on the shore of the ultimate sea

This just came over the e-wire regarding Barack Obama’s presidential campaign winning Integrated and Titanium Grand Prix awards at Cannes over the weekend…

June 30, 2009

Statement on receiving Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival Grand Prix Titanium and Integrated Campaign Awards:

“The Obama Media Team is honored to accept these amazing awards in recognition of the outstanding work done by so many people at the Campaign, in particular the New Media Group, alongside the multi-agency consulting team led by AKPD Message and Media and GMMB.

“The communications agency roster includes: Dixon Davis Media Group, Murphy Putnam Media, Shorr Johnson Magnus, Squier Knapp Dunn Communications, Message, Audience and Presentation, FUSE, Blue State Digital and The Strategy Group. Research firms include: Benenson Strategy Group, Anzelone-Liszt Research, Bendixen and Associates, Bennett, Petts and Blumenthal, Brilliant Corners, David Binder Research and Harstad Research. All of these firms and the Obama for America staff share in this incredible honor.

“But we couldn’t have done it without all those volunteers, who knocked on doors, hosted events, made phone calls, contributed whatever they could afford and stood in line on Election Day to make their voice heard. Most of all, we must thank President Barack Obama, the best client anyone could ever hope to have.

“It is humbling to receive this recognition among so many groundbreaking campaigns around the world.”

In addition to being the highest profile political campaign ever awarded at Cannes, it is likely the most collaborative. I count 19 communications and research firms sharing the Lion, at least the ones that were mentioned on the email I got. Maybe the trophies will travel around like the Stanley Cup to each partner company, but if I were running a political communications, design or research agency, it would be worth the €1999.00 to get advertising’s highest honor for the office shelf¹.

Someone may have left Chicago’s Mode Project off the list, though–according to Mode’s website it had a pretty big role: “[Mode Project was] one of the main creative partners in the campaign, assisting its longtime client and the lead agency, AKPD Message and Media. Mode Project oversaw the design of the now famous Obama logo and produced more than 200 broadcast commercials and additional digital content during the course of the primary and general election.” You may remember them from this space previously, as they commissioned one Aaron Draplin to collaborate on some recovery logos.

It’s a conspicuous absence, and maybe strikes at the heart of the creative-versus-rational debate Bob Garfield gets into here when the cool, interesting company that designed the logo is left out of the celebratory dogpile: “the messaging was as creatively barren as it was tactically brilliant. There was no ‘Morning in America’ in this campaign. No ‘Daisy.’ No any single thing that stood out. Cannes has just awarded two Grand Prix to a back office.”

Well, a very talented back office, with political geniuses David Axelrod and David Plouffe running the show, but still one that required the iconic ‘O’ (that ironically headed the email as you see here, yet whose creators weren’t given any dap). Mode Project even produced the video that introduced David Plouffe’s Cannes appearance, made possible by Omnicom’s DDB (watch it at the studio’s site). The Guardian’s Mark Sweney reports here Plouffe dispelled the myth the campaign was 2.0–Plouffee called it “old school,” surely one for which a logo is integral.

So, I’ve asked the spokesperson from GMMB (also an Omnicom agency) a couple more questions about its Cannes strategy and will see if the Mode snub is just an oversight. Maybe it is. Hopefully this isn’t this year’s BBDO-Big Spaceship credit fracas; it would be a shame to ruin the further celebration of optimism and choice with squabbling and politics.

Funnily enough, in the course of dashing off this post things seem to have developed. A colleague received an emailed release from Mode just a few minutes after I received the release from GMMB:

OBAMA FOR AMERICA CAMPAIGN WINS TOP PRIZES IN CANNES
Mode Project, Creative Partner to AKPD Message and Media, Part of the Winning Media Team

Chicago, IL – (June 29, 2009) — The advertising and marketing campaign that helped propel Barack Obama into the White House has been honored with the two top prizes — the Titanium Grand Prix and the Integrated Grand Prix — from the Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival.

Chicago-based Mode Project was one of the main creative partners in the campaign, assisting its longtime client and the lead agency, AKPD Message and Media. Mode Project oversaw the design of the now famous Obama logo and produced more than 200 broadcast commercials and additional digital content during the course of the primary and general election.

Of the Cannes win for Obama for America, Mode Project’s Colin Carter says, “We were honored to be a part of the Obama for America campaign and congratulate everyone on the Obama Media Team in this historic, game-changing endeavor. The Cannes honor is the highest in advertising and knowing we contributed to the successes of the campaign gives us a sense of accomplishment, second only to the election’s outcome.”

Mode Project (http://www.modeproject.com/) is a Chicago-based creative production studio providing motion design, production, editorial and interactive solutions to agencies and brands such as AT&T, ecko unltd, Obama for America, Sunsilk, Tropicana, Kellogg’s, Gatorade since 2002.

So, got any info as to why different agencies and companies involved in the historic campaign may be playing politics in the wake of the Cannes awards? Or is this just an innocent, simple oversight where the email I got was the one that forgot to give praise to the creative parts of the campaign, reserving that for another PR list? Let me know…

1. maybe that’ll help the Lions keep the lights on after this year’s fest was reportedly off some 40%, but surely they had some cash salted away [↩]

A funny thing happened on the way to this Talent profile of Aaron “All-American” Draplin that ran in March’s Creativity.

The piece had been done for a few months, and had gotten pushed to the March issue because it had certain evergreen qualities.

It was laid out, on the page, being proofed and minutes away from being sent to the printer when it was revealed Draplin, along with Chris Glass, another designer, worked with Chicago’s Mode Project creative director Steve Juras to develop logos for the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) projects and the U.S. Department of Transportation’s TIGER (Transportation Investment Generating Economic Recovery) team (seen here), which were unveiled by Big Boss Barack Obama in early March.

