I love conferences because (nerd alert!) I love being in a learning environment. It’s surprising I wasn’t a “lifer” university student, because I actually adored going to classes, debating with my peers and feeling my brain expand with new facts and perspectives. Conferences are the closest thing to university in our professional lives. And we’re not graded on anything, so it’s a win-win.

But then comes the conference burn-out. I arrive on day one, bright-eyed and bushy nerd-tailed, ready to soak up the knowledge. But the presentations run over and become rushed. The attendees sit and listen passively, while the speakers use a roster of tired buzzwords that mean nothing. We tweet the gems of insight that pass through our ears, in part to remember them, in part to prove we’re there and listening. People trade business cards, but not enlightenment. And the most engaging part of the conference becomes the candy bar sponsored by Google and collecting free sponsor schwag (my second favorite part of any conference).

We’re all business people, aren’t we? Why are we so afraid to join arms and face the tough questions that actually plague our industry in a collaborative way, while we have the benefit of being gathered together in the same massive space? Advertising, especially, is not a perfect business. Most of us hate it at times, even when we passionately love it. It has flaws, errors, misgivings and shortcomings that are rarely addressed head-on and when they are, the change is slow to come.

Ironic, isn’t it? We are some of the most creative minds in the world and we make our livings changing and challenging brand conventions for clients, and yet we live with the status quo ourselves. Why aren’t we using our creative minds to solve these business problems?

Enter the tree-shaking, status quo-challenging folks at C2-MTL, curated by SID LEE, stage left. The usual and expected isn’t going to fly in May 2012 when the inaugural annual global C2-MTL Commerce + Creativity conference kicks off.

C2-MTL aims to break the mold and use innovative technologies to get attendees interacting in a productive way. During the three-day gathering, C2-MTL promises that no two workshops will be the same, as all explore the relationship between commerce and creativity and its potential to redefine business. Finding creative answers to commercial questions is the name of the game.

When taking a look at this conference, begin with the set up – what they are calling “The Village.” At the center of The Village is the New City Gas complex, an industrial heritage building that was built in the nineteenth century, which will be transformed into a hub of creativity. It will have networking plazas, brainstorming zones, collective worktables, intimate conversation rooms and exclusive content lounges. And the attendees of C2-MTL will be among the first to step foot inside The Village.

An environment designed for collaboration sets the stage, but what will light the fire? How about a killer lineup of speakers from all facets of creative industries? SID LEE is known for blending disciplines – from architecture to design to engineering – to create exquisitely unique results. The C2-MTL conference will follow suit. Featured speakers include co-founder and Principal Architect of MVRDV Winy Maas, Fast Company’s Editor Robert Safian, the Chief Creative Officer of Google Creative Lab Robert Wong, former CEO of Walt Disney Group Michael Eisner, storyteller and businessman Francis Ford Coppola, Editor-in-Chief of AOL Huffington Post Media Group Arianna Huffington, the Chief Creative Officer of Dreamwork Bill Damaschke, Contributing Editor of Wired Magazine Jonah Lehrer, CCO Dreamworks and the President and CEO of Cirque de Soleil Daniel Lamarre.

Lamarre’s team, headquartered out of Montreal, will also breathe new life into conference presentation, as Cirque de Soleil is C2-MTL’s Creative Partner. What exactly that means is yet to be revealed (yes, only ticket holders will behold the revelation), but having just seen my first ever Cirque de Soleil show, I’m imagining projections onto pools of water filled with contortionists and speaker’s bullet points dangling from acrobats hanging from the ceiling by one finger and a sheet. Those of you attending next month will have to let me know (via Tweet, of course) what “Creative Partner” means when we’re talking about Cirque de Soleil.

The overarching themes of the conference are Generate, Activate and Innovate. Every single topic of presentation is a challenge, looking to the future and asking what are we doing, what are we going to be doing, how are we going to be doing it and most importantly, why? How refreshing from a typical line-up of “tell me what you did and how I can mimic your efforts for success in my own work, thanks.”

