one of the most special moments of the first day of the inaugural ADC 92nd Annual Awards + Festival of Art and Craft in Advertising and Design. With the day’s workshops wrapped and the drinks in the afternoon poolside Creative Register Cabana consumed, all Festival attendees headed for the Private Pool + Lawn at W South Beach to kick back and absorb the inspiration of Day One at the Opening Night Pool Party presented by Martin Guitar.

An open bar provided unlimited cool drinks to get people loosened up to mingle, and a line grew around the pool for the opportunity to create a signature pasta dish. The lawn was packed with colorful, clearly Miami Beach-ready guests, as the ADC’s executive director Ignacio Oreamuno [ed: he explains the move to Miami here] took the stage to introduce musician Keaton Simons. The crowd fell silent. But something wasn’t right. A venue-imposed noise restriction made it challenging, but not impossible, to hear Oreamuno’s voice across the lawn. But a not-so-gentle ocean breeze blowing off the sands of South Beach and straight into the microphone finished the job, and barely a word or a strum from Simons’ guitar could be heard as he began his set.

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Back under gray skies here in NYC, our SXSWi memories wind down today with a little ditty courtesy of the one and only Shaquille O’Neal, the former NBA star/current TNT b-ball analyst and Buick pitchman who, for entertainment sakes, made this call to the wife of Campbell-Ewald group digital creative director, Iain Lanivich. Of course, we’re sure the cheery mood was buoyed not just by the Big Aristotle, but the word that the C-E is on the verge of winning Cadillac. We inquired about this last week, and didn’t hear word, but have been hearing that the Cadillac deal was imminent for almost six weeks. Now that it’s been made public via AdAge and others, it appears to be the case, though no one’s talking as evidenced by said trade’s post. We’ve hit the same wall on inquiries, but here’s one interesting tipster’s note, from March 7.

“The only reason Cambell Ewald is moving Downtown is because they are getting the Cadillac Ad account. GM demaded that if they get the account they MUST move downtown. It’s a done deal, the current agency Fallon is located in Minn. and GM is making this move SOON!”

Not sure that’s the “only reason,” but if it goes through, it’s a reunion of sorts between GM and Campbell-Ewald, which as we all recall lost the Chevy business after 91 years in early 2010.

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We’ve covered a few of the Young Glory briefs from previous months, like when Jim Riswold wrote, “Islam has an image problem…fix it…with a poster,” and now that it’s March, we’re back with highlighting another impossible task for young creatives to tackle. Courtesy of Sir Richard Branson, Sid Lee, and C2-MTL, this month’s theme is the failed war on drugs.

Project Boot Camp has two categories for students and young professionals, respectively. The contestants submit their ideas online and can win small prizes and travel packages that aren’t worthy of someone who is trying to solve the global drug crisis. If a contestant came up with a serious idea capable of stopping drug violence, he/she should be given a bit more than a trip to Montreal. (He/she also would’ve done something that nobody in the American government has ever accomplished, so extra kudos to that person…)

Once the winners are chosen, Sid Lee, led by its Montreal co-CD/partner, Eva Van Den Bulcke, will take the original ideas and try to create a campaign that puts the war on drugs on the social agenda. I think this whole contest is supposed to be noble, and deep down it might be, but it also reeks of self-importance and futility. This month, war on drugs. Next month, we should create a poster that ends racism. Ready…go!

After the jump, you can watch a C2-MTL promotional video. Hint: The people who solve the war on drugs get to go here for free.

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“No one wants to be amazing at something awful. But it happened to me.” Those are the words of Todd Bieber who, in his own words, “used to make shitty local commercials in rural Pennsylvania.”

Earlier this week, Cadbury held a promotion in Stratford’s Westfield Shopping Center where a gigantic party popper shot out 100 chances to win tickets to London’s 2012 Olympic Games.