I received  a text at 6:53 a.m. this morning from GREY EVP Nick Childs (who helped spearhead this contest and is also one of the judges.)

It read: “Call me asap this morning!” (That’s rarely a good thing folks…)

I was worried that I had announced the award too early and caused ire for my fellow Frenchmen… he laughed and shared the amazing news:

We won a second Lion from Cannes this morning – this time we won a “Gold Lion” from the 57th International Advertising Festival – in another category (more details to be announced tomorrow on the separate categories we’ve won in.)

That’s of course great for “us” – the people who launched this campaign – BUT – Here’s why YOU SHOULD CARE:

[vimeo video_id=”12771947″ width=”700″ height=”398″ title=”Yes” byline=”Yes” portrait=”Yes” autoplay=”No” loop=”No” color=”00adef”]

First – Grey is calling “the largest collaborative user generated film effort in history”…

Second – this likely solidifies this campaigns as Grey Advertising’s campaign of the year… that’s a pretty big deal folks.   That means one thing:   the “Final Chapter” where the 6 winners come together and shoot together this fall – will be an EVEN BIGGER DEAL.   Truth be told – this was an experiment from the start and we never made solid plans on how we would end this campaign (everyone wanted to see how it went.)   Now that it’s this big of a success – I can comfortably go out on a limb and state that the final chapter will be a BIG DEAL.

Third – this is where YOU COME IN… there are TWO FINAL CHAPTERS LEFT TO ENTER. The Fifth chapter’s winner is just about to be announced.   Here’s what you have to understand – when this all comes together – and we shoot the final chapter – THAT AS A WHOLE will likely be re-entered into the Cannes Lions and many other advertising competitions.   In other words – you have a GOLDEN (or silver) CHANCE of potentially being part of a major award winning campaign.  Not too shabby to put on your resume.   If I were you – I’d be getting ready to submit the single best entry ever for the final Chapter 7 and/or Chapter 8.   The next entry deadline for Chapter 7 is July 18, 11:59.59 p.m. E.S.T.

So get to work.

Because this is gonna rock.

Big Time. Read the rest of this entry »

Wow.  Pretty stunned, flattered, and honored to see this happen – but the Canon/Vimeo “Beyond The Still” video contest has just won a Silver Lion at Cannes!

To those not in the advertising world – these awards are loosely the equivalent of a Grammy/Oscar/Pulitzer in other industries.  In other words this a really big deal – not just some other award.

I find it particularly relevant in that it shows how the world of advertising is changing very quickly.  Producing slick campaigns will always be relevant – but finding ways to DIRECTLY connect with an audience is key.   When the advertiser (Canon) Agency (Grey NYC) AND the audience (those who entered the contest) all benefit – hey – that’s the definition of a ” Win/Win.”  Well it’s in fact a “Win/Win/Win” – isn’t it?

Congrats to the amazing team at Grey Advertising NY, Canon and everyone who helped this little dream of ours come true.  This is definitely one that will go toward the top of all of our resumes.

As I mentioned in a previous post–  I went to meet Grey a little less than a year ago and told them I wanted to find a way to harness the excitement behind this new HDDSLR craze.  I had experienced success from “Reverie” and “Nocturne” and wanted to find a way to share it with others out there.   I told them that going out and producing yet another film for myself wasn’t going to cut it, as I wanted to find a way to SHARE my experience of the past two years with other filmmakers out there.  I threw a few ideas at them that I had at the time – and the creative team at Grey and I worked together on morphing those ideas into something that we could get Canon excited with – and ultimately we created the Beyond The Still contest together…

I know many of you have found the contest very rewarding (it’s still ongoing BTW!!!!  There are still two more chapters!!!!) –  it’s nice to get this type of recognition to say the least.

The best thing is:  WE’RE NOT DONE YET!  And I can’t wait to see what we can do for the FINAL CHAPTER with the 7 winners… needless to say this contest will now not just wither away… as it’s just gotten much bigger than any of us could have imagined.  Expect a lot more attention to be put on this contest  – not to mention the final chapter that I and the 7 other winners will collaborate on together in the fall.

Thank you Tor, Ari, Stephen, Elinor, Rick, Chris, Melinda, David, Melanie, James, Luiz, Nick, Madhuri, Rob and Chris for all of your efforts in making this project come together – not to mention the entire cast and crew who helped launch the initial chapter!

Here is a description of the campaign as it was entered by Grey to the Cannes Lions on their site: Read the rest of this entry »

Here’s Jim Jannard’s follow up to the controversial comments he posted last week and that I commented on.

While I’d be foolish to think that I ultimately had anything to do with his decision – I do find the last line of his post extremely interesting…The one where he states that RED is taking a lesson from Apple and that RED “will no longer discuss what we are doing until we are done.”

That is pretty much the conclusion that I came to when I stated that RED’s main “issue” was to over promise and deliver late within my post. Obviously, I think the RED team is making the correct move.  My quote was:

“If there’s only one criticism that I have with RED – it’s that they’ve tended to over-promise and deliver late…  basically the opposite of what Apple does (Apple stays absolutely secret about their projects, deny they’re working on anything, and releases them only when they are confident the product is ready for prime time…)   I personally would prefer to get hard deadlines from RED on future product releases – even if those dates are overly conservative on their end.”

Again – I’m not claiming that Jim hadn’t come to this conclusion in any way as a result of what I said of course – but what IS CLEAR – is that yes – RED does listen and they do care…

Here is Jim’s full response: Read the rest of this entry »