This was, as they go, a tiny bundle of candy placed into our lap by the great magazine fairy in the sky. And those are pretty few and far-between at the moment, so it was nice to savor. (The super-relevant photo, by the way, was taken by Mark Welsh from Nitro Snowboards back before Thanksgiving!)

We took around half an hour to rework it and a nice evergreen became much more timely and interesting.

Anyway, Draplin’s one to keep an eye on. Know how to do that? Via his kickass blog.

About a month ago a forwarded email arrived.

It was so staggering, actions were forced.

The note, laden in artistic pronouncements and full-of-itselfness, begged for an extension; a dramatic reading was considered, but it turned out only a full video could to the thing justice. After all, a 1500-word yearly update email sent to dozens of people deserves the highest degree of satire you can muster.

Don’t get me wrong: I’m an earnest man. But even sincerity, in extreme, is funny as hell. (Viz. Kenneth on 30 Rock.)

Who was the sender? An unknown personage, but clearly a modern-day Benjamin Franklin, part writer, part political organizer, all full of Brooklyn potential and privilege and so indicative of our generation’s rampaging self-importance.

We christened him Eric Anton Schechter-Oblomov; this is his yearly update, verbatim, brought to life as best we could.

A Letter From Brooklyn from Eric Anton Schechter-Oblomov on Vimeo.

Read the original email

Michigan Central

I’m not usually in the position of emphatically recommending anything on the cover of the Weekly Standard, but this story on Detroit is too important to pass up, if only because it’s able give a high-altitude view of the staggering failures that continue to define this once-majestic place.

Yeah, you’ve got to put up with a bit of Scott Templeton under-the-bridge stuff but Matt Labash does a really good job of sussing out some of the complexities of Charlie LeDuff, one of the best guys in the business, whose personality seems to be between the gentle inquisitiveness of a Jon Ronson and the advocacy of someone like Muntadhar al-Zaidi (not the best comparison, but the latter is close at mind, give me a break).

If Detroit has a future it’s with the LeDuffs of the world, the sparking, idea-oriented tied to this place who can bring some of the ingenuity and passion back. Whether they’ll be attracted by the blank canvas decades from now when the city is little but a sterile downtown surrounded by desolate blocks or will come sooner, when there are still things worth saving, is the big question.

(Check out the map at the bottom of this article to get a sense of the city’s scale, Boston, San Francisco and Manhattan can fit into the city limits, 30% of which is now estimated to be vacant.)

Hope in the Jungle, originally uploaded by nparish.

Early last month, as the historic nature of our presidential election set in and the national night light grew a little brighter, images and stories of people celebrating all over the globe flooded in. I got to wondering.

How many people around the world DON’T know Barack Obama was elected president of the United States?

Let's try to figure it out

Enough already!, originally uploaded by nparish.

It’s safe to say Barack Obama has the Facebook status message status quo in his corner.

she's got mommy's lifeless eyes

Thanks to a new web promo for Volkswagen minivans, we can see what little America Obama-Palin would look like. Talk about working across the aisle. Anyone care to do a McCain-Biden mixup?

All this looks like small beer compared to the meltdown here on Wall Street this month, but I was back in Michigan over Labor Day and found myself thinking the state’s huge production incentives program isn’t being fully utilized.

Up North, things are particularly bleak. In the town where my parents stay, Boyne City, 95 people started Labor Day weekend with a pink slip, as LexaMar, one of the biggest corporations in the town of 3500 laid them off on Friday. It made small talk everywhere, downtown, strolling past the classic cars on display, at the police-sponsored drag race at the city airstrip, another midsized manufacturer slicing off jobs as the economy expels another ragged breath.

The one point of light in a state with its biggest industry, automobiles, breaking down, is film production. It’s exceptionally cheap to shoot anything in Michigan right now, and that has ushered in the closest thing to a business renaissance the region has seen in years, at least the latest Band-Aid to create an economic buffer around the doomed car business, like Oakland County Executive L. Brooks Patterson’s Automation Alley plan that began about a decade ago.
Read more about Michigan's Film Incentives and digital production

…cause in Detroit politics when you talk mess to the mayor, you get canned.

This came in over the email transom today from a friend of a friend…I haven’t asked around to follow up yet, but comes through a pretty reliable source and is interesting either way.

Apparently, this gentleman, who worked in politics, encountered scandal-collecting Detroit mayor Kwame Kilpatrick in Reagan National in D.C. and had some words with hizzoner. Read on.

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A Super Tuesday Primer

click to enlarge

Don’t listen to those public endorsements–check this handy guide to see who donated what to which candidate before you make your Super Tuesday choice.

In the great American political tradition of voting according to the opinions of famous people who know nothing about you and most likely have a terminal disconnect with your entire paradigm, I proudly present a terribly Photoshopped gleaning from about a half an hour putzing around at this campaign donation tracker. Of course, these aren’t actual endorsements, but really they’re better, and maybe offer some real insight into politics if you squint really hard. The celeb nominations are clearly partly motivated by hobnobbing (want that chat with Barack? It’ll cost you at the fundraiser–incidentally Barry Manilow donated to EVERYBODY, I just threw his Paul contrib. up to shore up support for Dr. Ron), but the few normal folks, in this case, self-identified as janitors, feel utterly sincere. Seriously, the guy cleaning up at El Azteco II donating $459 to Ron Paul? I’ve been to the original El Azteco, in East Lansing. Friends used to sling frijoles there in college. You can practically see Mr. Darling licking the envelope after saving up tips for a month.

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