2007 ADCD award show

The Art Directors Club of Denver gives good award show. Always has. Last night was no exception.

The big winners in the ad categories were Cactus and Integer. Some other shops also took home multiple awards, like John Amatucci, Vermillion, Lee Reedy and Pure Brand.

In his opening remarks, club president James Pelz said some nice things about the New Denver Ad Club, of which I'm an overactive member. I want to return the favor. When we were planning TD50, we started by agreeing that ADCD was already doing a killer multi-discipline show. We didn't see any point in duplicating their efforts. So TD50 partially owes its structure to the ADCD. There's no excuse for agencies not to enter both shows.

Be that as it may, my agency sat out this year. But Thomas Taber & Drazen, where I worked up until last month, entered a couple things. And our - or is it "their," now? - 2006 print campaign for Colorado Farm Bureau Insurance took home silver and judge's choice awards. Stephen Curry, creative director of Lewis Communications wrote:

What makes this campaign refreshing is the simple credit it gives the reader for his/her own intelligence.

The best part of working on the campaign came after we sent final art out out to dozens of community newspapers across the state. We got media reps calling us to tell us our files were screwed up. The photo was too small. The headline was missing. That sort of thing. We had to reassure them that the files were fine. And our client deserves heaps of praise for saying yes to a very quiet campaign.

So it was a good night. And a tough act for the TD50 award show to follow.

Get another take on the evening from The Denver Egotist.

What's your Colorado Way of Life?

Colorado Farm Bureau Insurance's new site gives users a unique way to share their favorite fishing holes, skiing runs and family activities. Coloradowayoflife.com was created by Thomas Taber + Drazen, which is to say I had a hand in it. It's supported by print, poster, out-of-home, brand ambassadors, and a very honest brand statement. Colorado Farm Bureau Insurance has been protecting this state for 55 years.

UPDATE: Print support evolved from last year's campaign.

UPDATE: Screen capture added.

AdWeek on Colorado Farm Bureau Insurance

AdWeek on our new campaign for Colorado Farm Bureau Insurance:

In polite society, we're no longer allowed to say anything bad about nature. Even when a natural disaster strikes, we're sure to be told that it's really the fault of human activity. Nature itself can do no wrong. At any rate, that's the modern orthodoxy. It may not be fully shared, though, by someone whose home has just sustained thousands of dollars worth of damage due to an ice storm. This campaign for an insurance company does a deft job of acknowledging the nature-is-blameless mind-set while addressing the reader's practical concerns.

It's nice to get recognition and awards and stuff. But in a way, it's even nicer just to be understood.