When conference speakers strategically include the Editor of Fast Company, it is no surprise – but of great interest – that the publication has chosen Montreal, rather than New York, to announce and celebrate its 100 Most Creative People in Business of 2012. Some of the recipients will even be in attendance. When past recipients include Jay-Z, Tina Fey, Oprah Winfrey and Facebook’s Chris Cox, we can only imagine who will grace the 2012 roster and join this esteemed crew. We can only imagine, or, of course, we could attend and see.

IBM will also be revealing results of its 2012 CEO Study at C2-MTL. Results will be revealed the same day in Tokyo, London and New York, but Montreal is the first place where IBM will be discussing the results. C2-MTL’s Caroline Lavergne explains on the event blog,

C2-MTL’s love story with IBM started a while ago. IBM’s 2010 CEO Study, Capitalising on Complexity, was a cornerstone of C2-MTL’s founding philosophy: 1500 CEOs from 60 countries and 33 industries declared not only that they feel ill-equipped in dealing with a constantly changing and evermore complex business landscape, but that the crucial factor of future success is creativity. Not rigor, management discipline, integrity or even vision. Creativity. The 72-page document is actually required reading for all new C2-MTL recruits.

Will C2-MTL succeed? Will this conference truly be different than the rest, and get its attendees talking, collaborating, brainstorming and making actual strides to move the needle forward on using creativity to innovate commercially? I don’t know. But if C2-MTL’s plans are not a recipe to achieve that objective, I don’t know what is. And if I wasn’t going to be halfway around the world at Portfolio Night 10 in China, I would definitely be in attendance in Montreal to find out.

Please let me know how it goes.

Brianna Graves
Operations Manager, Writer
IHAVEANIDEA

Wrong.

A soapbox that JWT North America’s Chief Creative Officer Jeff Benjamin briefly stood upon at the recent 4A’s Transformation LA conference in Los Angeles, driving home the point that the media some advertisers have given up on deserves a second chance.

Why are standard banner ads perceived to be so annoying? They expand invasively into the consumer’s online experience and provide little reward for engaging with them. And they don’t offer much in the way of exciting possibility for the creative mind to develop inspired solutions.

Of course, we could all imagine better possibilities in today’s media landscape. What if you could integrate Google Maps, YouTube channels, Facebook and Twitter, multi-video displays and multi-tab views into a banner ad? What if cool, fun, top international brands like McDonald’s, Rocawear, Kellogg’s, Family Guy, Glee, Weekly World News and EMI-backed band Graffiti6 offered the use of their assets to pair with the capability above?

You can. They are.

It’s called the VOS (video overlay solution) and it is Casale Media’s answer to “can’t we do more with this media?”

The Tomorrow Awards and IHAVEANIDEA have partnered with Casale Media to challenge you – the international creative community – to leverage this rich media platform, and prove that banner advertising is, in fact, not at all dead. You could go down in history as the hero(ine) who revived it, and The Engagement Directive is your opportunity to do so in a risk-free environment.

In a competition that will run through two rounds and end with $15,000 in cash prizes for the winners, The Engagement Directive is open to creative minds worldwide. What kind of creative minds? Well, designers. Art Directors. Creative Directors. Those who know Flash inside and out. Teams or individuals can enter, so long as they are driven to prove they have the creative mettle to inject life and innovation into a too often dismissed platform.

We believe that those who use the VOS will love it. That’s why we partnered with Casale Media and top international brands to offer you top assets, top media, top prize money and no financial investment to make magic happen.

But we don’t think we’re the only ones who will love experimenting with the VOS.

You, dear creatives, will love the VOS…

• … because it provides a large, customizable canvas with enough interactive possibility to make you go nuts. Streaming video? Got it. Social integration across all channels from Facebook to Twitter to YouTube to Google Maps? Got it. It is also as labor-free as you’d like it to be. Just provide Casale Media with assets and your creative vision, and they’ll do the heavy lifting for you.

Your account people will love it…

• … because the ROI data is plentiful. The VOS is targetable, scalable and trackable across the MediaNet premium network. You can track engagements, play time, drop off rates and more.

