Swimming with shadows

One of my heroes is Dave Martin, the 66-year-old triathlete who was killed by a great white shark off the coast of San Diego last year. It's not so much the circumstances of his death. It's that he raised children so fearless they went surfing in the same waters the very next day.

I have had to think a lot about bravery recently. About whether it is braver to accept death or to fight it. About growing up deeply different. About ambiguous ends rendered in sharp focus. I haven't arrived anywhere especially profound. I just imagine Kevin Martin paddling out into the Pacific, unable to ignore the swimming shadows below, but completely able to accept them.

Life in twilight

The Greek and Roman myths are filled with narcissistic sissies prancing around in their underwear, slaying big scary beasties, and flitting through oak groves. My ancestors were different. As Edith Hamilton writes in her classic Mythology:

The world of Norse mythology is a strange world... No radiancy of joy is in it, no assurance of bliss. it is a grave and solemn place, over which hangs the threat of inevitable doom. The cause the forces of good are fighting to defend against the forces of evil is hopeless. Nevertheless, the gods will fight for it to the end. Necessarily the same is true of humanity... The heroes and heroines of the early stories face disaster. They know they cannot save themselves, not by any courage or endurance or great deed. Even so, they do not yield. They die resisting.

Many of the Norse texts went the way of their gods. What the Christians didn't destroy, time did. (Don't build statues out of wood.) But where the Greeks and Romans found illusionary glory in temporary victories, the Norse found permanent dignity in futile struggle.

Even the greatest achievements are washed away by history. And your children - and theirs and theirs and theirs - are all you have as a hedge against death. And yet you fight the fight. Not for a doomed world or a doomed future. But for its own sake.

Your will to battle towards a unpleasant and certain end is the most important thing you have. My ancestors knew this. And I know it too.

How does one put a book together in the year 2008?

I'm a book junkie. Doesn't matter if I am happy where I am or not. I'm always replacing and reordering campaigns. Other people watch TV. Me, I look at my book and wonder how much it sucks.

Take the ad that illustrates this post. One of the last I wrote at TT&D. It's kind of cool. Especially for the alpha-mom target. Then again, it's just headline - photo - copy - logo. Couldn't it've been a little rougher around the edges? Should I put it in my book? And if so, what should I kill to make room for it?

But I digress.

Because what's really bugging me is how to display stuff like web banners, integrated storytelling, and nontraditional media.

Like the Regis stuff we did. I love the heck out of it. Because it wasn't just a print campaign. It was an attempt to build a relationship using a mixture of wild postings, SMS and student-generated content.

What does that look like in my book?

Or our new web banners for Denver Tourism. Some cool, fun rich media executions. But you really need to play with them to appreciate them.

When I got out of ad school in 2000, you could flip through my book in 60 seconds flat and decide whether you wanted to interview me. Now, it takes 60 seconds just to explain some of my work. ("See, when the page loads, it looks like this. But then when you roll over this banner, suddenly this other banner expands and becomes a game...")

I considered divvying things up. Print in a PDF, video as an Quicktime movie, sound as an .mp3, and digital on a website. But it felt clumsy. Worse, it lessens the power of the integrated campaigns I am proudest of.

I also considered abandoning my book altogether, and just posting my favorite stuff here on my blog. But I'm not sure that the world is ready for that sort of approach. I know that when Karsh looks for new creatives, we ask for physical books we can flip through and sort into Yes, Maybe and Hack piles.

I'm not the only one struggling with the issue of building the perfect portfolio. Astheria (via my fave anonymous ad geeks) did a non-scientific study which concluded that all online portfolios suck, always.

Sigh. Being good is hard enough. Do I still have to figure out how to prove it to complete strangers, too?

Playing against type

On November 8, 2007 I wrote a post that talked about how social marketing "tests the concept of juristic personhood by daring brands to live up to their legal status." That's still true. But juristic personhood doesn't make one a person.

People have the ability to play against type. For instance, "The Natalie Portman Rap" isn't funny if it's not sung by the sweet, petite, Ivy Leaguer. And with apologies to Sarah Silverman, "I'm Fucking Matt Damon" would've been been a yawn if Hollywood nice-guy Matt Damon hadn't been singing backup.

