The 2009 Jay Chiat Awards for Strategic Excellence Winners

Media Communications—Gold:
BBH, New York
"Tearing Down the Spectacle and the Spin"

Agencies are great at making the humdrum emotionally powerful. We're experts at telling entertaining stories. And we can put just about any channel to work for us.

But what if emotion was the enemy? What if entertainment got in the way of a higher purpose? And what if TV wasn't just a media channel—what if TV was a destructive force?

Those were the problems facing the Presidential Debates that we set out to address, and in the process push against just about every agency convention we came across.

This is the story of how what could have been another round of Election Smackdown became something far more interesting and inspiring—and all because we ran from entertainment and embraced utility.

This is the story of MyDebates.

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Next: "Where My Bees At?"