Climbing the Summit

I’m still in Chicago attending the Gatorade Equity Summit.

The full compliment of attendees has broken away for lunch and I thought I’d spend my hour checking in from the comfort of a rocking chair overlooking Lake Michigan on the W’s “front porch.”

Every year at the Equity Summit, Gatorade presents an award called “Best of Sweat” for the innovative use of, well, sweat in their broadcast advertising.

The contest essentially comes down to one between us and Element-79, and we’ve taken the trophy in the two previous years.

This year makes it a “three-peat” for our work on “Skyscraper”, though we’re sharing the award with E-79 (and their “hatching egg” spots for Gatorade Rain).

We’re not considering it a kissing-your-sister tie, though; Element-79 produces over ten times the spots we do for Gatorade and has more balls in the hopper come judgment day.

The celebration was cause for much drinking and merriment last night (and is contributing to my marked lack of appetite today), and I’m proud of my team and of the work we did on the spot.

Still, I put my guys to work last night (in the middle of the bar, with drinks in hand– it’s a nice gig) in developing some lines for a new effort for 7-Eleven and Slurpee. You should see the work break nationally in July, and we still have more to do before we ever stroll into the studio for production.

In the meantime, check out this cool new ambient work from BBDO/Canada for Pepsi. They’re subway boards with an interactive element: an audio jack you can plug in to and hear new music tracks (and obligatory Pepsi messaging, of course) and takes advantage of the now-ever-present white iPod headphones. It’s a really cool idea, and kudos to them.

Now I’ll do a little more surfing while enjoying the temperate Chicago weather before going back upstairs to finish out the summit and hopping a plane back to Dallas.

All in all, not a bad couple of days.

Email Article Thursday, June 8th, 2006 at 12:19pm Mack Simpson

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