Your strategists will love it…

• … because it extends the reach of your campaigns and efficacy of your messaging through an easy and affordable channel to a targeted audience. Want to test messaging in different markets to create even more effective TV ads for your campaign? Use the VOS.

Your consumers will love it…

• … because it won’t attack them just as they are populating a perfect Pinterest board. The VOS turns a standard banner into an engaging overlay that deploys quickly only at user request to “expand.”

Convinced to accept your mission and give it a try? The Engagement Directive will work in two rounds:

In the first round, entrants may choose one brand from the roster, download assets, directions and a template for guidance, and then go to town. Within some basic guidelines, the sky of your imagination is the limit.

Between rounds, the Engagement Panel – comprised of the seven brand managers, Casale Media, the Tomorrow Awards and IHAVEANIDEA – will choose the winning entry for each participating brand, and one for the Free for All! Category.

Casale Media will then develop each first-round winning idea into a functional VOS banner that will run up to one million impressions in to a targeted audience (determined by each brand manager) across MediaNet.

The VOS banner that performs the best in the “real world” second round will take home the top honors and Grand Prize honors.

It’s not every day that you are offered an innovative new media platform, the assets from seven top brands, and free reign to marry the two in a way the industry hasn’t seen before. But that’s what Casale Media is doing, and that’s why IHAVEANIDEA and the Tomorrow Awards have partnered with Casale Media in this challenge.

Will you accept your mission?

To learn more, and begin your entry for The Engagement Directive, visit www.engagementdirective.com. For questions, please contact brianna@ihaveanidea.org.

Brianna Graves
Operations Manager, Writer
IHAVEANIDEA

Assuming the Mayans miscalculated (at least that’s the attitude I’m taking), there is much to look forward to this year. With Portfolio Night 10 on the seems-far-but-will-be-here-before-we-know-it horizon, a new year of Tomorrow Awards future-thinking brilliance yet to be unveiled and new Giant Hydra projects starting to flow through the network, 2012 has all the makings to be a success.

Given our varying degrees of seasonal acceptance (i.e. disdain for winter), the IHAVEANIDEA team continues to work virtually, spread out across the U.S., Canada, and now the U.K. and South America. In addition to the core team you know and love, two new superstars are contributing to make this year’s Portfolio Night bigger and better than ever. Sarah West, who is based out of London as the Global Manager of Portfolio Night, has been behind the scenes, deftly readying our present and future agency hosts for the best event to date. Luis Oreamuno, who is based out of Panama, has joined the team as a contributing writer and will be bringing you all of the Creative Bites and Ready to Shine action on PortfolioNight.com from now until May 23^rd, as well as some content for How’d You Get In? and our Ad Celebrity Book Lists on IHAVEANIDEA.org.

Up-and-coming young creatives, have you been polishing your portfolios? May isn’t that far away!

Of course we can’t help but be insanely excited about Portfolio Night 10. With nearly ten cities signed up already, including Athens, Austin, Budapest, Helsinki, Montreal, Philadelphia, Stockholm, Toronto, Dublin (and a Mumbai agency host is soon to be announced), the roster is already shaping up impressively! Keep an eye on the City Page of PortfolioNight.com, the Portfolio Night Facebook and Twitter feed for the latest city additions. If you don’t see your city on the list and want to help make it happen, reach out to Sarah to begin the conversation. She would be happy to provide you with more information.

Speaking of portfolio preparation, Ignacio will be busy throughout the month of February, working with a team of Protégés through Feast by iStockphoto’s Mentorship program. The topic is communicating creativity and developing the portfolio of the future. Thank you to all who applied to the program; Feast had significantly more applicants than usual and reported it was some tough competition to create a shortlist of participants. Ignacio recently shared some thoughts on the topic here on IHAVEANIDEA, and will undoubtedly bestow the wisdom of his experience on the Protégés. We’ll share a bit more about the Protégés with you once their mentorship month is complete.

