Real Men and Women of Madison Avenue

Last night The One Club hosted The Real Men and Women of Madison Avenue and Their Impact on American Culture at Healy Hall in the New York Public Library’s Science, Industry and Business Library. The event was well attended with over 200 people on hand to view the nine exhibits as well as the interactive kiosk and loop of revolutionary television advertisements. Icons of the industry in attendance included Ed McCabe, Amil Gargano, Julian Koenig and George Lois as well as many other industry insiders and up and comers.

The layout of the exhibits is well crafted and designed in a quasi-timeline structure. The first exhibit is devoted to Early Pioneers in the 20^th Century including Claude Hopkins, Bernice Fitz-Gibbon and particularly Shirley Polykoff, creator of the “Does she or doesn’t she” line of advertisements for Clairol.

The second exhibit Founders of Madison Avenue is dedicated to such visionaries as Raymond Rubicam and Rosser Reeves, the creative mind behind the M&Ms "melts in your mouth not in your hand" campaign.

The fourth exhibit The Creative Revolution includes Helmut Krone’s ingenious VW advertisements as well as his famous “We try harder” Avis campaign.

The following exhibit features the work of McCabe and Lois, two titans of the industry and is titled The Iconoclasts and Rebels. Lois, creator of the "I want my MTV" catchphrase is probably best known and renown for his often subversive covers of Esquire magazine from 1962-1972, including the Mohammad Ali cover seen below (for further reading on Lois and Esquire in the 60's see this captivating Vanity Fair article)

The final exhibits include explorations of The West Coast Explosion, The Creative Directors, Entertainers & Designers, and Madison Avenue Across the Pond. Each exhibit did well to balance the sensibilities of novices in the field with veterans with years of advertising experience. The exhibition is on view through September 26th.

One Show Interactive Awards

At first glance the Nokia Theater in Times Square seemed like an odd place to plan the Interactive Advertising Awards. In fact, Times Square is an odd place for New Yorkers to plan anything, it is a place most of us are happy to avoid at all costs , and all week the One Show was held in such tremendous venues the Times Square locale seemed like an odd selection. But walking toward the theater as the bright lights of New York's most famous square shown down on me illuminating the latest Sean John products and keeping me informed of the Nasdaq's doings I realized that this was the perfect location for the Interactive Awards.

This realization was supported upon entering the theater and seeing the Wrestling Ring in which the podium sat and the masked wrestlers ran about. This was not a typical awards show.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. First I ordered a drink from the Heineken bar top and found a Yahoo! plastic ice cube floating in it illuminating my glass. Then I met a series of young members of the advertising world and did the whole business card exchange, then I met a series of older members and again, business cards were exchanged, then we entered the show and I was blown away by the winners.

The advertisements and approaches to advertising that these (mostly) young innovators are taking was not only a revelation in terms of the direction of advertising but also the direction of human interaction in general. Unique new approaches to story telling and concept promotion will certainly find avenues beyond the world in which they currently inhabit but it was very exciting to see them in their infancy at the show.

Check out the judges and the winners here.

One Show College Awards Photos

The One Show's College Awards at the Prince George Ballroom. Contributors from 32 different school exhibited their work with quality that rivaled their soon-t0-be colleagues.

One Show College Competition Winners

Below are the winners from last night's One Show College Competition. Photos and a round-up to follow.

Category	Award	Art Director	Writer	School
PRINT	GOLD	Elliot Nordstrom & Phil Van Buren	Elliot Nordstrom & Phil Van Buren	University of Colorado / Boulder
PRINT	SILVER	Jiashan Wu, Ryan Wi & Yangjie Wee	Jiashan Wu & Ryan Wi	Parsons The New School for Design / New York, NY
PRINT	BRONZE	David Gonzalez, Dev Gupta, Dale Austin & Travis Weber		University of Texas – Texas Creative Program
TELEVISION	SILVER	Aiden Ho, Brigham White	J. Smith	Miami Ad School / Miami Beach, FL
TELEVISION	BRONZE	Justin Stielow	Timothy Bildsten	Miami Ad School / Miami Beach, FL
TELEVISION	BRONZE	Raquel Gimenez	Jake Dubs	VCU Brandcenter, Richmond, VA
INNOVATIVE MARKETING	SILVER	Jeongjyn Yi	Jeongjyn Yi	School of Visual Arts / New York
INNOVATIVE MARKETING	BRONZE	Brenda G. Cevallos	Matt Miller	Brigham Young University
INTERACTIVE	GOLD	Tomas Jonsson	Carl Fredrik Jannerfeldt	Berghs School of Communication / Stockholm
POSTER DESIGN	GOLD	Ronald J. Cala II (Designer & Illustrator)		Tyler School of Art, Temple University
POSTER DESIGN	SILVER	Stacy Mann	Harry Kniznik (Writer) Charles Austin (Photographer)	The Creative Circus / Atlanta
POSTER DESIGN	BRONZE		Kelly Hanner (Designer & Writer)	Texas State University

One Show Photos

The King was great. It'd probably be difficult not to be funny in that outfit but he was especially hysterical. See below for a recap of the evening.

One Show Recap

The Allen Room at Jazz at Lincoln Center was one of the best advertisements of the evening. With 50 foot high floor-to-ceiling windows looking out on Columbus Circle and a three piece jazz band sounding like they were performing at Carnegie Hall the evening’s cocktail hour started out very promisingly. Somewhere around 600 people made their way to The One Show last night for the most distinguished advertising awards in the biz – and to throw a few back, flirt a bit and eat some appropriately named jumbo shrimp.

The event was a collection of very talented, eclectically dressed people of seemingly all persuasions. Some of the attendees wore suits or ball gowns while others could just have easily been banging away on their Macs in a Brooklyn coffee shop.

For me it was an interesting (and first extensive) look into the advertising industry and an opportunity to collect business cards like I was having a raffle for a free lunch at the end of the evening.

“At One Show events the people who have come up want to help the people who are coming up,” said Phil Growick, the Managing Director at Jerry Fields Associates (A Company of The Howard, Sloan, Koller Group according to his business card).

And it really did seem like that. At one point I was talking with a guy (Greg Hahn from BBDO) who looked like a less mysterious version of Jack White just having a casual conversation and later he collected an award for the HBO Voyeur ads – the coolest of the night in one man’s estimation.

“It’s the best of the best,” Hahn said. “There’s a lot of inspiration here and you get to see the gold standard of the advertising industry.”

The awards themselves were hosted by Tom Papa who was funnier off the cuff than scripted. And the music played throughout the show was Vampire Weekend type, super hip, but not in a too-cool-for-school-kind-of-way stuff.

All in all a very cool show, and some of the better adverts I’ve seen this side of five or six Super Bowls ago.

Check back in tomorrow for a recap of the Student Awards Show.

14th Annual Student Exhibition

The One Show Education Festival kicked off last night at the Prince George Ballroom in Manhattan. Below are pictures from the event which featured the work of over 300 students from 32 different advertising and design schools. The event provided over 200 attendees a chance to view the future of the advertising landscape while meeting faculty members and industry experts. Check back here throughout the week for updates on the Education Festival.