Key Art creates the "buzz"
The Hollywood Reporter's Key Art Awards, Humberto Cruz, Cereal Partners Worldwide Global (pdf)
Tonight is the night, when more than 1,800 media executives and creative professionals congregate in the opulent bosom of Hollywood's Kodak Theatre for an evening of self-congratulatory revelry. The 35th Annual Key Art Awards will mete out well deserved honors to a handful of lucky promotional objects, plucked from the ranks of 1,423 submissions and judged by more than 460 movie-advertising professionals. Having tried unsuccessfully to weasel a press pass out of various representatives at the Reporter, I will have to content myself with the many impressive numbers in the Reporter's own coverage of the event which they themselves conceived in 1972, and have sponsored every year since.
Interestingly, the Key Art Awards Post Awards Party is being sponsored by the Los Angeles Times, and by the Chicago Tribune, which owns the Los Angeles Times. It is tempting to posit that, with the Tribune Company involved, there is very real potential for a Humberto Cruz sighting. Of course, I will not be privileged with such a sighting, as I will not be in attendance, as I failed to sweet talk the Key Art Awards representatives at The Hollywood Reporter.
It will be interesting to see which spot wins in the Co-branded audiovisual category. My money is on Chicken Little/McDonald's, but I wouldn't be surprised to see Chicken Little/Sears take home the honors. Not since Fievel immigrated to America to appear somewhat incongruously on a Christmas stocking has there been so much excitement surrounding McDonald's, Sears and the cultural homogenization of talking animals.
Incidentally, The Chronicles of Narnia has also been double-nominated in the category, for co-branded spots with McDonald's and CPW Global, respectively. The "CPW" stands for Cereal Partners Worldwide, a joint venture between General Mills and Nestlé headquartered in Switzerland and offering cereal products in 130 countries not including the U.S. or Canada. Ostensibly, the "Global" addendum means new markets: New Worldwide Global Markets.
The documentation from CPW's investment seminar makes for a fascinating read if you have time. The General Mills/Nestlé combo is a co-brand in and of itself, meaning, of course, that in terms of sheer co-brandedness, the Narnia/CPW spots are really head and shoulders above their competitors. In any case, Cereal Partners Worldwide Global is the brand responsible for these delightful outcomes of multi-corporate cooperation.