The CLIO Awards three day 50th anniversary bash in Las Vegas wrapped up with a showy production featuring an acrobat, a cheerleading squad and marching band from Utah, Barry Manilow and host Christopher Knight, better known as Peter from The Brady Bunch.

But the Vegas-style production values couldn't disguise a lackluster year for makers of TV/cinema/digital work. This year the juries awarded few gold awards and no Grand CLIO. In total, the television/cinema/digital jury handed out a measly six Golds, seven Silvers and 20 Bronzes, while the TV Technique jury awarded nine Golds, 18 Silvers and 23 Bronzes.

TV Technique jury chair and Amber Music president Michelle Curran said this year's crop of commercial entries boasted big production values and slick VFX but were short on groundbreaking ideas.

"People lost the art of telling a really good story. Now that budgets are being cut back so much, we should go back to simple, entertaining, well-written stories that don't need humungous special effects," she said. "There was nothing that's going to go down in the history of great commercials."

Additionally, the directors and the DPs on the Technique jury were so hard to please they almost didn't award anything in their respective categories.

"Those guys were mean!" she said. "You have a certain amount of points that enable you to get a gold, a silver and a bronze and when I looked at the actual points there was nothing high enough to get an award, which was rubbish. There was actually some quite good work in there."

After speaking with CLIOs organizers, Curran said she revaluated the work to determine the winners. "I had to make a judgment call on what I thought were worthy of getting an award," she said.

The Gold CLIO for direction went to Partizan, London for T-Mobile's flashmob spot "Dance" and cinematogrpahy Gold was awarded to Ogilvy & Mather Advertising, Taiwan for the bizarre noir epic, Wego "Soap".

Other gold-winning Technique winners were Amber Music's work on Nomis "Damn Boots", The Mill's animation for Coca-Cola "It's Mine", Cut + Run's editing on Audi "Gymnastics" and Park Pictures' sound design on Nike "This Is Your Final Wake Up Call".

Gold winners in the TV/cinema/digital category included Saatchi & Saatchi, New York's You Can Say Anything With A Smile campaign for Crest; "Versailles" and "Mafia" by BETC Euro RSCG, Paris' for Canal+; Johannes Leonardo's "Damn Boots" for Nomis; Skittles "Pinata" by TBWA\Chiat\Day, New York and Ogvily & Mather Japan's "Beauty Bowling" for Esthe WAM Hair Removal.

The Advertiser of the Year award went to Volkswagen, MJZ picked up Production Company of the Year, BBDO was named Agency Network of the Year and Crispin Porter + Bogusky, Miami/Boulder nabbed Agency of the Year honors.

The final evening of the three-day event began with a cocktail reception and photo op with famous ad icons such as the Michelin Man, the Nestle Quick bunny and the Kool-Aid guy. Award announcements during the two hour show were punctuated by retrospectives of famous commercials from the past five decades and performances by an acrobat dangling on a hoop above the audience, a marching band, a cheerleading troupe and honorary CLIO recipient Barry Manilow, a prolific jingle writer from the 1970s.

Manilow was clearly a big draw, with photographers flocking to the foot of the stage to snap photos while he sang and played jingles for Band-Aid, McDonalds, State Farm and Dr. Pepper on piano.

For a full list of all the winners, click here: http://www.clioawards.com

To see photos from the event, click here.