The HydraHeads have been gearing up for a busy 2012 with new Giant Hydra projects kicking off this month. With a network of more than 500 qualified, talented creative minds ready to contribute brilliance, the results are always spectacular. Brett is working hard to profile some of these talented minds on GiantHydra.com, so check in over there, on Facebook, Twitter or sign up for the monthly newsletter to learn more about what Giant Hydra can add to your work, projects and agency. If you’re not a HydraHead, but think you have what it takes, apply here: http://gianthydra.com/signup.php.

And the Tomorrow Awards. Ah, the Tomorrow Awards. After a brilliantly exhausting, fun and inspiring Conference and Ceremony in Amsterdam in November, we are already looking toward this year’s Awards. Looking back for a moment, did you ever see the video recap that our friends at Umbrella pulled together? Check it out and reminisce with us.

It makes me even more excited for the events ahead. Have you seen any work future-facing enough to garner a Tomorrow Award? Tell us about it. And who would you love to see speak?

And thus, we embark on the adventure that will be 2012, thankful to have each of you along with us. Ignacio, Brett, Nat, Brendan, Sarah, Luis and I look forward to crossing paths or working with you this year. Shaping the future of the industry we all love for the better; let’s make it happen together.

Brianna Graves
Operations Manager, Writer
IHAVEANIDEA

“Now I know why they are called the #tomorrowawards – I’ve awarded myself a lovely hangover today,” IHAVEANIDEA contributor and ECD at Tribal DDB Amsterdam Chris Baylis tweeted.

That sums it up nicely.

“36+ hours later. I think I’m just about over the #tomorrowawards,” event partner Kerrie Finch, CEO of FinchFactor, tweeted. “Congrats to #saturnproject, #Ihaveanidea &@edge_amsterdam.”

But really the congratulations extend to all of our partners, including Kerrie herself and FinchFactor, Conspiracy Concepts, Edge Amsterdam and Umbrella Post-Production, our sponsors, Creative Niche, Sid Lee and Amsterdam in Business, as well as our media partners, Amsterdam Ad Blog and Jongehonden. The Tomorrow Awards was an international effort that could not have been accomplished without the support of these folks, as well as Sid Lee Amsterdam’s Kris Eckman, who stepped up to technically run the show without a hitch.

The week was fantastic madness for Ignacio and I. From the moment I stepped off that ferry into Holland and he off that plane from NYC, where the Monster Judging had just wrapped up, it was full speed ahead at Mach One. With the support of our team, a million and one details were attended to and many a work-session was held in the café of Pakhuis de Zwijger, the site of the Tomorrow Awards.

The show was inspiring, with insightful presentations by TAXI Chairman Paul Lavoie, AKQA ECD (and IHAVEANIDEA contributor) Nick Bailey, Anomaly Partner Carl Johnson (who announced during the show that Anomaly has opened an office in Amsterdam!) and last, but most certainly not least, Sid Lee President Jean-Francois Bouchard. All touched on different aspects of the business with talks that energized the room.

Sid Lee set up an interactive installation at the awards that allowed for live search. One typed in a search term, entered the interactive box and watched as the search term was brought to life through video, photo and audio representations of the term. It was pretty phenomenally fun to experience.

For the first time ever for any awards show, the Tomorrow Awards was broadcast across the world live through UStream, allowing anyone to tune in and learn about the work of tomorrow and the future direction of the industry, a conscious effort toward a core value of the Tomorrow Awards: to teach and to learn. Keep your eyes peeled in the coming weeks as the winners’ behind-the-scenes videos will be posted online, detailing the judges’ rationale behind why each winner was chosen to win a Tomorrow Award.

It was an extraordinary show. Thank you to all who attended, in person or virtually online.

Sadly we could not stay in Amsterdam forever. Mostly because it is way too cold and neither Ignacio nor I are a fan of those kind of bone-chilling temperatures. For Ignacio, it was off to South America for some well-deserved rest and relaxation, complete with 100% technology disconnection (it is still possible to disconnect entirely!) and I to Paris, France, where I will be visiting and profiling the Sid Lee Paris atelier. I look forward to meeting Sylvain and Saïd and learning more about their work, space, people and culture to share my findings in a new Agency Profile here on IHAVEANIDEA.org.

