• by Ken Liebeskind , May 8, 2001

Online advertising may be suffering from a downturn this year, but you wouldn't know it from the online advertising on display last night at the One Show Interactive awards show in New York.

Sixty-seven online ads and campaigns, created by agencies around the world, won bronze, silver and gold pencils, the most prestigious advertising award, bestowed by the One Club for Art and Copy.

The awards were given out in a variety of categories, from single banner to beyond the banner to Web sites.

Most of the winners of the awards were at the event, and walked to the stage to accept their awards, similar to an Oscar presentation. Only they didn't make acceptance speeches, they posed for photographs instead. Agency executives and other industry leaders presented the awards.

The winning ads were shown on three large screens behind the stage. They were colorful and full of live action, reflective of the rich media trend. "There's a traditional agency influence with lots of tongue in cheek humor," said John Young, One Show Interactive chairman, before announcing that Tribal DDB/New York-Chicago won the Best of Show award for the "Whassup" site it created for Anheuser Busch. The site seemed a literal pick up from the popular Budweiser "Whassup" TV commercials, with live action footage and dialogue from the spots, with the word whassup recited in 36 languages.

The "Whassup" site also won a gold pencil for the Integrated Branding Campaign category. Among the other gold pencil winners were Freestyle Interactive/San Francisco for its Hewlett Packard Invent banner campaign; Fallon Interactive/Minneapolis, for the Buddy Lee Challenge integrated branding campaign for Lee Jeans; and The Chopping Block/New York for its Orbit e-stickers beyond the banner campaign for Cartoon Network Online.

American agencies won many of the awards, but foreign agencies were surprisingly active, with agencies from Sao Paulo, Johannesburg, Barcelona and Singapore winning awards, among others.

More than 2,300 entries from 27 countries were submitted. They were reviewed by a panel of 21 judges from agencies around the world.

One Show Interactive was launched in 1996. It is part of a week long One Show that continues through tomorrow, when awards for print, radio and TV advertising will be issued.

- Ken Liebeskind may be reached at kenrunz@aol.com