The best TV commercials of the year will appear for a one-time screening in Los Angeles this week. Compiled by the Association of Independent Commercial Producers, the show will present a one-hour compendium of ads selected by more than 300 judges, all industry professionals.
The winner for best single commercial is American Express’ “Wes Anderson,” a two-minute ad that turns the film director into a star.
Top Campaign for the year went to Geico’s “Cavemen” series. A new category, advertising excellence/next, was added this year to recognize campaigns with moving images across all media. The honorees are “Still Free” for the Ecko clothing brand, “Iconoclasts” for Grey Goose Entertainment and the Sundance Channel, and “Tea Partay” for Smirnoff.
The show debuted earlier this year at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. L.A. marks its second stop, but the show will continue touring to five other U.S. cities later this year.
To make great advertising available to a wider public, the AICP has launched a Web site, www.aicpshow.com, which has the commercials and the credits for the last 16 years of the show’s history. The archive contains more than 1,000 ads going back to 1992.
The L.A. screening of this year’s show starts at 7 p.m. on July 25 at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Sponsors include local powerhouses Panavision, NBC Universal, Raleigh Studios, Technicolor, Sony Pictures Studios, SAG-AFTRA and the Director’s Guild of America.
Nick’s Convergence
The Viacom Inc. media empire has made integration its mantra. And the central vortex for the resulting cosmic energy is the Burbank headquarters for the company’s Nickelodeon group of children-focused cable channels.
Nick’s new Sunday evening teen show “iCarly” follows a girl who lives with her twenty-something brother and produces Webcasts from a makeshift studio. Carly never intended to become a cyber star, but when the auditions for a school talent show that she’s in charge of get posted online, the audience demands more.
Using a play-within-a-play conceit, the iCarly.com site actually exists and real kids can submit short video pieces. Material can include comedy sketches, interviews, recipes, monologues and more.
“iCarly aims to give kids an unfiltered voice,” said Dan Schneider, executive producer. “It’s a series that is intended to involve real kids across America and illustrate how they are currently experiencing entertainment.”
But iCarly isn’t the only convergence point in the Nickelodeon cosmos. The company has a broadband site called TurboNick that had its most successful month ever in May, with almost 103 million streams, a gain of more than 500 percent since May 2006.
Last week, TurboNick debuted a new Web-only series called “Nick Cannon’s Star Camp.” Executive produced by host Cannon and Quincy Jones, the show details how a group of teens are selected and groomed to become a cohesive musical act called the Giggle Club.
The series of five 15-minute episodes will stream on TurboNick every Sunday, and the finale will air on Nickelodeon August 26.
Finally, for its post-teen audience, Nickelodeon’s TV Land channel has signed a deal with Entertainment Weekly magazine to produce a two-hour special on “The 50 Greatest TV Icons.” The show will air Nov. 16, and the magazine hits newsstands the same day.
Tough Times
Tribune Co. shares were off last week after Los Angeles Times publisher David Hiller said the newspaper had “one of the worst quarters we have ever experienced” in the three months through June.
Cash flow at Tribune’s biggest paper declined 27 percent in the second quarter, and sales slid 10 percent led by a drop in advertising pages, Hiller wrote in a July 13 memo to employees.
It will be interesting to see if the sour numbers complicate efforts to complete the Chicago-based company’s $8.2 billion buyout led by investor Sam Zell.
Agencies & Accounts
Spin Shoppe PR has merged with Canvas PR & Marketing to form Spin Shoppe/Canvas Media Group. The merger brings together Spin Shoppe’s clients GQ Magazine, Self Magazine, Sony Ericsson and Cingular Wireless with Canvas clients Phoenix Pictures, Viper Room Apparel, Petco and Bodyfactory. Canvas has also represented celebs Esai Morales and Paula Abdul. Headquartered in Los Angeles, the company will maintain offices in New York, Miami, San Francisco, Chicago, London, Paris and Tokyo. Inter/Media Advertising has won six Hermes Creative Awards from the Association of Marketing and Communication Professionals. Clients for the award-winning work were Bret Saberhagen’s Make A Difference Foundation, Storage Barn, Auto Insurance Specialists, GMAC Insurance and Enhansulin.
Staff reporter Joel Russell can be reached at
[email protected]
, or at (323) 549-5225, ext. 237.