Meanwhile, back on the home front in Montreal, Brett has been in charge of Operation Benjamin Button, as we gave up our big office space to move in start-up style within the lovely walls of Montreal’s CloudRaker. Given that half our staff spends life in a plane, train or automobile rather than in the office, occupying a huge space for a couple of us did not seem sage. So back we go to the early days. It’s the nature of IHAVEANIDEA. Our network is global and our lifestyles nomadic, so we creep day by day toward a virtual model. Thank God for Google documents.

When not playing maestro of Craiglist, movers (shakers) and boxes (even on his birthday!), Brett has also been busy managing some awesome new Giant Hydra projects. More from him on that front in a later Inbox, but it’s exciting to see agencies, brands and Creative Directors grasp the power of a worldwide network of the industry’s best talent and just exactly what can be accomplished within a mass collaboration effort. It’s pretty mind-blowing.

What’s next? With the conclusion of one Tomorrow Awards Conference and Ceremony, we begin preparations for the next, which will be held in Montreal in Spring 2011. There are already tons of great surprises in store for that event, which are of course supremely top secret. You’ll have to join us in Canada to see just what will happen. Okay, we may reveal bits and pieces before then but you’ll have to tune in to the Inbox for the latest and the greatest.

And of course, we are ramping up for a celebration of a decade of Portfolio Night’s with Portfolio Night 10 on the horizon soon in May 2012. Ten years of uniting the industry’s up-and-coming talent with the industry’s most well-respected and established talent in cities and countries all across the world on one night. Check back as we disclose our global partners and participating cities. Will your city host a Portfolio Night? For more information on that front, contact sarah@ihaveanidea.org.

And with that, I bid you adieu for this week. A la prochaine!

Brianna Graves
Operations Manager, Writer
IHAVEANIDEA

For those still interested in attending, there are still some tickets left. For all the details, visit the Conference web page.

Of course, in order for there to be winners announced on Tuesday, there has to be a shortlist. Fortunately that’s where you, the loyal IHAVEANIDEA fan, came in. Last week, you and hundreds just like you went through tons of entries and selected a collection of 56 kick-ass entries that moved onto the Monster Judges on Monday.

Some notes:

• USA! USA! American entries took home almost half of the shortlist positions, with 27 pieces making the list. This was followed by Canada, with ten, and Brazil, with seven.
• The Yanks may have had the most entries on the shortlist, but the Brits were batting 1.000. Every single entry from the United Kingdom made it to the shortlist.
• Ogilvy Brasil had the most entries survive to the shortlist, followed by perennial Tomorrow Awards darlings Google Creative Lab, previous Tomorrow Award winners AKQA and previous shortlister Cole & Weber United.

THE SHORTLIST

(sorted alphabetically by country & agency)

