Chip Shop Awards 08: This year’s hot potatoes
A taste of the chips to come
The judging for this year’s Chip Shop Awards took place earlier this month at Leo Burnett’s office in Kensington Village, London. The, shall we say, ‘alternative’ ethos of these awards has seen entries increase to record levels this year, again attracting work from as far as Europe and the US.
The ever-increasing number of entries could also be, in part, down to the awards’ wholehearted endorsement by D&AD president Simon Waterfall (“I fucking love the Chip Shop Awards”)… Then again, it could just be down to categories that include Best Use of Bad Taste, Best Use of Plagiarism and Best Non-PC advertisement.
The world is littered with awards schemes that are bursting at the seams when it comes to petty, pompous and pointless rules and regulations. But the Chip Shop Awards are different. They have no rules. If some of the best ideas are yet to see the light of day because they are unlikely to ever get past the regulators, if they bombed in research or, for that matter, if they have yet to even win the client concerned, then the Chip Shops have become the perfect antidote.
This year’s judging panel was chaired by Michael Wolff, of Michael Wolff & Company, and also consisted of Dean Webb of The Red Brick Road; Lewis Moberly’s Paul Cilia La Corte; John Jessup, creative director at Leo Burnett; Garry Blackburn, director at Rose; and Nick Finney, co-founder of NB Studio.
The panel was again impressed by the work submitted. However, it was perhaps best summed up by The Red Brick Road’s Dean Webb: “Some of he work should have run, some of it made me jealous, some of it was inspiring. I particularly liked the Tourette’s work (see left), that’s one of the pieces that made me jealous – the wankers.”
To book tickets for the event in Edinburgh on 21 August or to see the full shortlist of nominated work see wwwshopawards.com.chip.