I'm shortlisted at Cannes for copywriting and illustrating

I'm not personally attending the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity that's happening this week. But I've just learned that a couple of things I worked on have been shortlisted. Which is almost as exciting as cavorting on a beach in the South of France. That's what I'm telling myself, anyway.

In terms of my Copywriting - The Mr. Clean facebook page, for which I helped develop the Mr. Clean character and wrote many of his status updates, is in there:

http://www.canneslions.com/work/2012/interactive/entry.cfm?entryid=32848&award=101&order=0&direction=1

And get this... I'm in this James Ready Beer campaign as an Illustrator. That's right, I was asked to draw some of the newsletters that came in the beer boxes. I knew that doodling on my school notebooks would come in handy one day.

http://www.canneslions.com/work/2012/effectiveness/entry.cfm?entryid=3856&award=101&order=1&direction=1

I made one of the Top political YouTube videos of 2011!

This week I was thinking back on 2011 and wondered if my Love Song for Elizabeth May really just happened this year. Seems so long ago. But then tonight, on the last night of the year, I got a nice reminder that, yep, it happened in 2011: According to Yahoo! News, it was one of the Top political YouTube videos of 2011. Check out the article by clicking here. Glad I could be a part of a big Green step forward for Canada. Here's to more steps in 2012!

I'm a GreenHeroes category winner! Come to the Green Living Show to see if I win the Grand Prize!!

GreenHeroes is an eco web channel and television series that will be announcing the Grand Prize Winner of their GreenHero contest at the Green Living Show this Sunday. The lucky winner, selected from nominations to www.greenheroes.tv (to see my nomination, click here) will be featured in an upcoming episode of GreenHeroes. Why am I telling you this? Because I just got an email saying I'm a category winner! Which apparently means that at the very least, I'll be getting a T-shirt. Which is very exciting for me, because it means I can delay doing laundry for another day. Oh, and I'm also now in the running for the Grand Prize. To see the Green Living Show's Main Stage schedule click here, and be at the Green Living Show on Sunday at 1:30 PM to congratulate me. Or to console me. Either way, I will let you touch my T-shirt.


Oh, and for the skeptics who need proof, here's the email:


Congratulations Josh! I am pleased to let you know that you are a category winner in the GreenHeroes contest!

With this distinction, you are also a finalist for the Grand Prize winner. The winner will be announced this coming Sunday, April  17^th at 1:30 p.m..

We will be making a short presentation on-stage to all the finalists and then will be announcing the grand prize winner.  It would be great if you could join us to celebrate.

As a finalist you will receive a green heroes t-shirt, so please let us know your size, and if you will be able to attend on Sunday. We have a complimentary ticket for you and a guest. We also hope to host a little celebration afterward at our booth #337.

  

Thanks for participating and I look forward to seeing you on Sunday.

Sincerely,

Joan Prowse

Producer

www.GreenHeroes.tv

My eco-comedy video wins eco-comedy video contest!

So, I heard about an eco-comedy video contest. Of course I was happy about this, because it means the eco message is getting spread. But it made me feel less special to know I'm not the only one making eco-comedy videos. Fortunately, my feeling of specialness returned upon receiving notice that I won the contest. Yah, that's right - Bring it on, eco-comedy videomakers! Bring it on!!! Wait, that's not very Gaia of me, is it? Ah, screw it. It's every environmentalist for him/herself. So I'll paste in the announcement email below to intimidate any future eco-comedy videomakers who might be getting any bright ideas. Like they used to put heads on poles to warn people what would happen if they made eco-comedy videos. Or something like that.

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Subject: Winners of the Eco-Comedy Video Competition

Dear Friends,

I want to share with you the short, humorous video projects submitted to the Third Annual Eco-Comedy Video Competition.  We launched this competition as a way to encourage the use of humor in the fight for conservation.

All submissions are now available for you to enjoy here under the "Video Responses" heading.  I’ve included the four finalists at the end of this e-mail.  

I thank the Sierra Club, Eco-Sense, the Environmental Protection Agency, and Mill Reef Productions for making this competition possible through a partnership with SOC's Center for Environmental Filmmaking at AU.  I especially thank the Sierra Club for putting up the $1,000 prize money.

Congratulations to all our participants, and a very special congratulations to the two winners, Josh Rachlis for An Inconvenient Ruth, and Ben Zolno for Plastic State of Mind.  Josh and Ben will split the $1,000 prize from the Sierra Club.

Best, Chris

2011 Finalists:

ScamWOW

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sMQCj9UHCpM 

The Energetic Energy-Saver

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QDMha4-DQwA

Plastic State of Mind
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n0D0c4qXV90

An Inconvenient Ruth
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3mmkOF9qJAU&feature=email 

Professor Chris Palmer

Author of Shooting in the Wild: An Insider's Account of Making Movies in the Animal Kingdom  (Sierra Club Books, 2010)

Distinguished Film Producer in Residence

Director, Center for Environmental Filmmaking

School of Communication, American University

4400 Mass Avenue, NW, Washington DC 20016-8017

palmer@american.edu

cell 202-716-6160; office 202-885-3408; home 301-654-6137

Center website: www.environmentalfilm.org

SOC profile: http://www.american.edu/soc/faculty/palmer.cfm

Shooting in the Wild on Facebook: http://on.fb.me/gOTUlc

Shooting in the Wild website: http://bit.ly/a4L3LU

Chris’s Facebook site: http://www.facebook.com/#!/chrispalmer47

Follow me on Twitter @chrispalmer_au

Chris’s blog: http://soc-palmer.blogs.american.edu/

---

And here's my winning video, to reinforce to eco-comedy videomakers what they're up against when they mess with me:

I'm a Top 10 finalist for ad industry's most creative Canadian

 Okay, so Marketing Magazine is having their 2nd Annual Great Canadian Creative Faceoff. And after reviewing all of their submissions, the judging committee has chosen yours truly as one of the Top 10 finalists. It's a contest to find the most creative person who works in the ad industry, based on their activities when not at work. A cursory perusal of this blog will show you that I engage in a number of creative activities when I'm not at work. Whether I'm any good at them is a whole other matter, to be discussed at another time, preferably over tequila. But right now, we're talking about this contest. Here's how it's officially described:

This is a search for the cream of Canada's creative crop, from across all sectors of our industry-agency, marketer, media, PR. Based on all the nominations received, the top 10 will be selected by Marketing's writers and editors, then posted and profiled on creativefaceoff.ca. From there we turn it over to the audience. We'll be asking you to vote for your favourite. Based on the voting results, the list will be narrowed to 5 semi-finalists. Then, we'll ask for a vote again. A second round of voting will take the Top 5 to Top 3, and the final voting will determine the winner of the 2010 Great Canadian Faceoff, revealed at the 2010 Media Innovation Awards on November 18.

Blah, blah, blah. The point is, go to www.creativefaceoff.ca and vote for me. Under my picture you can click on the link to vote via Twitter. But also, if you scroll down past the faces (which you have to do if you have a teeny laptop like moi), that's where you can select my name to give a non-Twitter vote as well. I hate asking people to go to websites to vote for me. But, well, I guess it's just the curse of being so fabulous that I get shortlisted for so many things. Also, since only half of Toronto actually went out and voted for Mayor, here's the other half's chance to redeem themselves and vote for something. Just don't vote for Rob Ford in this contest, for god's sake. It's going to start going to his head.