I'm not sure this sort of self-referential riffing would work for brands. Consider Gatorade's spinoff G2. The G2 spots play on the core brand's athletic heritage, not against it. The copy includes the line, "You're always an athlete, hydrate like one." Can you imagine the same campaign with the tagline, "You're not always an athlete, so we made a drink for that, too."

The other reason creatives stay up late

You'd like to think the late nights ad folk are famous for are just a by-product of our undying passion for the work. But that's only half the story. Alongside desire, there's fear, as Bart Cleveland explains:

The advertising industry is a great white shark, always feasting, yet never satisfied. You had better get better if you want a career that lasts for more than a few years...

The cause of the problem for many seniors in this business is that too many have avoided committing themselves to growing in responsibility or ability.

The ability that many senior-level people lack these days is Web skills. And there's been no shortage of people predicting doom.

Yesterday, it was our own Denver Egotist:

Being in such high demand, are these developers simply moving to more established landscapes, or is Denver simply a microcosm of a national drought?

On the national level, there was Brian Morrissey, quoted here via Scott Goodson:

Clients are placing more emphasis on mastering social media but find their agencies ill equipped to help them succeed in that space, according to a new survey.

And there was Benjamin Palmer worrying that ad agencies aren't up to the Web 2.0 challenge:

Everyone talks about how the industry is changing, nontraditional media, fragmented audiences, blah blah blah. It's true, it's progress, and it's fantastic. It is also obviously scaring the crap out of traditional ad shops.

I see this meme over and over. And I'm never quite sure who these "traditional ad shops" are. Maybe it's because I've never worked at a Madison Avenue monolith; I imagine they'd be harder to evangelize. Both of the agencies I've had the pleasure to work for in the past four years embraced Web 2.0. And when I write "embraced," I mean, "threw our arms around it and kissed it like Ryan Gosling and Rachel McAdams making out in The Notebook."

At TT&D, we built the first social network for iPhone users, launched a UGC contest for WOW! and asked Colorado to build us a state activity map for Colorado Farm Bureau Insurance. At Karsh\Hagan, we're enabling student-generated content for Regis University, launching McDonald's film on YouTube, and we've got a few new projects upcoming, one of which will be here on May 15.

I know these aren't quite Barbarian Group-level technology applications. I'm not trying to go toe to toe with Palmer creatively. But the "agencies genetically can't get the Intertubes" meme sounds like something invented by interactive shops. And I'm not buying it. Because as Palmer himself writes:

[I]t's not that hard to adapt, if you really want to.

In fact, ad agencies have a better 2.0 mindset than some interactive agencies. (Although many have been slow to realize their advantage.) As Ian Schafer wrote:

[I]f the agency doesn’t have a full media/creative/public relations offering, they probably won’t be able to have the right (and unbiased) experience and best practices to succeed in social media.

The answer isn't as simple as building a better Internet offering. It's about integration. Every day, I see the best Denver agencies staying up late, developing the ability to create great work across integrated media.

It makes me get all weepy. Just like that scene in The Notebook.

Our House: A good play, a few years too late

[Ed. - This post contains spoilers for Our House, a play by Theresa Rebeck that premiered at the DCPA. I decided not to publish until the Denver run concluded to avoid giving away the plot. You've been warned.]

I liked Our House a lot while I was watching it. The writing was snappy. The direction was gripping. The actors were committed. The moral - TV is bad, TV news is worse, and reality TV will rot your brain - was right out of a college lecture on hyperreality, but it's a good lecture and I needed to hear it again.

Still, there was something that bothered me about the play. And reading through my playbill, I figured out what it was. I'd watched Our House's world premiere. But it didn't feel current.

Ken at Pure Thinking was all over an article titled "Young prefer MySpace to TV." He wrote:

When asked how they would rather spend 15 minutes, 45% of this age group answered social networking sites, surpassing watching TV, reading, talking on the phone, or playing video games.

Today, wannabe celebs turn to the Internet, not broadcast. (See: Samberg, Andy and Tequila, Tila.) So when Our House's Merv started blowing away his roommates, I expected him to put video on his YouTube channel. When he demanded to talk to the news anchor who hosts his favorite reality show, the play seemed dated.

