Envy makes advertising go round—when creatives aren't busying copying ideas, they're coveting them. D&AD celebrates that dynamic with a series of new spots, created by Wieden + Kennedy in London, to promote the awards show's 2014 call for submissions.
In the videos, industry heavyweights including Dan Wieden share their picks for work from the past year that they "wish they'd done." In Wieden's case, it's an ad by Barton F. Graf 9000 that proposes changing the titles of devastating hurricanes from apparently random names like Katrina and Sandy to names like Marco Rubio and Michele Bachmann, in an attempt to lay blame for the natural disasters on politicians who deny climate change. It's sort of like an "Oh, diss, gotcha dummy" on the dilapidated playground of American politics—but done in a way Wieden hopes will actually have some positive effect.
The other spots focus on mediums beyond straight advertising. For the digital category, W+K alum Iain Tait, now at Google Creative Lab, praises Philips's Internet-connected, color-changing lightbulbs. For the design category, Jessica Walsh of Sagmeister & Walsh spotlights the new "W" logo for the Whitney Museum, in what may be, perhaps unsurprisingly, the most opaque explanation to the uninitiated—because design work that looks good doesn't always translate to the most down-to-earth or persuasive argument.
The parts of the promos most worth envying may be the opening zoetrope animations that Nexus's Productions Factory Fifteen developed. The spinning toys pack in quick references to past standout work—the advertising bit, for example, includes the Guardian's "Three Little Pigs" opus (BBH), Honda's flying motors (W+K) and Cadbury's famous Phil Collins gorilla (Fallon). For insiders, the presence of such greats should amp the challenge to submit—or maybe just render it moot. Nobody is ever going to make anything half as good as a big-feeling simian beating the crap out of a drum kit.
