Who would have thought that an advertising awards program could even survive without a trophy?" quips 2001 AICP Show chairman Jon Kamen.
Well, the Show has done more than survive since its inception in 1992: It’s flourished. Inclusion in the annual AICP Show honor roll is a coveted accomplishment in and of itself– one that attains perpetuity as part of the permanent collection of the Department of Film and Video at the Museum of Modern Art, New York.
During the first decade of the AICP Show, several production companies and ad agencies have figured prominently. In tabulating the honorees over the past 10 years, we find that the production company parade is led by bicoastal/international Propaganda Films and Venice, Calif.-based PYTKA.
Spots produced by Propaganda– and its bicoastal/international sister shop Satellite, along with a single honoree from the former Propaganda/Federation in London– amassed a whopping 86 honors during the decade.
Over that same time span, PYTKA accumulated 50 AICP Show honors. Markedly different, however, were the paths to the Propaganda and PYTKA tallies. Propaganda’s honored commercials involved a slew of directors, including David Fincher (now with bicoastal Anonymous Content), David Kellogg (also Anonymous), Michael Bay (who now directs spots via Bay Films, Santa Monica), Dante Ariola, Simon West, and such Satellite helmers as Pam Thomas (now with bicoastal Moxie Pictures) and Spike Jonze.
Meanwhile, with the exception of a cinematography honor in ’92 for director/cameraman John Pytka, all of the PYTKA-produced AICP Show honorees were helmed by one director: Joe Pytka, whose dominance appeared during the first four years of the Show (’92-’95), when his spots received a collective 43 honors. Twenty-five of those honors came in ’92 and ’93. PYTKA’s highest annual totals were 13 in ’93, 12 in ’92 and 11 in ’94.
Propaganda’s biggest years came in ’95 with 15 honors, ’96 with 14 and ’93 with 13. Satellite contributed to the ’95 and ’96 tallies, and then took all eight honors garnered by the Propaganda family at the ’98 Show.
Continuing the decade’s production house scorecard, bicoastal/international @radical.media became a dominant force over the past five years, copping 39 honors. @radical.media copped seven honors this year, topping all production houses in the 2001 competition. The company’s highest tallies were 12 honors in ’97 and 10 in ’99. @radical.media has a total of 40 AICP Show mentions.
Also performing impressively were bicoastal HSI Productions, its satellites (e.g., Mars Media, Venus Entertainment) and the U.K. shop that it frequently collaborates with on jobs helmed by Gerard de Thame (Gerard de Thame Films, London). Collectively, these have garnered 28 honors in recent years.
Crossroads, bicoastal and Chicago, and its satellites X-Ray Productions and X-1 Films, garnered 20 AICP Show honors this past decade.
Tony K, Santa Monica and London (and predecessor company Tony Kaye Films), amassed 17 AICP Show honors. Venice, Calif.-based Smillie Films garnered 15 AICP Show mentions. Next with 14 each are bicoastal RSA USA and Hollywood-headquartered JGF (the successor shop to Johns+Gorman Films).
Industrial Light+Magic Commercial Productions (ILMCP), San Rafael and Los Angeles, totaled 12 AICP Show honors over the past 10 years. (This includes several from its previous incarnations, including as ILM/Lucasarts.)
Spots produced by bicoastal Headquarters have taken 11 AICP Show honors in recent years, including five in 2000. Stiefel+Company, Santa Monica, also has 11 mentions, including four in ’93.
Concluding the rundown of production companies with honorees attaining double digits are, with 10 apiece: Bruce Dowad Associates, Hollywood, bicoastal HKM Productions (in tandem with its satellite, The Directors Bureau, Hollywood) and bicoastal/international Partizan. The latter shop collected its 10 in the last two years, including six in 2001.
AGENCIES
Portland, Ore.-headquartered Wieden+Kennedy (W+K) created commercials that collectively garnered 79 AICP honors during the last 10 years. W+K’s best annual showing was in ’97, when it earned 14 honors.
Spots from BBDO New York attained the second-highest number of AICP Show honors over the past decade: 45.
Next, with 29, was Cliff Freeman and Partners, New York. Then came Fallon, Minneapolis– which with its predecessor ad shop Fallon McElligott earned 23 honors. Nearly half of those came in 2000 when the agency rolled an 11.
Goodby, Silverstein & Partners, San Francisco (and its predecessor Goodby, Berlin & Silverstein) won 22 AICP Show honors, including seven in ’98. TBWA/Chiat/Day took 20, mostly for the work out of its Los Angeles office.
CATEGORY-SPECIFIC
Besides the all-encompassing numbers that document honors earned by a particular spot across multiple categories, another gauge of performance can be found through category-specific results.
For example, in the production category over the past 10 years, Propaganda and Satellite combined to earn six honors. HSI/Gerard de Thame Films and Mars Media collectively copped four production category honors. PYTKA took three production, as did Headquarters. Two-time production category honorees were @radical.media and New York-based Steve & Linda Horn Inc.
Direction/humor, which later became the humor category, had four directors earning more than one honor during the past decade. Jon Francis, then with Stiefel+Company (now with Big Trout Pictures, San Francisco) earned three mentions. So did Charles Wittenmeier, who at the time was with now defunct Harmony Pictures (Wittenmeier is currently with Propaganda), and the team of Bryan Buckley and Frank Todaro of @radical.media. Buckley and Todaro have since split off to pursue individual directorial careers. Buckley is at bicoastal/international hungry man, while Todaro remains at @radical. media. Taking two honors in the humor category was the directing collective Traktor of Partizan.