This thread points out that Our House was inspired by the story of Julie Chen, who anchored the CBS morning news and has hosted Big Brother since 2000.

2000. That's sounds about right. Eight years ago, Our House might have been vital. But today Real World is in it's 19th season and nobody I know trusts the TV for news anyway.

For me, the play felt like a look back at a quaint time when TV still ruled.

It's not or. It's and.

Twenty-eight of the ideas in the Denver 50 used the Internet either as medium or delivery mechanism. Only one of those ideas came from a digital-only agency.

What does that tell you? Maybe that many traditional agencies understand and operate in the online space as well as, or perhaps better than, some digital agencies.

Consider posts at AdPulp and AdWeek:

Digital agencies are improving their skills to help clients strategically, but still fall short in their ability to lead broader marketing and brand strategy, according to a new report by Forrester Research. That inability means Web agencies in the near term will continue to be relegated to the role of implementer, while a client's traditional shop takes the lead, said Brian Haven, a Forrester analyst.

Right. For a traditional agency to get into the interactive space, it only needs to clear two hurdles. The first is expanding its skill set, which is as easy as hiring the right people. The second is accepting that advertising can be story just as easily as it can be spectacle. (See my related post "Agency segmentation: A slideshow" for more on this shift.)

But for a digital agency to encroach on traditional space, it needs to pick up strategic, media and conceptual skills. Plus it needs to become an expert in print, broadcast, guerilla, out-of-home and direct.

Modern marketing isn't about or. It's about and. Lead agencies must be able to concept fresh ideas in all media. Everyone else will be relegated to development roles.

Aggregation nation

I realize that what I'm about to write is trendier than a Barack Obama t-shirt. But I'm going to write it anyway.

Serial online publishers need a great way to aggregate their content into a single news stream.

The Biz of Coding agrees:

Managing scattered online Social Life on multiple Social Networking sites, I sense, will become a Killer App Category 2008.

So does Mashable

[A]s I try out more social networks and lifestreaming utilities, I’ve spread my personal brand all over the Internet. I’ve got podcasts, domains, writings, tumblogs, linkblogs and RSS feeds scattered all over the internet bearing my name. I need to find one or two good utilities and a slick looking format with which to consolidate it all in a useful, user-friendly manner.

There are several startups in the space. And SocialThing!, which is being developed by friends of friends, sounds similar.

Plaxo Pulse is similar, too. I have a couple gripes about it. One is that when you load your address book into it, it automatically invites everyone you know, instead of letting you select who you'd like to connect to. The result is that you're connected via pulse.plaxo.com to a whole bunch of business contacts who don't actually create any content of their own.

Someone's going to get this ironed out eventually. I just know it.

Cross-posted on karshconnect.

Me and Lisa Simpson and the NDAC

Yesterday morning, someone asked me how much recognition I wanted during the Denver 50 show. And I remembered a scene from "The Summer of 4 ft. 2." Lisa Simpson is attempting to hand out yearbooks when Nelson explains how the world works:

Nelson: Who died and made you boss?

Lisa: Mr. Estes, the publications advisor. I edited the whole thing.

Nelson: If you hadn't done it, some other loser would have. So quit milking it!

Quit milking it. Good advice. I will, in a minute.

There are three things I wish everyone knew about The Denver 50:

1. It wasn't a big moneymaker. At least, not compared to what the ADDYs would've been. We got 170 entries, which included more than 600 executions. Under an ADDY format, each of those executions could have been entered again individually. We left money on the table so we explore a media-neutral format that more accurately reflected the realities agencies face today.

2. It was a huge risk (as ad club risks go). It took courage for the board to let us buck the national awards format. It took optimism for our jaw-dropping judges to spend their time on a local show. And it took faith for agencies to buy into the show concept. People can argue about whether the Denver 50 was a huge success or a giant flop. But I hope people appreciate the fact that we were swinging for the fences.

3. The names of our sponsors. There is an exhaustive list in the book. A little extra love from me to my friends at:

• texturemedia, who built the judging site.
• Amatucci, who shot the book cover.
• Pure Brand, who produced the book.
• Integer, who planned the event.
• Fueld Films, who shot our video and game.
• Thought Equity, who assembled the reel.

