Hasta La Ideas

Here’s a look at some of the advertising work that was selected to appear in the CR Annual this year, along with an insight to the judging process…

As Patrick explained earlier this week in his graphic picks post, the Annual is our juried showcase of the best work created in the last 12 months. This year’s Annual is out now, published in our special double May issue. It’s laid out in chronological order with selected work shown according to the month in which it was launched – with the exception of the Best in Book section which contains the judges’ choices of the very best work entered.

Along with fellow judges Lisa Jelliffe of Wieden + Kennedy, Paul Jordan of Dentsu and Andre Laurentino of TBWA\London, I was one of the judges looking at advertising projects. We started the day of judging by looking through all of the entered advertising films and simply making notes. We then went through the list of work in discussion, to work out which ones we each liked and discuss any which only one of us liked to see if that judge could persuade the rest of us that their case was valid for considering that particular piece of work.

Likewise, if one judge absolutely hated a piece of work that the others liked, it was discussed. As with the graphic design judging, if a judge (or his or her agency) has entered a piece of work, they are asked to leave the room while their work is discussed by the other judges.

We only selected one advertising film to be Best in Book, and the decision was unanimous (and therefore very easy). All of us felt that director Johnny Kelly’s charming film, Back To the Start, for US restaurant brand Chipotle was brilliantly executed and stood head and shoulders above all the other work we saw.

Read our original blog post about the film here.

There were some other very easy decisions – one was to include VW’s The Force ad – where a young Darth Vader wannabe fails to harness the power of the Force, until his dad lends a hand with his remote car key:

Another easy decision was to include BBH’s Life Story spot for Barnardo’s which cleverly reveals how a troubled child’s life has been turned around thanks to the support of the organisation:

And, of course, there were some surprises and trickier decisions. It came as a surprise to me, for example, that one of our number on the jury wasn’t particularly impressed with BETC’s Canal+ spot, entitled The Bear in which a bearskin rug reveals how he became a hugely enthusiastic film director as a result of watching so many films from his spot in front of the telly on a living room floor.

Personally, it was on my list of potential Best in Book entries – I think it’s really great. I was happy that it made it into The Annual, even though it was struck from the Best in Book contenders list becasue support for it wasn’t unanimous.

There was some debate (which didn’t include Lisa Jelliffe) about W+K’s Kitchen Odyssey spot for Lurpak – but the wonderful cinematography which glorifies the making of a simple omelette won through. We also selected the accompanying Good Food Deserves Lurpak press and poster campaign on the basis that the ads function perfectly, inducing both hunger and a desire to create the easily achievable dishes (such as a bacon butty) depicted.

There was also a discussion about the Wall’s Kitchen ad in which a man conveys his gratitude to his wife’s cooking of Wall’s sausages by presenting her with a tiny rapping dog in a ring box. Two members of the jury really liked it and spoke up when the other two were happy to let the add pass into the “no” pile. In the end, we all agreed that the ad cleverly targeted Walls suasages audience and appealed to their sense of humour in a hugely original and memorable way.

There’s always some ads that we haven’t seen, almost always from overseas. This year was no exception. None of us on the jury had seen the Conveyor Belt series of ads entered for Walmart by The Martin Agency. The idea for the series was quite simple but original – each one begins by showing a seemingly innocuous selection of items rolling along a Walmart checkout conveyer belt.

Then a scenario unfolds to show how these items combine to create a funny story. So a Klaxon is used as a method of waking up two sleepy grandsons on a fishing trip (see below), spray oil and a sharp tooth saw are required to help remove a child’s head from where he’s managed to get it stuck between, and a mobile phone, some double sided sticky tape and a barbie doll, in the hands of a little girl conspire to make her father late for work…

Among the print advertising we selected to include in this year’s Annual, Benetton’s Unhate campaign (created by Fabrica in cooperation with 72andSunny NL) is proably the most striking and controversial.

We all admired the simplicity of the Land Rover Passport Stamps print ad too:

There were lots more great advertsing projects selected by our section of this year’s Annual jury – check out the May issue of CR to see them all. You can aslo view all the Best in Book projects on the CR iPad app (details below). We will post on the selected interactive projects later today too.

Full details on the Creative Review Annual 2012, in association with Bigstock, here

CR for the iPad
Read in-depth features and analysis plus exclusive iPad-only content in the Creative Review iPad App. Longer, more in-depth features than we run on the blog, portfolios of great, full-screen images and hi-res video. If the blog is about news, comment and debate, the iPad is about inspiration, viewing and reading. As well as providing exclusive, iPad-only content, the app will also update with new content throughout each month. Try a free sample issue here

CR in Print
The May issue of Creative Review is the biggest in our 32-year history, with over 200 pages of great content. This speial double issue contains all the selected work for this year’s Annual, our juried showcase of the finest work of the past 12 months. In addition, the May issue contains features on the enduring appeal of John Berger’s Ways of Seeing, a fantastic interview with the irrepressible George Lois, Rick Poynor on the V&A’s British Design show, a preview of the controversial new Stedelijk Museum identity and a report from Flatstock, the US gig poster festival. Plus, in Monograph this month, TwoPoints.net show our subcribers around the pick of Barcelona’s creative scene.

If you would like to buy this issue and are based in the UK, you can search for your nearest stockist here. Based outside the UK? Simply call +44(0)207 292 3703 to find your nearest stockist. Better yet, subscribe to CR for a year here and save yourself almost 30% on the printed magazine.