A small item from what Adweek was reading on the plane here: In 2008, BBDO’s campaign for HBO, called “Voyeur,” won ten Lions, including the Grand Prix for an integrated promotional campaign. The campaign, which featured a series of synchronized short films depicting various narratives in one apartment building, “was essentially content itself,” James Othmer noted in his book, Ad Land. When Othmer sat down with Courtney Monroe, HBO’s EVP of consumer marketing, she conceded as much: “She also agreed that it helps to have your very own network… as a media platform,” Othmer wrote, “and that selling entertaining content is easier than selling the benefits of a deodorant stick.”

     Coincidence, irony, or indication of the changes in the advertising game: Two years later, in 2010, Weiden + Kennedy won the film Grand Prix for Old Spice, “The Man Your Man Could Smell Like.”