New York-based advertising agency Anomaly has won an Outdoor Lion Grand Prix award for their campaign for denim and clothing company Diesel. Images for the campaign were shot by photographers Kristin Vicari, Melodie McDaniel and Chris Buck.

Anomaly are among a small contingent of American agencies earning recognition at the Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival this week, and they are the only U.S. agency to win a top prize in any of the awards categories thus far (awards announcements continue through Sunday).

The winning ads feature the tagline “Be Stupid,” with bold copy that makes pronouncements like, “Smart may have the brains, but stupid has the balls,” or, “Smart has the plans, but stupid has the stories,” or simply, “We’re with stupid.”

The ads espouse the idea that “stupid” people are in fact the most innovative, or at least that they have the most fun until personal injury makes them smarter.

Photographs of young people doing an array of humorous and ill-advised things—flashing breasts at a CCTV camera (see above); body-slamming each other; trying to fit too many people on bicycles; posing for photographs with wild animals—illustrate the point.

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 24th, 2010 at 7:21 pm ET by Conor Risch and is filed under Advertising, Business, Contests.