“Heineken Rugby Clubhouse”
Holler
Australia

“Come Back Ferrorama”
DDB Brasil
Brazil

“Virtual hang-gliding – Rio The Movie”
Morphy Interactive Agency
Brazil

“Drunk Valet”
Ogilvy Brasil
Brazil

“Lift&Laugh”
Ogilvy Brasil
Brazil

“Live Frog”
Ogilvy Brasil
Brazil

“Parental Control”
Ogilvy Brasil
Brazil

“Whopper Face App”
Ogilvy Brasil
Brazil

“Touch The Rainbow”
BBDO Toronto
Canada

“Nabit”
CloudRaker
Canada

“Show Your Colors”
Commun
Canada

“SUDOKU | JAMAIS SEULS”
Commun
Canada

“Tourism Toronto – The Cheating Wall”
CP+B
Canada

“Tourism Toronto – Toronto Trending”
CP+B
Canada

“Sideway – IGN rated 8/10 Game for PS3”
Fuel Industries
Canada

“Red Bull Amsterdam”
Sid Lee
Canada

“Sid Lee Collective Bootcamp”
Sid Lee
Canada

“Internet Explorer 9 – Battle for Beauty”
TAXI Montreal
Canada

“Stefan Becker”
BUZZIN MONKEY
Germany

“The 250km Wave”
Dentsu Inc.
Japan

“androp ‘Bell’”
Party Inc.
Japan

“365 Campaign”
LEMZ
The Netherlands

“KLM LIVE Reply”
LEMZ
The Netherlands

“The Status Improver“
Garbergs Reklambyrå AB
Sweden

“Ariel Fashion Shoot”
Saatchi & Saatchi
Sweden

“The Vaccines ‘Wetsuit’ Instagram Music Video”
Anomaly
United Kingdom

“Skype in the classroom”
Made By Many Ltd.
United Kingdom

“Nike Bootroom Reactive touchscreens”
OMM
United Kingdom

“Kaiser Chiefs’ Bespoke Album Creation Experience”
Wieden + Kennedy
United Kingdom

“Audi Road Frustration Index”
AKQA
USA

“Great. For the price of good.”
AKQA
USA

“Halo Reach”
AKQA
USA

“‘Up All Night’ Fan Montage Video”
BBDO New York
USA

“Google Chrome: It Gets Better”
BBH New York
USA

“Google Chrome: Lady Gaga”
BBH New York
USA

“Star Wars”
Big Spaceship
USA

“What Do You Love?”
Big Spaceship
USA

“HBO Game of Thrones – The Maester’s Path”
Campfire
USA

“Microsoft OneNote ’40 Days Around the World’”
Cole & Weber United
USA

“Microsoft Outlook “Creature Creator””
Cole & Weber United
USA

“Washington’s Lottery “Learn to Lottery” Hulu Game”
Cole & Weber United
USA

“Hyposurface”
dECOI/MIT
USA

“Social Hackathon”
Deep Focus
USA

“Les Paul Google Doodle”
Google Creative Lab
USA

“Rome ’3 Dreams of Black’”
Google Creative Lab
USA

“Verbalizer for Google Voice Search”
Google Creative Lab
USA

“WebGL Bookcase”
Google Creative Lab
USA

“Jane’s Addiction Comes Alive in UG3D”
Momentum Worldwide
USA

“Cisco’s The Hunt Transmedia Experience”
No Mimes
USA

“The Inside Experience”
Pereira & O’Dell
USA

“Mercedes Benz Tweet Race”
Razorfish
USA

“Jeep Ops @ Call of Duty XP”
Relevant
USA

“Nike Black Mamba”
R/GA
USA

“U.S.Design iPad app”
Socialistic
USA

“The Last Exorcism: Chatroulette Video on YouTube”
The Visionaire Group
USA

“Airwalk: Invisible Pop Up Store”
Young & Rubicam New York
USA

Isn’t this where Brett posts fresh-squeezed commentary on some of the latest and the greatest campaigns to hit the market?

Typically and historically, yes. But change is good and IHAVEANIDEA is changing things up in the Inbox, starting now, to give you a weekly glimpse behind the wizard’s curtain. Things like where in the world is Ignacio? Or where am I, since Ignacio and I are in a high-stakes travel competition (Ignacio is ahead by one. For now.). Or where is Brett, for that matter, who also took to the friendly skies to visit Seattle last week while Sean, Nat and Brendan held down the fort back home, with their stakes firmly planted across Canada.

Why so much travel? Well, it’s the IHAVEANIDEA way to connect with the best in the industry across the world as often as possible, of course. So, where in the world is the IHAVEANIDEA team?

Ignacio just returned from Budapest where he was a featured speaker at the BrandFestival, sharing the potential of Giant Hydra and opportunity for agencies and brands to use mass global collaboration to achieve greater creative results. If you haven’t heard of it, the BrandFestival is an annual two-day event that focuses on the current direction of engagement and brand strategy, and its future potential through the voices and opinions of the industry’s leaders (go Ignacio, our fearless leader!).

Photo: BrandFestival 2011. All Rights Reserved.

