It’s cool when you end up a hard day of work feeling like you learned something.
Or at least got an interesting quote for your collection. Today was one of these days.
First, Irishmen Tim O’Kennedy, CEO from D&Ad, simplified a couple of things about awards in a meeting with us.
-          Festivals shouldn’t be shows of who’s the best but a register of what was the best. It establishes the point to be outperformed, even if some people think that it shows something to be followed.
-          People like to talk about excellence …

Everyone dreams of hitting the big game-winning home run. You picture it: Cameras are flashing all throughout the stadium. The crowd is ready to burst with excitement. Every player on both teams is fighting to conceal the mounting pressure they are feeling.
You swing, and send the ball deep, deep, deep over the second basemen’s head. You arrive comfortably at first base with a single. The air goes out of the stadium for a second, but then it builds again as the next player comes up to bat.
This isn’t how the …

Ever seen advertising so bad that you want to beat it up but you can’t because it’s advertising and it can’t fight back because it has no fists, no weapons and it’s not really alive so why bother?
I call that Nickelback advertising because every time I hear a song by that band , I want to beat it up. But I can’t because it only a song and it can’t really fight back for all the reasons I just described.
Here’s where I need help. How do I tell people at …

I went to the Cannes Lions festivals this year.
The festival is different than it used to be. It’s now much more a networking/seminar week than an exhibition and celebration of the world’s advertising excellence.
Which is good, because it gives us the opportunity to listen to people like Spike Jonze, Ben Stiller, Mark Zuckerberg (who didn’t talk much, actually) and Jon Landau. But it’s also bad, because of the shortage of excellence in the work, shown and awarded, there.
Curiously, this year, the two most classical Grand Prix, Film and Press, were …