Boards Magazine - December 1, 1999

Honesty. Who Knew?

Board Flow

Board Flow

Robotic Disco Party

Lego's Interactive Ad Venerable toy manufacturer Lego is experimenting with new advertising in order to keep its products relevant for today's video-game-addled young consumers.

Urban Culture Inc. In the music business, "urban" is a blanket term used to describe mainly African-American music styles like hip hop and R&B. In the world of advertising and TV commercials, the definition is less clear. Urban culture is often the spawning ground of many of the hot trends and new fads that marketers are monitoring constantly. North American urban centers, in particular, account for a constant stream of hip styles that go on to influence the imagery in television advertising. It is often different ethnic communities, frequently African-American and increasingly Hispanic, whose lifestyles are the fodder for commercial visual references. Understanding and selling directly to downtown trendsetters has therefore become more and more important.

Authenticity in Rome

Landsman: Risk with Reward

Subversive Yet Wacky Spectacles Martin Granger may have moved to New York, but the Hungry Man/Avion Films director's schedule has made it hard for him to get settled in.

Breaking Out of Her Niche

The 1999 Boards Awards Herewith, the Boards Awards, an assembly of the most award-winning spots and the talent behind them. Our intention is to provide a look at the all-world, all-star creative talent and the year's best TV commercials, as judged by ad juries around the world. These are commercials that have been judged to have the highest creative and production merit. To arrive at the final top 10 lists, Boards scoured the results of 10 award shows. The shows had to be international in scope, or simply too prestigious to overlook. The list was indeed subjective, and to make it more so, we weighted the point values assigned to each show. For instance, a Cannes Gold Lion was worth slightly more than a CLIO Gold Award. We assigned points to each award-winning commercial, the agency, the agency creatives, the production house and the director responsible. In the following pages, we also profile some of the people behind the top spots of the past year.

Blood, Sweat and Beers

Abstract Creations

Black-and-white Hughes

Human Behavior

The Need for Sneade In the long and laborious process of making a commercial - from the excitement of conception through the joys and pains of gestation - it's the editor who assumes the status of midwife, yanking and finessing and coaxing into the world that little fella in whom the hopes and dreams of so many are invested.

Music for The Space Between Your Ears

Chips Ahoy! goes Groovy Wild Brain, San Francisco, and director Gordon Clark used an Internet link, in-house posting and vintage psychedelic art to streamline production of Chips Ahoy "Groovy" out of Foote, Cone & Belding, New York.

"We're here to stir up the creative flame" And with these words, creative luminary Phil Dusenberry, chairman of BBDO New York and vice chairman of the AAAA board of directors, opened the American ad agency association's biennial creative conference.

Electronic connectivity: A New Way to Win Jobs The media business - it's all about connections. Face time, one-on-one meetings, networking - these are the well-worn paths to success in this industry. But what happens when the client is in Singapore, the ad agency is in London, the production company is in Los Angeles and the director resides in New Mexico?

AICP Launches New Technologies Committee

Altering The Focus Reel EFX, Los Angeles, constructed a rig comprised of 60 still cameras to capture the chefs at work in the TGI Friday's kitchen for five spots with tabletop director Tom Ryan out of Dallas-based Directorz. The multi-cam footage was shot in one day for Dallas-based Publicis.

History Channel interstitials a form of image advertising Creators of The History Channel's "TimeLab 2000" interstitials, featuring Law

Intra-industry committee tackles Y2K issues. After over a year of researching what may happen to the commercial production industry with the advent of 2000, a committee of the AICP has issued a number of recommendations for conduct during this much discussed time.

14th annual London International Advertising Awards

A Look at Who's Making The Moves