Direction/visual, which later became the visual style category, yielded eight directors with multiple honors. Tony Kaye of Tony K. was a four-time honoree in this category. Earning three honors was Tarsem of @radical.media. And the five remaining directors were two-time honorees in the category: Peter Smillie of Smillie Films, David Fincher of Propaganda, Joe Pytka of PYTKA, Bruce Dowad of Bruce Dowad Associates, Mehdi Norowzian of bicoastal/international Chelsea Pictures, and Gerard de Thame of HSI and Gerard de Thame Films.
Direction/dialogue, which became the dialogue or monologue category, had but two directors with more than one honor: Joe Pytka with seven, and Jesse Peretz of X-Ray with three.
Direction/tabletop– now simply the tabletop category– saw five directors gain multiple honors. The team of Mark Coppos and Virginia Lee of Coppos Films took three honors (with Coppos as a solo act gaining an additional honor). Bruce Nadel of bicoastal OneSuch Films is also a three-time tabletop honoree. Earning two tabletop honors apiece were Santiago Suarez of Santiago Inc., New York; Michael Schrom of Michael Schrom & Co., New York; and Michael Somoroff of bicoastal MacGuffin Films.
During the past decade, five editors won more than one honor in the editorial category. Jim Haygood of Superior Assembly Editing Company, Santa Monica, copped three honors. Michael Saia also garnered three– the first two at now defunct Dennis Hayes Editorial, and the third at New York-based Jump. Andre Betz of Bug Editorial, New York; Peter Goddard of Poppy Films, London; and Adam Liebowitz of Go Robot!, New York, each scored two editorial honors. Liebowitz’s first came while he was at bicoastal Crew Cuts; the second, at Go Robot!. Other editorial houses having more than one win in the category included Red Car (which now has offices in New York, Santa Monica, San Francisco, Chicago, Dallas and Toronto); the Whitehouse Post Productions, London; and bicoastal Lost Planet.
Prominent among visual effects studios were Industrial Light+Magic (ILM), Venice, Calif.-based Digital Domain, and Sight Effects, also in Venice. In the visual effects category, Digital Domain and ILM each won six honors. (Most of ILM’s were parts of jobs that involved the aforementioned ILMCP.) ILM scored three more honors in the animation category and an additional one in the short-lived computer graphics category. And Digital Domain had two other honors in the animation category.
Sight Effects scored five honors in the visual or special effects category over the past 10 years. The company also had a hand in two animation category honors and an additional one in the direction/animation category. ILM, Digital Domain, Sight Effects and New York-based R./Greenberg Associates also scored numerous honors in other categories outside the effects/animation realm (e.g., copywriting, tabletop). For example, in the 2000 AICP Show, Sight Effects contributed to spots that collectively earned six honors– the most of any company on the production side that year.
Will Vinton Studios, Portland, Ore., compiled four honors in the animation category this past decade– and an additional one in the direction/animation category.
Bicoastal Elias Associates and Venice-based Machine Head are the kingpins of music and sound design, respectively. Machine Head scored seven honors in sound design and two in the music category. Elias Associates garnered six music honors and two in sound design. Other multiple winners were New York-headquartered JSM, with two honors each in the music and sound design categories; Sacred Noise, New York, with a pair of sound design honors and an additional music honor; and bicoastal tomandandy, with two music category honors.
The cinematography category, has had seven two-time honorees, including four directors/cameramen: Pytka, Kaye, David Cornell of bicoastal Headquarters, and the late Paul Giraud of HSI Productions. DPs who have earned a pair of cinematography honors are Bojan Bazelli, Paul Laufer and Tobias Schliessler.
Over the past 10 years, two production designers have earned more than one AICP Show honor: Michael F. Gaw and Vance Lorenzini, with two mentions apiece.
Multiple honorees in the copywriting category this past decade included Dan Morales of Cliff Freeman and Partners, with three mentions– all coming this year for FOX Sports Net spots; Jeff Kling of W+K, also with three; Hank Perlman with two via W+K; Stacy Wall with a pair, also out of W+K (Perlman is now a director/partner at hungry man, where Wall is also a director); and Greg Hahn of Fallon, Minneapolis, with two honors.
Two agency creatives received more than one honor in the art direction category: Chris Hooper of Goodby, Silverstein & Partners, San Francisco (he now directs via bicoastal Tool of North America); and Alan Pafenbach of Arnold Worldwide, Boston.
In the advertising campaign category, the dominant agencies were Cliff Freeman and Partners with six honors; Goodby, Silverstein & Partners with four; Fallon with four; W+K with three; Arnold with two; and Leo Burnett, Chicago, with two. In the now defunct excellence/ad concept category, W+K picked up two more honors, BBDO New York was also a two-time honoree, and Goodby brought home an additional one.
Production companies scoring in the advertising campaign category were @radical.media with four honors, Propaganda with four (including one from Satellite) and PYTKA with two. Satellite and @radical.media also scored an additional honor each in the advertising excellence/single commercial category. Bicoastal MJZ took two honors in that category, as did HSI in tandem with its Venus satellite.
Dominant advertisers behind AICP Show-honored spots included Nike, Volkswagen, ESPN, FOX Sports, Budweiser, Mercedes-Benz and Levi-Strauss.
Championing the public service category were multiple honoree production houses JGF with five mentions, Stiefel+Company with three, HKM Productions with two, and bicoastal Giraldi Suarez (combined with an honoree for its former satellite GASP) with two.
Agencies scoring in public service were Crispin Porter+Bogusky, Miami, with three honors; and BBDO New York, Team One Advertising, El Segundo, Calif.; Hal Riney & Partners, San Francisco (now Publicis & Riney); and W+K, each with two honors.
