Planit takes top prize at ADDYs 

Posted: 10:56 am Fri, April 9, 2010
By Liz Farmer
Daily Record Business Writer

Planit co-founder Ed Callahan (left) talks with co-worker Chris Finnegan at Friday’s ADDY award ceremony.

Planit’s ‘Anatomy of a Ballet’ is ADDY’s best in show

BY LIZ FARMER

liz.farmer@mddailyrecord.com

At a new location and with a first-time Best of Show winner, the Advertising Association of Baltimore’s annual awards ceremony was one of the more unique ADDY awards shows in recent memory.

For the first time in its 16 years, Baltimore-based Planit took home the top prize of the night for “Anatomy of a Ballet,” a short-form video it produced for the Kennedy Center in Washington.

Filmed in high definition at 1,000 frames per second, the extreme slow motion video of ballet dancers is part of a campaign the agency has launched to show the more athletic side of performing arts.

“The mission was, how can we really show the strength and depth of what is required from the body?” Ed Callahan, creative strategist and co-founder of Planit, said Friday. “And make it so people don’t just focus on … ballet as being delicate and feminine.”

All told, Planit won 14 gold and silver ADDYs last Thursday, including Best of Show in the public service category for its “Trash TV” commercial, part of its anti-litter campaign it for Baltimore City. While the commercials were created on a limited budget, Callahan said he was not sure if the new administration would continue with the campaign this year.

Budget issues were an underlying theme in this year’s ADDYs, which moved to the Sheraton North Baltimore hotel this year from its previous location at the Maryland Institute College of Art. According to Linda Stanley, the advertising association’s director, it was a financial decision.

“We’re trying to keep costs down and not increase the ticket prices for our members,” she said.

While the 256 attendees and 375 entries are on par with last year, they are far less than two years ago, when 400 people attended and the association received 485 entries.

In addition, fewer companies entered the competition this year — 28 out of 44 companies that entered won at least one ADDY compared with 36 out of 60 companies last year. A total of 123 gold and silver ADDYs were awarded this year.

“Agencies have been really hard hit, but we were really happy with our entries,” said Stanley.

Callahan and others said they thought the effect of the recession could be seen in the advertising industry’s work.

“The clients tend to be less risky,” said Callahan. “When they are spending their ad budgets it’s not about building their brand now — they need to see a return on their investment so it’s more sales-driven.”

David Smith, executive creative director of Carton Donofrio, said clients now also tend to be distracted by the next big thing, making creating a cohesive campaign tricky.

“They read just enough about social media to know the buzz words, but they’re thinking about the individual things instead of a piece of the puzzle,” he said.

Carton Donofrio in Baltimore was also a big prize-winner, taking home Best of Show in the interactive category for its Web site for the Graduate Management Admission Council.

“We showed recent grads who had done very well in school and who were in pretty much in humiliating jobs and said ‘Don’t let this happen to you,’” Smith said.

The firm also won Best of Show in print for an internal project and brought home 15 gold and silver ADDYs total.

MGH Inc., in Owings Mills, won the most awards, racking up 27 total ADDYs. John Patterson, the firm’s creative director who won the overall Best of Show ADDYs for the previous two years, said he was particularly proud of MGH’s showing in interactive.

About two years ago, MGH began offering interactive services and this year it won two gold and three silver ADDYs in that category.

“Historically we have not won in that category,” he said. “So it was nice to be recognized.”

Advertisements honored with a gold ADDY were automatically entered into a district competition, which compares the Maryland entrants against work from other agencies in New York, Pennsylvania, Delaware and Washington, D.C.

Regional winners will be announced this month and are automatically considered for a national award.