John Hegarty Lifetime Achievement Award
May 23|2005

The John Hegarty Lifetime Achievement Award was great! We had a very lovely dinner ( I had the Salmon) accompanied by non stop flow of great wine and amazing entrees and desserts. Probably the best conference like food I've had, no rubber chickens here.

The head of Levi's came up and gave an amazing talk about John Hegarty. I recognized the client because he had been in The Apprentice. If you follow it, this season they had one episode where the teams have to design promo piece for Levis and this client basically kills a team because they weren't wearing Levi's to the meeting.

John's has had the brand as a client since the Levi's client was a kid! He emphasized that John's gift was his ability to find the truths about the brand, and the truths about the consumer, and tie them together.

His speech was very very inspiring. He talked about how everyone was wrong to think that changing mediums in advertising was going to change our business. He emphasized that like supermarkets that are forced to offer better selection and car companies that have to offer better cars and more accessories, ad agencies have to offer better service, a better product, and thus better ads. Changing mediums to virals or whatever you might like, won't change the fact that's is all about producing something entertaining and engaging. We must concentrate on the idea. After all, books have been around for hundreds of years and people still buy them and read them. If they are good. The same applies to advertising.

So after John's award, and a well deserved standing ovation we went for cocktails in the lobby. To my surprise I was giving my business card around and somebody from Dubai was like "Hey I know you!! ihaveanidea!" He told me everyone in the agency and in Dubai went to ihaveanidea on a daily basis and then to my surprise I met the head of the Art Academy of San Francisco who told me that they use ihaveanidea in their classes! So I can't hide I feel very proud of what we all have done with ihaveanidea thanks to your support. We musn't stop, we have a lot of work ahead.

But now, it's time for a little sleep, because tomorrow I have to sit through 5 hours of TV ads.

Wish me luck!

-Ignacio