Day Tres was full of great sessions with great titles, such as: Drinking Improves Creativity... This was also the day when Ms. Betty White was recognized with our Lifetime Achievement Award and she was as graceful and funny as always.
Sessions ended with the popular "State of our Art" and it was great to see the stunning Kendrick Reid, SVP & Executive Creative Director for BET, back on stage. We had little time to catch up with email, meet with friends and have a drink or two before the 2012 PromaxBDA Promotion, Marketing and Design Awards Show. I bumped into the host, Jay Mohr in the Lobby Bar and I had a chance to chat with him... and he looked at me like: "Who the hell are you?"
Of course I had to say, "We met last year... don't you remember?" ... and still lost, but hopeful he said, "Of course, you are with Promax." (Like many others forgot the BDA part)... He went on to tell me he had just woken up... he was in fact drinking coffee and having what looked like a muffin. Mind you it was close to 6:30 pm!
Jay was amazing last year and I was really looking forward to see him on stage again this year, and he did not disappoint. It is a really hard job. This not an easy crowd to impress, but he did it again! AMAZING!
Someone had the genius idea to keep the bar open during the awards, not bad!
Roger Hyde, Chair of the Awards Committee and SVP at DirecTV, has been the man in charge of improving this show and implementing a new two-phase judging process, which certainly reflected a more scrutinized selection of winners this year!
The main awards went to:
NORTH AMERICA PROMOTION AND MARKETING:
- FX Network - Marketing Team of the Year - In-house
- BPG - Creative Agency of the Year - Out of House
- Jeff Pinilla - Ron Scaler Rocket Award
NORTH AMERICA DESIGN:
- FX NETWORK - Design Team of the Year - In-house
- BPG - Creative Design Team of the Year - Out of House
- Davor Mihalji - Rocket Award
GLOBAL EXCELLENCE PROMOTION AND MARKETING:
- Discovery UK Creative - Marketing Team of the Year - In-house
- BDA Creative - Creative Agency of the Year - Out of House
- Alessandra Menozzi - Rocket Award
GLOBAL EXCELLENCE DESIGN:
- ProSiebenSat.1 TV Deutschland - Design Team of the Year - In-house
- Monarchy - Creative Design Team of the Year - Out of House
- Leo Nguyen - Rocket Award
And I was happy to celebrate awards for two of my clients:
Prologue Films, for American Horror Story, won a BRONZE in the Open/Titles Category, and Iron Claw for MLB Extra Innings 'Home Run Trot,' won a GOLD in the Art Direction & Design: Image Promo - Sports Category.
It was a long and productive week for me. Call me old fashion, but I really liked the well-printed book we were handed at the end, with all the winners and visual references!
Thank you POST Magazine for allowing me to have a voice directly from PromaxBDA in Los Angeles... Next on the agenda was our Board Meeting on Friday, where we got together to have a post-mortem and discuss our goals for 2013. It was great!
Danixa Diaz is a partner/executive producer with LA-based collective International Artists. She can be reached at: danixa@iartists.tv.