• by October 22, 2004

Yahoo! held its annual Creative Works Summit in New York yesterday, awarding its iconic purple Big Idea Chair to Audi of America and its agency McKinney + Silver.

This chair is no ordinary chair. Yahoo!'s Jerry Shereshewsky and his team award the cushy chair only to those agencies whose work exemplifies the most compelling online creative on behalf of clients.

For anyone who missed it, McKinney's campaign for Audi featured David Bowie in a mash-up contest (the vocal track of one song mixed into the instrumentation of another) and challenged consumers to create a mash-up to the Bowie track of their choice for a chance to win an Audi TT. The online contest was part of a larger multimedia effort.

The half-day Yahoo! event, held at the Directors Guild of America, showcased examples of unique online campaigns that were meticulously integrated into offline advertising, promotions, guerrilla marketing, and public relations efforts.

Bartle Bogle Hegarty introduced "Pit Man," the star of the campaign for Axe, an antiperspirant for young men. Ogilvy and Digitas folks were on hand to present a case study on the Seinfeld/Superman Webisodes created for American Express, Sharpe Partners presented a Fuji Film case study, and McKinney related its experience on the Audi TT campaign.

The most interesting bits of conversation were generated by the panel of creative experts who considered what kind of storytelling is appropriate in a streaming broadband environment.

On another note, Google posted a strong third-quarter, earning $52 million for the quarter, up from $20 million for the same period a year ago. Revenue for the third quarter was a whopping $806 million, up from $394 million for the same period a year ago.