I am constantly amazed by the generosity, talent and work ethic of the people I meet

The NDAC is launching a portfolio program. Next. It's targeted at young guns. Copywriters and art directors who want to improve their book and their network. Jennifer Hohn and I volunteered to brand the program. We went through concepts. Laughed a lot. Wrote some scripts. When Brian asked me if I could guarantee that I could get the stuff produced, I said yes. But I was totally lying. I mean, who was going to make our ideas come to life?

I should have had more faith.

Soon Jim Elkin of Roshambo Films was producing and directing our videos for the club's YouTube page. (The first will be posted Monday.) Radical was getting us three great actors and Idolum was donating editing time. (And incidentally, Tom also offered to help out.)

David Mejias was shooting the poster campaign, with XYZ doing the retouching and Tewell Warren printing.

Justin McCammon and Taylor Beseda got all digital on the idea, with elements like the @nextcreatives smackdowns, nextcreatives.com, and a collaboration with Burns on a soon-to-be-released Facebook app.

And Gregg Bergan, Norm Shearer, Mike Sukle and Jonathan Schoenberg offered to donate their time to mold the next generation of Denver creatives.

Every single person I just mentioned has a crazy-stressful job and a loving family and who knows what else might be going on in their lives. But every single one of them believes that Next will help the career of a young creative who is just burning to be great. Every single one of them wants to make Denver a better market. Every single one of them deserves a giant round of applause. This is a good business we're in. And it's filled with good people. Believe it.

2008 TD50: Random thoughts

This is how I know I'm in advertising: Four of the six meals I ate Friday and Saturday were pizza.

I spent most of Saturday at Cactus, where I was helping a group of volunteers, interns and students upload all of the Denver 50 entries to the judging site.

Truth be told, I had a sneak preview of the work Friday night. I went through all the entries to troubleshoot discs, separate out all the checks, that sort of thing. The side benefit? I got to see all of the work you've been doing for the past 12 months.

This is what I think: The work is better this year. I'm not sure if it's because people get the show concept. Or if they've been inspired by the ad club or the Egotist or something. But there are several entries that I wish I had in my book. There are even a couple agencies who could argue they deserve to be mentioned in the same breath as Cactus, Factory and Sukle.

Here are a few other things I think, phrased cryptically:

• More agencies took the Own-Your-C Gamble this year.
• Everybody loves TD50, but it's never going to make much money.
• If we ask for a 4 Mb .mov, we'd rather not receive a 800 Mb file.
• Will the ex-McClain people get their revenge on Denver?
• Our TD50 party (I think it's Tues., Dec. 2) is going to rock.

You get no more intel out of me. I'd like to thank more than 30 brave agencies for entering the Denver 50. Best of luck to you all.

Full-length version of Death to the 50

AdPulp looks at the 2007 Denver 50 book

AdPulp writes:

I rarely look at award show books these days, but this one pulled me in. First off, there's no Best of Show, just 50 big ideas, one after the next. And there are no categories, which I appreciate. A big idea is a big idea. Who cares what media it's expressed in?

Read the rest here.

Denver in AgencySpy, AdPulp, Tellys and AdRants

Whatever feelings you may have about The Denver Egotist, you gotta love them selling our town in national blogs like AdPulp and AgencySpy. Nicely done, Egotist. If I knew who you were, I'd buy you a Double Cheeseburger. But I don't. Your loss.

And while I'm back-slapping, congrats to Citizen on their 10 Tellys. And Cactus for making AdRants.

StrawberryFrog is in London (and just about everywhere else)

Over the past few days, I've started to suspect that I'm being stalked by StrawberryFrog. I look on the Cannes shortlist and there it is. I turn on CNN and there it is. I wonder what's up in London and, now, there it is:

Last year, SF moved headquarters to New York and is moving its European operations to London...

It's no secret that StrawberryFrog has been successful by being smart and ahead of the game. They've been one of the most talked about shops since their inception in 1999. Goodson says, "I think it's fair to say that in today's ever changing market you need to stay entirely agile while remaining focused on delivering innovation, strategic and creative excellence." And that's exactly what StrawberryFrog seems to be doing. I see this as just another smart move on their list of good calls.