Ignacio landed back in Montreal at the exact moment I was boarding a plane (literally 20 gates down the terminal) to London to visit with some of the city’s hottest shops. Lean Mean Fighting Machine stepped up to the plate to host me first and I spent three days last week diving into what makes them tick. This week I’ll stop by Dare to chat with Flo Heiss, pop in to glue Isobar for a conversation with Seb Royce, speak with Damon Collins at RKCR Y&R and then head to St. Luke’s for a tete-a-tete with Al Young. The result? Shiny new Agency Profiles for IHAVEANIDEA.org and featured content for The Saturn Return Project, to bring the London market to life as the fourth stop on my journey around the world.

Lunch time fun with the Lean Mean Fighting Machine Crew

Meanwhile, Brett was out in Seattle at Cole & Weber United, helping them celebrate their astonishing 80th anniversary by moderating speaker panels made up of past employees, which he reported were (and I quote) “amazing.” While in Seattle, he also covered a little Giant Hydra, a little Portfolio Night (who wants to see Seattle back on the map for Portfolio Night 10?) a little highly predictable rain and a lot of local brew. The Toronto native even found a baby CN Tower.

Next week, it’s off to the big city of (Tomorrow’s) dreams for Sean and Ignacio, who will head to New York City for the Monster Judges panel. They will lock themselves in a room for a day with seven top-notch Monster Judges who will choose the top five winners of the Summer/Fall 2011 Tomorrow Awards, and three cameramen who will film the entire judging process behind the scenes. Ignacio will reveal the premiere Tomorrow Awards documentary footage in Amsterdam.

Amsterdam? Yes, that is the next destination on the round-the-world IHAVEANIDEA fall tour. Ignacio will hop on a plane from NYC and I will hop on a train-ferry-train combo from London, and the two of us will converge on Amsterdam for the event of the season: The Tomorrow Awards Conference and Ceremony on November 15th. If you haven’t snagged a ticket yet, what are you waiting for? Get them here, as it’s going to be a phenomenal event and there are a limited number of tickets. Our sponsors have outdone themselves this round with some very cool installations and networking fun, and we’re really looking forward to connecting with both the international and Amsterdam-based communities that will be in attendance.

Oh, and if you are a Public Judge for the Tomorrow Awards, get ready to start your engines. The judging is this week and your input will determine the top fifty entries that will be debated by the Monster Judges in New York. No pressure, but you have a say in the winners of an international awards ceremony, so choose wisely.

Keep your dial tuned in to next week’s Inbox to see what is new within our family of companies. Not only IHAVEANIDEA, but also the Tomorrow Awards, Giant Hydra and Portfolio Night and Adland.

Wait, Adland? Yes, we’ve added to the family and you might have read about it here. But more on that in next week’s Inbox.

Brianna Graves
Operations Manager, Writer
IHAVEANIDEA

Well a new company  called Drop Drinks has gone and put that great taste into a soft drink, and the folks of JWT London invite everyone “turn the air pear” in pretty much the grossest way possible.

Nevertheless, it’s time to shake the grinning rictus of a plastic king from your minds, and behold a new era, that of McGarryBowen. Over the weekend they launched there very first TV spot since winning the account. No kings, no sacrifices, no freakouts, now it’s food porn onions, seasoned bacon and guacamole.

Okay, maybe this isn’t bringing home a Titanium Lion next year at Cannes, but maybe this is just what the brand needs, a focus on the food over Flame cologne.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to Five Guys.

But it’s a new day, a new rum, and a new direction as they announce Bundy 5, an all-new white rum. I could talk about the fact that it’s filtered five times and aged in white oak barrels, but really, none of that is important. All that matters is… well, just watch. But not if you’re some nancy dandy poseur.

Playa.

We may be a few months from Advertising Week in New York, but The Big Ad Gig, the annual competition considered a highlight of that event, is well under way. This year, the rewards are similar — a 30 day paid internship at either Atmosphere Proximity, Facebook, CP+B, Ogilvy or the Martin Agency — but the challenge is a little different. Aspiring interns are expected to create a video showcasing “a moment in advertising history.” I suppose that’s kinda vague, but it does leave you with thousands of possibilities.

Better pick your moments quickly; the deadline to get your video submitted in order to be considered for the Advertising Week throwdown is August 25th. For all the details, visit the site.