Advertising is breaking free from old media and platform boundaries, and the ideas pushing the game ahead won’t easily fit into traditional moulds. The Tomorrow Awards is a brand-new awards show that recognizes this fact and brings all spotlight to the creative thinking by completely dropping category divisions.

Entries will be publicly voted on by the global advertising industry before a select group of ‘Monster Judges’ do the final assessment. The list of judges includes Perfect Fools Creative Director Mark Chalmers, as well as Colleen DeCourcy, Chief Digital Officer at TBWA Worldwide New York, Naoki Ito, Executive Creative Director at Wieden + Kennedy Tokyo, Sergio Mugnaini, Interactive Creative Director at ALMAP BBDO Brazil, Robert Wong, Executive Creative Director at Google Creative Lab and Tomorrow Awards Chairman Rei Inamoto, Chief Creative Officer of AKQA.

You’ll find the Tomorrow Awards’ website here and an article in Contagious magazine here.

Perfect Fools’ Mark Chalmers and Tony Högqvist tag-teamed with Great Works’ Ted Persson for a Creative Social session at advertising festival Eurobest in Amsterdam last week. The talk, themed ’Digital is Dead’, took its own title literally, posing the question: if digital is dead, who is the murderer? By showing examples of some of their own mistakes they proposed that we should all learn from and stand up for our shortcomings. And that the biggest ‘digital’ sins are herd mentality, misuse of technology and siloed thinking.
Read more about Creative Social here and Eurobest here.

But Högqvist and Chalmers were not the only Fools on stage in Amsterdam. Foolishness was also represented by PF intern Sara-Lee Rost, who helped present the “Meet the Talents” session held by her digital alma mater Hyper Island. Sara-Lee joined several of her fellow Hyper students to talk about about “how the next generation of leading creatives will shape the industry.”

D&AD Awards’ four-day judging marathon takes place this week, and PF Amsterdam creative director Mark Chalmers is among the judges, who together will go through 25,000 pieces of work to find worthy winners of the coveted Pencils (details here).
PF CEO Patrick Gardner is on the jury of the Microsoft MOUSE Awards (details here).
Winners will be announced June 11 and April 29 respectively.

Over the past few years independent creative agencies have taken a larger role on advertising’s main stage, firmly establishing themselves next to the large networks and developing innovative and game-changing campaigns. Despite the ongoing recession many of these companies have managed to stay ahead of the game and even see their business grow. Highlighting this development, independent agency network thenetworkone has in collaboration with the UK’s Campaign Magazine invited Perfect Fools and 15 other top independents to feature in “The World’s Leading Independent Agencies 2009″.

In a collection of articles published today, these agencies share their thoughts on the current status of the world of advertising. Perfect Fools’ Patrick Gardner and Mark Chalmers discuss how the recession is actually provoking a major shift to digital, and how to best carry the digital torch into the next decade. Online showcase here.

Mark Chalmers, creative partner at Perfect Fools and co-founder of global digital collective Creative Social, hosted a workshop together with Daniele Fiandaca, Nicola Rovetta and Dave Bedwood at Eurobest held in Stockholm. Focus was on the future of digital advertising globally and challenges that European agencies will face.

View an interview from Eurobest with the guys here, and Creative Social’s website here.

Perfect Fools has recruited Mark Chalmers as a creative partner and announced its continued expansion with plans to open an office in Amsterdam this spring.

Chalmers’ brief is to work across Perfect Fools’ current Stockholm and New York offices, as well as help set up in Amsterdam and develop the business in Asia. Chalmers will work on international business for clients including Electrolux, Samsung, K-Swiss and more.

Perfect Fools’ opening in Amsterdam follows a period of significant growth for the agency, which has nearly doubled in size since establishing a US presence in early 2007. Over the past two years Perfect Fools has increasingly focused on pan-European, North American and global integrated online campaigns, launching a row of well-known offerings for major brands. Chalmers and the Amsterdam office will help the agency better serve its existing clients and provide direct contact between the Fools’ unique, streamlined digital creativity and many of Europe’s top agencies and largest corporations.

Chalmers was formerly executive creative director at StrawberryFrog Amsterdam working on global campaigns for clients including Heineken, Mitsubishi, Coca-Cola, and ASICS Onitsuka Tiger, where his distinctive creative style brought international recognition and a stream of awards.