We're lucky to have StrawberryFrog founder and CEO Scott Goodson judging the 2008 Denver 50. Norm, Citizen Pictures and I are filming the call for entries now. Look for the video in about four weeks.

I'm a guest on Scott Goodson's lunchtime chat

A week or so ago Scott Goodson, the founder and CEO of StrawberryFrog, asked me to do one of his lunchtime chats. I asked him to repeat the question. Goodson's guests are almost always global advertising powerhouses and I wasn't sure if I really fit in. But he confirmed that he wanted the interview, so I went for it. How many times do you get a chance like that?

The intro identifies me as the "founder of the Colorado 50," which isn't quite the whole story. Many people from the New Denver Ad Club worked on the show, like Gregg, Bob and Brian. As I wrote in the chat, "I helped develop a new award show named The Denver 50."

Obviously I talked about Karsh\Hagan, and I mentioned the Cactus OwnYourC campaign, which is a cool example of the work being done in Denver.

You can read the whole interview on scottgoodson.typepad.com.

UPDATE: The interview has been cross-posted at Marketing & Strategy Innovation Blog.

UPDATE: Marketing & Strategy Innovation Blog has been nominated for a Webby. Vote for it.

UPDATE: The Denver Egotist also discusses the interview.

ADCD photos online

Photos from the ADCD award show are at Bryce Boyer Productions. Now then, would you rather check out Norm's happy face or Creative Sourcebook's seriously hot, mostly naked models?

2007 ADCD award show

The Art Directors Club of Denver gives good award show. Always has. Last night was no exception.

The big winners in the ad categories were Cactus and Integer. Some other shops also took home multiple awards, like John Amatucci, Vermillion, Lee Reedy and Pure Brand.

In his opening remarks, club president James Pelz said some nice things about the New Denver Ad Club, of which I'm an overactive member. I want to return the favor. When we were planning TD50, we started by agreeing that ADCD was already doing a killer multi-discipline show. We didn't see any point in duplicating their efforts. So TD50 partially owes its structure to the ADCD. There's no excuse for agencies not to enter both shows.

Be that as it may, my agency sat out this year. But Thomas Taber & Drazen, where I worked up until last month, entered a couple things. And our - or is it "their," now? - 2006 print campaign for Colorado Farm Bureau Insurance took home silver and judge's choice awards. Stephen Curry, creative director of Lewis Communications wrote:

What makes this campaign refreshing is the simple credit it gives the reader for his/her own intelligence.

The best part of working on the campaign came after we sent final art out out to dozens of community newspapers across the state. We got media reps calling us to tell us our files were screwed up. The photo was too small. The headline was missing. That sort of thing. We had to reassure them that the files were fine. And our client deserves heaps of praise for saying yes to a very quiet campaign.

So it was a good night. And a tough act for the TD50 award show to follow.

Get another take on the evening from The Denver Egotist.

The Simpsons, Halloween and other sacred things

I love Cactus because they blogged the Simpsonization of their entire agency. My own illustrates this post, which is only sort of about The Simpsons.

This post is about messing with the sacred, Which the Simpsons movie certainly does. I'm not sure if I'm looking forward to seeing it or if I'm worried that my favorite show has jumped the shark. (A phrase which has itself jumped the shark.)

For me, Rob Zombie's upcoming reimagining of Halloween is an even bigger concern. The 1978 original is a monument in indie film, horror and urban legend. It's one of the few films to successfully mythologize around the awfulness of fate. And it's scary as hell, without ever getting gory. Zombie is unlikely to take the same approach.

Messing with the sacred pays huge dividends if you do it right. In the world of film, Batman Begins introduced the masses to the real Dark Knight. In the world of advertising, Adidas reclaimed its legitimacy with great work from EVB and 180 Amsterdam.

What the reinventions of Batman and Adidas have in common is that they weren't reinventions at all, but rather a restoration of core values. Batman became the strong shadow of The Long Halloween. Adidas returned to its global athletic roots, which are a couple decades deeper than Nike's, with spots starring worldwide stars like Ian Thorpe and David Beckham.

The lesson is that when you have the opportunity to work on something sacred, you shouldn't superimpose your own values upon it.

I really, really hope Rob Zombie understands that.