Wieden + Kennedy was named Agency of the Year and Independent Agency of the Year at the 2012 Cannes International Festival of Creativity. W+K was also runner-up Direct Agency of the Year.

Full listing of W+K awards at Cannes this year, by office, follows below:

LONDON
FILM

• Lurpak Rainbow – Savory Foods,  BRONZE

FILM CRAFT

• Lurpak Rainbow – Editing, GOLD
• Lurpak Rainbow – Sound Design, GOLD
• Nokia Gulp – Animation, BRONZE

CYBER

• Kaiser Chiefs – Viral Advertising, SILVER
• Kaiser Chiefs – Websites and Microsites, SILVER
• Honda Experiment Game – Other Interactive Solutions / Games, BRONZE

PRESS

• Honda Cars Lightbulb – Cars, SILVER
• Honda Cars Fish  – Cars, SILVER
• Honda Cars Sweetcorn – Cars, SILVER

PORTLAND

• Agency of the year
• Independent agency of the year
• Runner-up direct agency of the year

BRANDED CONTENT & ENTERTAINMENT

• Coke Polar Bowl – Best Use or Integration of Digital Media, BRONZE

FILM

• P&G Best Job – Corporate Image, GOLD
• Chrysler Halftime America – Corporate Image, SILVER
• Old Spice Motorcycle (PDX + Sao Paulo) – Cosmetics Beauty,  BRONZE
• Nike I Would Run to You – Clothing, Footwear & Accessories, BRONZE
• P&G What I See – Corporate Image, BRONZE
• Old Spice Bounce – Viral Film, BRONZE
• Coca-Cola Polar Bowl – Interactive Film, BRONZE

FILM CRAFT

• P&G Best Job – Best Production Value, GOLD
• P&G Best Job – Art Direction, SILVER
• P&G Best Job – Direction, SILVER
• P&G Best Job – Cinematography, SILVER
• Levi's Legacy (Joint Editorial) – Editing, BRONZE
• Nike I Would Run To You – Best Use of Music, BRONZE

CYBER

• Old Spice Devastating Explosions – Cosmetics, Beauty & Toiletries, BRONZE
• Old Spice MANta Claus – Best Digitally Led Integrated Campaigns, BRONZE
• Old Spice Mano a Mano en el Bano – Best Digitally Led Integrated Campaigns,  BRONZE
• Old Spice Devastating Explosions – Best Video, BRONZE

DIRECT

• Coca-Cola Polar Bowl – Fast Moving Consumer Goods, GOLD
• Nike Back 4 the Future – Digital Response Websites, BRONZE
• Coca-Cola Polar Bowl – Social Media & Viral Marketing, BRONZE

RADIO

• Old Spice Look – Cosmetics Beauty, GOLD
• Old Spice Heart Tokens – Cosmetics Beauty, SILVER
• Old Spice Windows Down, Moods Up – Cosmetics Beauty, SILVER

PRESS

• Old Spice Action Hero – Cosmetics Beauty, SILVER
• Old Spice Rocker – Cosmetics Beauty, SILVER
• CREATIVE EFFECTIVENESS
• Chrysler Born of Fire,  EFFECTIVE
• Old Spice Response Campaign, SHORTLIST

MEDIA

• Coca-Cola Polar Bowl – Best Use of Screens, SILVER
• Old Spice Mano a Mano en el Bano – Best Use of Integrated Media, SHORTLIST

TITANIUM

• Old Spice Mano a Mano en el Bano, SILVER
• Coca-Cola Polar Bowl, SHORTLIST

NEW YORK
BRANDED CONTENT & ENTERTAINMENT

• Jordan The Explosive Game – Best Use or Integration of Experiential Events, BRONZE

FILM

• ESPN Shake On It  – Publications & Media, SILVER
• Jordan Love the Game  – Corporate Image, BRONZE
• ESPN The Name – Publications & Media, BRONZE

FILM CRAFT

• ESPN The Name – Script, BRONZE

OUTDOOR

• Jordan Melo Event – Digital Outdoor, SHORTLIST

AMSTERDAM

FILM

• Heineken Legendary Making of the Date (Amsterdam) – Short Format Internet Film, SILVER

I recently picked up a copy of this book, Imagine. How creativity works, by Jonah Lehrer.

The blurb on Amazon says:

The profound mysteries of creative thought have long intimidated the world's finest brains. How do you measure the imagination? How do you quantify an epiphany? These daunting questions led researchers to neglect the subject for hundreds of years. In Jonah Lehrer's ambitious and enthralling new book, we go in search of the epiphany. Shattering the myth of creative 'types', Lehrer shows how new research is deepening our understanding of the human imagination. Creativity is not a 'gift' that only some possess. It's a term for a variety of distinct thought processes that we can all learn to use more effectively.

It's an entertaining and sometimes enlightening read for anyone interested in the creative industries. I particularly enjoyed the chapters on Bob Dylan's creative process – like writing a "long piece of vomit" – and that of Pixar. "Talent is not enough. Talent fails every day…But no-one ever said making a good movie was easy…If it feels easy then you're doing it wrong…We know that screw-ups are an essential part of what we do here. That's why our goal is simple: we want to screw up as quicky as possible. We want to fail fast. And then we want to fix it. Together."

There's also a section in the book on Wieden + Kennedy. It's always a little weird to read about your own workplace in a book like this. "Can that really be us?" You wonder. Anyway, here's some of what Lehrer says about us:

Dan Wieden is cofounder of Wieden + Kennedy, one of the most innovatve and honoured ad agencies in the world. Wieden's firm has a reputation for designing unconventional campaigns, from the Levi's commercial featuring the voice of Walt Whitman to those yellow rubber bracelets that support Lance Armstrong's foundation.

I met Wieden at the W+K headquarters in the Pearl District of Portland, Oregon. The building is a former cold-storage factory that's been hollowed out. This means that the interior is mostly empty space, a soaring lobby framed by thick concrete walls and weathered pine beams. Wieden gives me a tour of the building as he explains his unorthodox approach to fostering group creativity…

While Dan believes in the virtue of such events (as team building exercises, pie-making competitions and pub crawls) he thinks they only work if the right people are present. For Dan. this is what creativity is all about: putting talented people in a room and letting them freely interact.'It really is that simple,' he says. 'You need to hire the best folks ad then get out of the way… What I've learned to look for is the individual voice. It might be an aesthetic, or a sentence style, or a way of holding the camera. But havung that unique voice is the one thing I can't teach. I can teach someone to write copy. I can show someone how to crop a photo. But I can't teach you how to have a voice. You either have something to say or you don't."

Wieden describes the challenge of advertising as finding a way to stay original in a world of cliches, avoiding the bikinis in beer ads and the racing coupes in car commercials. And that's why he's so insistent on hiring people who don't know anything about advertising. 'You need these weird fucks,' he says. 'You need people who won't make the same boring, predictable mistakes as the rest of us. And when those weirdos learn how things work and become a little less weird, then you need a new class of weird fucks. Of course, you also need some people who know what they're doing. But if you're in the creative business, then you have to be able to tolerate a certain level of, you know, weirdness.'

There's much more in the book.

Update 01/08/12:

I see here that the author has resigned from his job at The New Yorker and that the book is being withdrawn by its publishers following Lehrer's admission that he falsified quotes attributed to Bob Dylan. As far as I know, the quotes attributed to Dan Wieden above are accurate.