The AICP Awards 2018 Honours The Best Advertising of the Year

The winners of the AICP Awards were announced this week. The Awards comprise the AICP Show: The Art & Technique of the American Commercial and the AICP Next Awards. The AICP Show premiered tonight at The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York City, closing out AICP Week, a celebration of advertising in the motion image, which also included the debut of the AICP Next Awards at The Tishman Auditorium on Tuesday, June 12th.  Susan Credle, Global Chief Creative Officer of FCB was the AICP Next Awards Judging Chair, while Robin Shenfield, Co-Founder and CEO of The Mill was the Chairperson of the AICP Show. Following its premiere at MoMA, the Show and Next Awards will tour museums and cultural institutions around the country and abroad.  This year’s winners – along with the entire AICP Show and AICP Next Awards archive – are available for viewing at www.aicpawards.com.  Each year, the honoured work from both awards presentations becomes a part of the archives of the Department of Film at The Museum of Modern Art. The collection now numbers over 1,975 pieces of advertising in the motion image. 

Each category of the Show may have up to three winners, with the exception of Advertising Excellence/Single Commercial, and Advertising Excellence/Campaign, which each may have only one honouree, making those pieces “Best in Show.” “Welcome Home,” for Apple out of TBWA\Media Arts Lab and directed by Spike Jonze of MJZ was honoured for Advertising Excellence/Single Commercial. The ad features FKA Twigs dancing after a hard day, as her drab apartment is transformed into an endless kaleidoscope by dance and music. Tide’s “It’s a Tide Ad Campaign,” comprising the spots “It’s A Tide Ad,” “It’s Another Tide Ad,” and “It’s Yet Another Tide Ad,” was honoured for Advertising Excellence/Campaign. Directed by Traktor of Rattling Stick for Saatchi & Saatchi, the campaign, which debuted during the Super Bowl, uses the tropes of Super Bowl ads to sell consumers on using Tide products. 

At the AICP Next Awards, the Most Next honour (Best in Show) went to State Street Advisors “Fearless Girl,” from McCann New York.  The statue, which promotes the company’s She Fund, was placed on Wall Street opposite The Charging Bull, and helped spark a social movement. The winner of the Most Next honour directs a $5,000 grant from the AICP Foundation to an educational institution of their choosing. McCann directed the grant to Girls Who Invest (GWI), a non-profit organisation founded in 2015 dedicated to increasing the number of women in portfolio management and executive leadership in the asset management industry. Its mission is to have 30% of the world’s investable capital managed by women by 2030. 

The AICP Next Awards Curatorial Committee comprised the following Jury Presidents: Winston Binch, Deutsch North America; Jen Dennis, RSA VR; Geoff Edwards, R/GA; Kerstin Emhoff, PRETTYBIRD; Katherine Keating, VICE Impact; Danielle Lee, Spotify; Jaime Robinson, Joan; Jimmy Smith, Amusement Park Universe; Tereasa Surratt, Ogilvy; and Fernando Machado, Burger King. Joining these Jury Presidents were Curators at Large: Rei Inamoto, Inamoto & Co. (2012 AICP Next Awards Judging Chair); Allen Mask, VP/ Marketing, Intelligence and Partnerships, Sonos; Jeff Kling, (2016 AICP Next Awards Judging Chair); and Eric Silver, McCann New York. 

The most honoured production company in the AICP Awards (across the Show and Next) is MJZ, with 13 honours, followed by m ss ng p eces and Craft New York/Traction Creative, which each earned four honours. The Corner Shop, Furlined, O Positive, and SMUGGLER each received three honours.

Among directors, Spike Jonze of MJZ and Matthijs van Heijningen, both of MJZ, each received five honours.  David Shane of O Positive, Malik Vitthal of The Corner Shop, and Dougal Wilson of Furlined each received three honours.

On the agency front, BBDO New York earned 10 honours and Wieden+Kennedy earned eight honours, while TBWA\Media Arts Lab had seven honours. McCann New York had five honours, while  Saatchi & Saatchi had four. Leo Burnett had three honours, as did the in-house agency at Apple.

The Art & Technique of the American Commercial has a bifurcated judging system, which begins with a series of judging panels featuring over 400 judges from across the country and around the world, with experts in various fields judging work across the 22 categories. The process culminates in the meeting of the Curatorial Committee, which is the final arbiter in the disposition of the Show, confirming eligibility and appropriateness to category.

The Mill created the staging, opening sequence and graphic navigation for the AICP Next Awards premiere. Antfood provided music. The AICP Show reel features custom-designed graphics by The Mill, with an original score and sound design by Antfood. The Show Sponsor reel and loop was created by Gentleman Scholar with music by Antfood.

Sponsors help make all of the events during AICP Week possible. AICP Partners and Supporting Partners, who support all AICP events throughout the year, are:  CAPS – A Cast & Crew Entertainment Company and Universal Studios (Partners); and Film Offices of The Hawaiian Island; NEED Financial; Sony Pictures Studios; and The TEAM Companies (Supporting Partners).

The AICP Show Corporate Benefactors are: Ad Age; Aspen Travel; AwardCore; Directors Guild of America; Gentleman Scholar; Google Cloud Platform; Hello World Communications; International Digital Centre, Inc.; Istros Media Corporation; The London West Hollywood at Beverly Hills; McCann Systems; The Mill; Nice Shoes; SHOOT Magazine / SHOOTonline; Source+Slate; S’well; and VER. The Corporate Patrons are: ABK+Boagart: Spirits; Adspur; AmericaCine; Antfood; Film Brazil+Apex; Filmsupply; FilmUS Virgin Islands; Frankfurt Kurnit Klein & Selz; Greater Fort Lauderdale CVB; Heard City; Island Film Group; Little Black Book; Lumberyard Studios; Media Services; Musicbed; and SAG-AFTRA.

The AICP Next Awards Corporate Benefactors are: Google Cloud Platform; McCann Systems; The Mill; and S’well. The Corporate Patrons are: ABK + Bogart Spirits; Antfood; Arcade Edit; and Heard City.

The AICP Next Awards event sponsors are: CAPS – A Cast & Crew Entertainment Company; Film Offices of the Hawaiian Islands; FOX Studios; and Island Film Group.