We’ve won a lot of Addy Awards over the years and we always feel good about them. But it takes a lot to get us excited. We got excited about winning a Gold National Addy for our work on JEL last year.

This year we won Best of Show at the Des Moines’ Addy Awards for Stew Hansen’s Dodge City. Car dealers are seldom recognized for the quality of their advertising and that lack of recognition is generally pretty darn appropriate. When Larry Goering hired us to help brand Stew Hansen’s he couldn’t have picked a worse time. Chrysler was in crisis. The economy was in the toilet. Generally, things in the car business sucked.

That’s what makes this Best of Show Award all the more rewarding. We had a client with the courage of a lion. And that’s what the judges really rewarded. Maybe that’s why they call him Crazy Larry.

If you do what everybody else is doing, you don’t stand out. Can’t. Impossible. So when you’re tempted to do the mundane advertising that’s so easy to do. Remember Crazy Larry. He has the Best of Show Trophy that you’d really like on your desk.

Here’s the commercial that won.