Today we're all back at work, trying to do the best job we can. That's the nature of this business. What you did yesterday doesn't matter half as much as what you'll do tomorow. Onward.

Some thoughts for new bloggers

Ian Schafer has some thoughts on the blogosphere:

Anytime the editorial content of blogs is tainted with cash, it de-legitimizes the medium. Even the promise of links is promising traffic which translates into potential ad revenue for the blog. Getting bloggers to create their own ads seems to take them away from what they are (probably) doing best: writing content for their readers. Collectively, readers are smart. They can smell a rat a mile away. Once they realize the content of the blog they are reading is influenced by money, they will move on.

Just to pile on, here are a few other things bloggers shouldn't do:

• Reproduce editorial content without linking to the author.
• Reproduce more than three paragraphs of content.
• Reproduce any photos or art without permission.
• Steal bandwidth by using an existing URL to post hijacked art.
• Fail to hat-tip to a blog that pointed out a story.
• Delete or substantially alter a post, unless you're deleting the whole blog.
• Cross post without linking to the crosspost.
• Astroturf. Seriously, nothing pisses me off like astroturfing.

When I started blogging, I probably violated all these rules. (Except the last one, which I consider almost unforgivable.) You have to give neophytes some leeway. And as more people and more brands enter into a Web 2.0 world, the code of ethics which has bound good bloggers is bound to be stretched a bit. Hopefully the medium won't get so corrupted it becomes worthless.

UPDATE: Here's another thought. Know the difference between anonymous blogging and pseudonymous blogging. It is important.

Internet celebrity, Flannery O'Connor and MakeFive.com

One of my favorite quotes is this from Flannery O'Connor:

Everywhere I go I'm asked if I think the university stifles writers. My opinion is that they don't stifle enough of them. There's many a best-seller that could have been prevented by a good teacher.

If O'Connor could see the flood of crap that we consume today, she would have enrolled us in private classes at Andalusia. And stifled us all. To death with a pillow, if necessary.

The traditional media gatekeepers are gone or leaving, victims of technology, lethargy and their own poor taste. But they withered away ostensibly attempting a great service: filtering out the bad, the amateurish and the tasteless.

One of the great myths of the adolescent is that there is a huge raft of talented filmmakers, actors and artists out there, ignored by the mainstream and forced to create genius in and for the underground. But there's not. And today all the world has access to YouTubes and MySpaces and Seesmics, content creation encouragers that have enabled a wave of celebrities whose only claim to fame is their own shamelessness.

I keep waiting for a killer critic to do for Internet celebrity what Pitchfork does for music and Josh Spear does for product design. But the deluge of wannabe celebrities is probably too great for anyone to comprehend, let alone manage.

Maybe if we all put our heads together, we can figure this thing out.

I've been playing around in MakeFive, a new online community based on lists. The site was launched by smashLAB on November 5, 2007. Its irresistible tagline is "You are what you think." And at the risk of stating the obvious, making lists at MakeFive is less time-intensive than at 43 Things.

My first list is of the five Internet celebs who actually deserve it. Join the community, vote on my choices and add your own, if you're so inclined.

TD50 2008 judges I'd like to see: Gareth Kay

The Denver 50 2007 judging panel was maybe the greatest ever assembled for a local show. Mike Lescarbeau, Mike Byrne, Rob Rasmussen and Kevin Roddy. I defy you to name four more influential creatives in America. I'd love to keep the bar high for 2008. One person I'd like to see is Modernista! planner Gareth Kay. This presentation from his Slideshare page explains why:

| View | Upload your own

You must participate

Even though I'm a writer, I have a thing for Web 2.0. Social networks, blogs, SMS, widgets, that sort of thing. I like them because they're marketing tools that "don't just show life to people, but make them live."

To invoke Guy Debord in an essay on marketing tactics is to dare the wrath of a hundred thousand college sophomores. Situationist International wasn't known for purchasing Nikes. But maybe it should have been. After all, "Nike killed the three martini lunch." (And who am I quoting there? Fenske?) Without a raft of ads encouraging us to "just do it," those who can take lunches would probably spend them hitting the bar instead of the barbell.

Nike got rich using traditional media to promote an active lifestyle. But everything top-down advertising does, Web 2.0 does better. It lets people connect based on affinity instead of proximity. It lets local actions take place on an international scale. It gives the people access to the powerful. Perhaps best of all, it tests the concept of juristic personhood by daring brands to live up to their legal status.

And for all the good it does, Web 2.0 only has two real downfalls. It immortalizes everyday language, holding it to an impossibly lofty standard. And it encourages content creation so much that it has confused shamelessness and celebrity. (I wrote a despondent essay on the latter issue; someday I may even post it.)

I think most marketing people buy in to the idea that Web 2.0 is an opportunity for brands to engage with consumers. But how many understand the flipside? Web 2.0 is an obligation. Because consumers now expect brands to make life better. And so Burger King creates a game and Target builds a Facebook group and Adidas shoots a practice film and ESPN makes a widget.

See what I'm getting at? Traditional advertising asks consumers to pay a premium for a product based on brand equity. Web 2.0 asks consumers to pay a premium for a product based on brand utility.

Web 2.0 marketing is perhaps something Debord would have welcomed, if he could have forgiven the spectacle of it all. Because while a brand can't make you live, it can now give you tools and opportunities. That's something that a print ad simply can't provide.

Crossposted on Karsh Connect.

What's a concept?

On September 3, I left this comment on The Denver Egotist about the definition of the word "concept."

I think the problem is the floating definition of the word "concept." In ad school, they teach you one definition, which revolves around the idea that the consumer must bring a bit of himself to the work in order to understand it. But I've heard people use the word concept as a synonym for "theme." And as a synonym for "cool to look at..." [T]he word concept is like the word edgy - so overused it borders on meaningless.

I can't remember who first explained the word concept to me. It was probably one of my teachers at The Creative Circus. But I've always found the following explanation interesting.

Consider the three arcs to the right. In each, the "A" represents the product and the "B" represents the ad.

In the top arc, the product and the ad are right up next to each other. There's no room for the consumer to have fun with the ad, to feel a connection to it. The headline is probably something like, "Today, you can buy this chair for $99." And the visual is probably a chair. This is not a concept.

In the middle arc, the product and the ad are nowhere near each other. Nobody could make sense of this ad. The headline probably says, "Attila the Hun loves you." And the visual is probably a boat, upon which sits a hippo. This is not a concept.

But the final arc is. The product and the ad aren't smothering each other, but they're close enough to make the consumer feel the shock of recognition and a bond with the brand that transcends any short-term product offering.

Of course even that labored and lengthy definition can't possibly explain something as good as this:

Agency segmentation: A slideshow

A couple of years ago, I realized my favorite agencies don't market themselves as brand agencies or online agencies or promotional agencies. BBH, Anomaly, Strawberryfrog and others are just out there doing, you know, stuff.

But I'd never advise a client to position itself as an all-purpose stuff doer. So I started mulling over new ways to position agencies. And an online discussion primarily driven by Adam Crowe, Zeus Jones and AgencySpy resonated with me.

As a way of sharing the discussion with coworkers, I created this PowerPoint presentation. (I know, I know. Scary stuff, writers messing with presentation software. It's literally my first time using PowerPoint.)

| View | Upload your own

Am me getting myself dumber now?

I consider it part of my job to stay on top of the ways in which people communicate. Blogging, microblogging, social networks. Updating my Twitter page via my cell while overseeing a spot edit and rewriting the script on the fly.

Some of these tools have proven valuable. Others have increased my mania. But now it appears I may just be making myself stupid. From The Atlantic Monthly:

Neuroscience is confirming what we all suspect: Multitasking is dumbing us down and driving us crazy.

The rest of the article is protected behind a password. But here's an excerpt from the magazine:

At the most basic level, the the mental balancing acts that [multitasking] requires - the constant switching and pivoting - energize regions of the brain that specialize in visual processing and physical coordination and simultaneously appear to shortchange some of the higher areas related to memory and learning.

In other words, you can do a lot of stuff, but after you finish, you can't really tell anyone what you did.

