LONDON – The entry deadline for the D&AD Professional Awards is on February 17. To remind the creative community about this critical day, D&AD, together with Lucky Generals, came up with something unique. They orchestrated a very elaborate plot to make the hearts of top creatives all the way from Sao Paulo, Cape Town, London, and Melbourne grow fonder for their precious pencils.
As the idiom goes, only absence can do that. Thus, the beginning of the D&AD Pencil heist.
On January 11, D&AD hired insiders from different agencies to snatch the coveted pencils from glass enclosures, locked closets, and steel cabinets cradling what’s known as the most difficult award to win.
“The heist was a spectacular piece of planning and was excellently executed, but despite the excitement of seeing the reactions on social media, it was never really about taking the pencils,” commented Tim Lindsay, CEO of D&AD. “What we set out to do from the start was to capture the reactions of people as their pencils were returned, reminding them of a very personal achievement, and I think that this film illustrates this perfectly.”
In a behind-the-scenes video released by the professional award giving body and the Lucky Generals, the culprits documented their criminal act. It also captured the priceless, ballistic reactions of chief creative officers and executive creative directors like some of us have never heard them before.
Four days later, the pencils were returned and so did the sanity of these creative industry heavyweights after an explanation by D&AD (that “It was Us”) was given for the disappearance of their most treasured collection.
“At a time when some are rightly questioning the plethora of awards in our industry, the D&AD pencil remains the one that creative people really want to win. The response to our heist, in agencies all over the world, proves that when it comes to awards, nothing matters more,” said Helen Calcraft, founder of Lucky Generals.
