Wednesday, November 2, 2011

This time it's real.

Earlier this year I awarded myself a Gold One Show Pencil for work we did 10 years ago but never earned official recognition. I suspect many of us have stories about work that should have won awards, but never did. And the reasons are just as plentiful: mislabeled entry forms, biased judges, stingy financial officers, etc.

Take our ABC campaign. It cleaned up at every award show in the US, but failed to merit any attention at the Cannes Lion Festival. Later, I was to discover it was never even entered in that particular show because the humor was deemed too inside. Doh!

Sometimes even winning an award isn't winning an award.

Last year I was contacted by David Lee, TBWA's Digital Executive Creative Director. He needed someone to flesh out the writing on projeqt.com. It's a very cool site that can showcase the work of photographers, poets, musicians, architects, writers, anyone in need of a mixed media venue. I spent a couple of months helping him write and organize the material. The site went on to great success and was even mentioned in several magazines.

Several months ago it won a Silver Pencil at the One Show Awards.

Naturally, I was excited. Not only to win a prestigious award like a pencil but to do it in the digital arena, where so many assume a veteran like myself is like a fish out of binary water. The truth is I've seen what passes for "digital thinking" at many agencies and find it as inspiring as Windows 95.

Projeqt.com won an award, but I didn't. My name was never entered on the entry form. It turned out to be a clerical error.

Today, I'm happy to say that what was once wrong has now been righted, as you can see on the now-amended credits.



For $200 I can buy the double-ended metallic trophy that will collect dust in a bin buried in my garage. Right next to my Telly, my Andy, and my Lulu. Or I can take that same $200 and celebrate with my wife and a nice steak dinner at Maestro with multiple refills of small batch bourbon on the rocks.

Make mine medium rare, please.

3 comments:

george tannenbaum said...

congratulations.

Years ago my wife worked at an agency that was named "Agency of the Year." There was a photo of 15 key players with my wife smack dab in the center.

When they fired her, they retouched her out.

The Soviet still lives on Madison Ave.

Jeff said...

Working at a certain agency that shall go nameless - Y&R - a senior art director who had the job of gathering names for award entries came asked if he should list my partner, a freelance art director, on the LR3 print introduction work. I asked him considering he'd done the work and come up with the campaign with me, why wouldn't he list him? I'm not sure what or who he was protecting since he had nothing to do with the campaign himself. After I left the agency, I saw his name on an OC Ad Award for a Land Rover piece another art director and I had done that he also had nothing to do with. Suddenly I understood why he asked the question the first time. If I'd been gone at the time he wouldn't have had to ask anyone. Credit where credit's due? That's just crazy talk.

dmklee said...

Your name shouldnt have been left out in the first place. Thank you for all the great work and sorry this took so long to be corrected....we did notify right after the show.

D