It may be true, because while I was typing the excerpt from The Atlantic, I must have forgotten my place at least a dozen times. This from a guy who can recite the alphabet backwards and perform chunks of Shakespeare from memory.

I think maybe this is why many in the ad world - like Sally Hogshead - are worried that new media will hurt our ability to concept. Navigating the maze of strategies, media and applications can be awfully distracting. Especially to a creative mind that verges on the manic without any help from hyperlinks.

It's easy to say,"Unplug, grab a Sharpie and go concept in a coffeeshop." But what happens when your creative director asks you if you've seen the latest viral video and you haven't because you've been off, you know, working?

And now, in an act of WTF blogging, I'm ending this post. Because I've checked my email and my RSS feeds at least a dozen times in the last 20 minutes and I've forgotten what my point was. If indeed I had one.

Michael Bay to "remake" Friday the 13th

I have a thing for movies where ax swinging maniacs work out their aggressions. I like them as cultural myth. And as entertainment. So I was excited to read in Underwire that they're remaking the original Friday the 13th:

In the original Friday the 13th, the serial killer made only a brief appearance in the final frames and never killed anyone. Jason didn't even don the famous mask until the third movie. The remake, however, will focus on Jason - who will wear the mask and kill - and keep the famous setting of Crystal Lake.

WTF? The fact that Jason was not the killer in Friday the 13th is a cultural touchstone. Ghostface killed Casey for not knowing it. It's almost as important as Michael's missing motivation in the original Halloween.

The new film's IMDB page lists it as an "untitled Friday the 13th project." Which is good. Because if Jason's the killer, it's not a remake. It's a sequel.

UPDATE: Someday five years from now, someone will point out that Ghostface killed Casey's boyfriend because she didn't correctly identify the killer in Friday the 13th. He killed her because, well, that's what the bad guys in horror movies do. Sigh, I need to proofread more carefully.

A parable

You find a great foreign film/viral video that you want to make into a Hollywood blockbuster/TV spot. So you go to the studio heads/account team and tell them about it. And they say that the foreign film/viral video lacks a love triangle/unique selling proposition. And action scenes/jump cuts. And a happy ending/big logo. And it would have been better directed by Martin Scorsese/Thanonchai Sornsrivichai.

So they ask you if you can make those little changes and still turn out something great. And you nod your head very seriously and assure them you can. But you can't.

But when you enter it into the Oscars/One Show, it wins anyway. Because Scorsese/Sornsrivichai is still Scorsese/Sornsrivichai, after all.

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.

Pigs, pitching and the Denver 50

I'm not the first person to blog this quote. Or the second, third, fourth, fifth or sixth:

The whole creative process is stupid. It's like washing a pig. It's messy, it has no rules, no clear beginning, middle, or end; it's kind of a pain in the ass, and when you're done, you're not sure if the pig is clean or even why you were washing a pig in the first place.

That goes double for pitching, which Marc Brownstein recently laid into at Small Agency Diary:

I'm not advocating abstinence from dating. It's just that the courting process has gone too far. It's often a waste of an agencies' time to pitch among 12 other shops. Narrow it down, clients! Apply some discipline to the process.

Pure's Gregg Bergan had a good column in The Denver Business Journal not too long ago. He opined that a trip through an agency's portfolio and a long lunch was a better predictor of relationship success than a creative shootout:

Schedule a time to visit each agency. Ask to meet with your entire prospective team and no others. Don't agree to a meeting until all of them can make it. Ask to see a portfolio that represents the work of the actual people who would be on your account. If the agency portfolio includes work of others, you don't want to see it.

OK. But the pitch process survives not only because clients like seeing a bunch of work for free. Creative departments, despite the strain, often love a shootout. It's competitive. Energetic. And win or lose, it gives writers and art directors a whole lot of chances to produce stuff for their books.

When we created the idea for The Denver 50, we all agreed that past award shows thrived on snappy headlines and big egos. And we wanted the New Denver Ad Club's first show to let go of those things and embrace the thinking of agencies like Bartle Bogle Hegarty, Anomaly and StrawberryFrog.

Letting go of the pitch process would take the same sort of willpower.