Garden Grove...

At the end of two days of voting, this group has managed to score only two paltry ads over a 7. Not a good sign. Although our revote list is growing, only rarely have we had such a dearth of 7+ work halfway through the meeting. The numbers would seemingly imply that this is a really tough, critical jury, but that’s not quite true – the work simply hasn’t merited high scores. We saw most of the work from the Americas today, and waded through some dismal predictably uninspired work for a few clients whose names shall remain obscured to protect the guilty parties involved… This group has been keeping me really busy typing out their rather elaborate suggestions to improve the sub-par work, and although it’s encouraging to see the spirit of constructive empowerment, I’m growing a bit weary of being in that room… the Sun was out today, which is probably why I was getting restless. Anyhow, after a long day of discussing and debating the merits of the work, about 15 of us boarded a bus to go visit Miami’s Fairchild Botanical Gardens, on the recommendation of Alexandre Okada, LB/Latin America’s Regional Creative Director. The gardens were featuring an art installation of blown glass sculptures, which he claimed were not to be missed. It was all the more surprising then, that he missed the trip, apparently because he had better things to do. Hmmmph. Well, after a tedious 40 minute bus ride through rush hour, we arrived at the Gardens and spent a token hour circulating through the expansive compound, taking pictures, observing the greenery, taking in the spectacle of the blown glass sculptures intertwined with vines and leaves… Here are a few pics from that trip…







Check this plant out - it blooms once every 3 years, and it happened to be open while we were there. Nicknamed "Old Stinky", Audrey III is an Amorphophallus titanium, a smelly plant about 7 feet tall that emits a wave of odor reminiscent of rotten meat every 3 to 4 minutes...