August A. Busch IV, group VP/marketing and wholesale operations of Anheuser-Busch (A-B) Inc., will receive the "Advertiser of the Year" honor at the Cannes International Advertising Festival (6/18-23). The prestigious award will be bestowed during the concluding evening of the festival.
The Cannes kudo recognizes Busch’s major contribution to the company’s domination of the U.S. brewing industry, and particularly to the consistently outstanding quality of its advertising campaigns over the past several years. The Budweiser "Louie the Lizard" campaign, out of Goodby, Silverstein & Partners, San Francisco, won a Silver Lion at the 1998 Cannes Festival, and Bud’s "Whassup?" campaign, from DDB Chicago, took the coveted Grand Prix at the Cannes 2000 competition.
Anheuser-Busch got off to a fast start this year in adding to that spot tradition. During the Super Bowl telecast, several of its commercials scored well according to industry and consumer polls. They included: Budweiser’s "What Are You Doing?," The "Whassup?" yuppie takeoff, directed by Lloyd Stein of bicoastal Headquarters for Goodby, Silverstein & Partners; Bud’s "Come Home," in which an alien, who was disguised as a dog, returns to his spaceship to share what he learned from earthlings ("Whassup?")—a spot helmed by Rick Schulze of Industrial Light+Magic Commercial Productions, San Rafael and Los Angeles, for DDB; and Bud Light’s "Cedric-Date," directed by Richard D’Alessio of New York-based Shooting Gallery Productions, via DDB.
Meanwhile, the jury heads for different competitions within the festival are set. As was earlier reported, Bob Isherwood, worldwide creative director of Saatchi & Saatchi, has been named president of two juries for this year’s Cannes International Advertising Festival. He will head the film and the press & poster competition judgings.
Isherwood, who works out of Saatchi’s New York office, has been a Cannes mainstay
over the years, overseeing Saatchi’s New Directors Showcase, which is annually unveiled during the ad fest. While a founding partner in the Campaign Palace, Sydney, he had a creative hand in Australia’s first Gold Lion for cinema at Cannes. Isherwood was at the Campaign Palace from 1982 to ’86. He then joined Saatchi & Saatchi, London, moving up the ranks to become worldwide creative director and a member of the agency’s executive board, in ’96.
Before the Campaign Palace, Isherwood served as a creative group head at a pair of London agencies: Collett Dickenson Pearce & Partners for 10 years, and, prior to that, Young & Rubicam, where he spent six years.
Cannes also named Ulf Dahlstein, president/CEO of Icon Medialab, Brussels, as head of the Cyber Lions jury recognizing creative achievements in online communications
