AWNY Praises ‘Pickle Jar,’ Disses Sirius Pam

NEW YORK An in-house spot created by Sirius Satellite Radio showing Pamela Anderson washing a car with parts of her body took home the TV Grand Ugly prize at the Advertising Women of New York’s Good, Bad & Ugly Awards here on Thursday.

A crowd of about 500 at the B.B. King Blues Club & Grill clapped and groaned their way through the night, hosted by Curb Your Enthusiasm co-star Susie Essman.

A Cannes Grand Prix Lion-winning ad created by TBWA\Paris won the Grand Ugly for print. The ad showed the adult head of a man emerging from a slender woman in an operating room, as though she were giving birth.

“They managed to take one of the most beautiful, important things, childbirth, and made it really ugly,” Essman quipped.

The show by AWNY, a nonprofit group that has hosted the awards since 1997, highlights both good and bad portrayals of women in advertising.

“Pickle Jar,” a MasterCard spot created by McCann Erickson in New York, won the Grand Good for TV. The ad shows a woman opening a jar of pickles following her boyfriend’s failed attempt.

“If he’s like my boyfriend, he’ll claim he loosened it for me,” Essman said.

There was a tie for Grand Good in print: an ad from Leo Burnett in Chicago for Procter & Gamble’s Beinggirl.com and a piece for Brooks Sport’s Brigitte Majorino brand by DDB in Seattle.

Other highlights of the show included performances from Broadway shows, including Hairspray and Wicked, and a video directed by Nanette Burstein. The latter showed veteran agency males including Lee Clow, Gerry Graf, Steve Hayden and Kevin Roddy dressed like women and talking about the difficulties of being a female creative.

Judges this year were primarily marketing executives from companies like Johnson & Johnson, JPMorgan and Pfizer.

Last year’s Grand Ugly for TV went to Ogilvy & Mather in New York for “Catfight,” which showed two scantily clad women fighting over Miller Lite.