Dot-com Brio Enhances Clio

The Clio Awards are the advertising world's answer to the Oscars, and they were handed out in New York on Thursday.

The day after, Early Show Anchor Bryant Gumbel spoke to critic Barbara Lippert of Adweek magazine and took a peek at a few of the winners.

Among them were:

• "Whassup: True," for Budweiser. Why has "Whassup?" become such a sensation?

  "Well, it's a better conversation starter than 'Drop the chelupa,'" quips Lippert. "It's a cool way of saying hello. The reason the commercials have resonance: There is an honesty about them. They are all friends for 15 years. They are all performers and directors and writers. they made a film called True. The agency got a hold of it and worked with them on the commercials."

  The Clio Awards are international. Overseas, "Whassup?" plays well because, according to Lippert, Europeans as interested in American culture. "Anything that gives them a leg up on being cool, Europeans will like," she adds.

• "Extra Soft Milk Chocolate" from Norway. Because the ad shows a male dancer accidentally kicking a woman's teeth out, this ad has been banned in Great Britain, and Lippert says it probably wouldn't play well in the U.S. either. In general, she explains, the European standard for television commercials is different.

  "In Germany and France, there is more nudity, more openness about bodily functions," she adds. "With all of the dot-com advertising, we're getting there. Also, they have had a lot less advertising than we have had. We have been bombarded for 40 years."

• "Wazoo" from E-Trade, in which a hospital emergency team works with a patient who is diagnosed as having money coming out of - well, an interesting place on the body.
• "Ransom" from E-Campus, in which a young man poses as his own kidnapper to phone in a ransom demand to his parents.

  Commercials don't necessarily need humor to work, says Lippert, but anything helps that makes the viewers like an ad and make them want to see it again.

"The best thing advertisers can do," concludes Lippert, "is to do something that is funny and memorable, that surprises you, that is intelligent."