One Show Pencil Winner

A few weeks ago, the One Show, arguably one of the more prestigious of all the gluttonous advertising awards, presented their winners for the 2010 Branded Content/Entertainment. I don't really know the title of the award nor the comings and goings of the awards industry, like I used to, I only know this is a new award created to reflect the changing media landscape of our business.

The award didn't exist 10 years ago, when we produced not only a campaign for our client -- homestore.com -- but a full length feature film documentary called Home Movie directed by Chris Smith. It was branded content, before there even was branded content.

And before there were awards for branded content.

Would we have won a Gold Pencil? I don't know, but I do know there were hundreds of films in 2001, very few of them earned Two Thumbs Up from Roger Ebert and the Other Dude. And few of this year's winners premiered at the Sundance Film Festival and went to a nationwide theatrical release.

So I'm going to do what few creatives (with the notable exception of the Clio grabbing crowd of 1991) would and award myself and those responsible for the film, a One Show Gold Pencil. And so, on behalf of the team and homestore.com CEO Stuart Wolff (now serving 5 years in a federal penitentiary for embezzlement), I'd like to thank the judges(me) for their thoughtful hindsight.

Stuart, I hope you're making new friends and enjoying the gruel and the communal showers.
And I hope the rest of you will enjoy the film.

Here's the trailer I recently found on youtube: