Seen and noted

BEST TV
1st place: The Counselor - Lingerie.
Who the hell is this guy? Why is he picking out lingerie for a girl he met 3 days ago? Who is it for? Why am I as infatuated with him as the woman who works at the lingerie shop? So many questions left unanswered. So much more to know. How do I find out? A classic teaser in all of its glory. As effective an advertising tactic as it has ever been when done correctly. And by a God this is done correctly. Now, it certainly doesn't hurt a commercial by having Michael Fassbender as the principle actor, and Luke Scott as your director. But compared to your average Hollywood movie trailer: cue dramatic movie guy read, "In a world... At a time...blah blah blah" this spot is commercial gold.
Now if you'll excuse me I have some googling to do.

2nd place: XBox One - Invitation.
So let me get this straight: the only real difference between the new XBox One and the last XBox, is that this one has a camera that lets me video chat with my gamer friends and will operate with voice commands? And for this they want another 6 or 7 hundred dollars of my hard earned money? SIGN ME UP!!!!

Talk about knowing your audience. Invitation promises everything that a die-hard game system junkie needs. A giant dose of epic immersive fantasy to steal you from your mundane life.

BEST PRINT
1st place: WildWash: The Shitzu.
Where exactly does an ad like this run? Who cares!? It's great! A good old-fashioned visually driven idea: See an image that stops you dead in your tracks and then makes you look for an answer. And then makes you go back and do it all over again. I'm dying to see the Labradoodle and Irish Wolfhound campaign extensions.

2nd place: 3M: Bomb
Drawing from a familiar visual reference, this print ad does the job very quickly and effectively (although, I'm not sure exactly who has to be convinced to tape up the bottom of a box packed full of valuables. But I'm not here to debate strategy). The work done to illustrate the bomb/vase is quite good. Go too far and it's not a vase. Don't go far enough and it's not a bomb. The only thing keeping it out of the number one spot here is the heavy-handed work on the typography. A simpler, less visually tricky solution would have added confidence to the layout and reinforced the simplicity of the product.

BEST OUTDOOR
1st place: Calgary Horror Convention: Body Parts.
How do you create awareness of a convention full of stuff designed to scare the crap out of people? You scare the crap out of people. I love this idea. So simple. And you know they don't exactly have a huge budget to promote this event. With a couple hundred bucks and 15 minutes at the local Halloween shop, you could own a 10 block radius. The execution itself has all of the campiness of a good slasher movie. Gory and somewhat hilarious.

2nd place: SNCF French Railways: Europe. Its just next door.
A nice simple use of technology to bring this idea to life. This execution plays into people's curiosity and innate desire to figure out a puzzle, but then delivers for those who expend the effort a surprise in a big personal way. "_______ vacation spot is right next door" is an old chestnut of a strategy and has probably been executed against a million ways. But this is quite simply a fresh, engaging approach.

BEST INTERACTIVE
1st place: ActionAid: DonateYourProfile.
I love this idea for two reasons:
1. It is, for the most part, free. The amount of awareness Action Aid must have received by simply using Facebook must have crushed any media spend they had in the past. Pro-bono work and social media are a match made in heaven. The last thing companies like ActionAid need is to be shelling out what little money they do have to run awareness campaigns. This kind of work shows the power of creative thinking and how it can make a difference on many levels.

2.It taps into a very modern mindset: I want to help. But I don't want to have to do much if anything at all. This idea makes it easy for even the laziest person to help spread the word.

2nd place: #Mamming
I heard about #mamming a couple of weeks ago. It had made its way into my Instagram feed and I thought it was a terrific way to raise awareness for Breast Cancer. What I really like about this idea is that it doesn't ask a lot of people. You don't have to upload your face onto something. You don't have to navigate your way through some lesser version of the Wilderness Downtown. And you don't have to sit through some over-wrought feature-length interactive movie thingy. You just plop your lovelies on a table, take a selfie, hashtag it and your done. People are probably doing it anyway. I wonder if we have to look forward to the testicular cancer awareness version.




This week's guest judge is Wade Devers, executive creative director, creative lead at Arnold, Boston.

Wade, with his creative partner, Pete Johnson lead creative for the Boston office and the development of its talent. Wade joined Arnold Worldwide in 1999 to work on Converse and has since led the creative efforts for multiple Fortune 500 brands in his tenure. Currently, he is the global account director on the Jack Daniel's family of brands and leads creative for accounts including CVS and Fidelity. His work has been recognized by the industry's most prestigious creative shows, including Cannes, D&AD, One Show and ANDY. Devers began his career at Leonard Monahan Lubars & Partners in Providence, RI.