LIA presents a special award to Morgan Spurlock’s documentary POM Wonderful Presents: The Greatest Movie Ever Sold

Morgan Spurlock’s documentary POM Wonderful Presents: The Greatest Movie Ever Sold won a specially created award at LIA 2011. In the spirit in which Morgan made the film, JetBlue Airways has sponsored this award.

Upon the recommendation of The NEW Category Jury, LIA decided to create a special award, aptly named, “The Greatest Award Ever Sold.”  This special Statue was presented to Morgan Spurlock, the creator of “Pom Wonderful Presents: The Greatest Movie Ever Sold” – a documentary about product placement and branding, paid for entirely by product placement.  The movie details the process of branding and getting sponsors on board and marketing deployed to promote the film, which in turn promotes the products and the marketing of the products used to promote the film.

 “The NEW Category is protean by its nature. Things that once were ‘new’ become established channels or concepts,” explained Faris Yakob, Jury President for The NEW Category. The NEW is, therefore, the category for things that don’t fit in other categories – mutations that hint at possible evolutionary routes.  This is why Morgan Spurlock entered his documentary film The Greatest Movie Ever Sold into it but, even in a category for things that don’t fit elsewhere, it didn’t seem to fit.  Pom Wonderful presents The Greatest Movie Ever Sold is a documentary about product placement, paid for entirely by product placement in it, which details the process of getting sponsors on board and the marketing deployed to promote the film, which promotes the products, and the marketing of the products used to promote the film.  It didn’t seem to sit comfortably alongside the other ideas we were judging, but it did seem interesting and directional for the industry to discuss and highlight. Therefore, in the spirit of recognizing that, we created a special award to recognize it, outside of the NEW category.”

LIA is constantly listening to what the industry has to say and this is just another demonstration of the kind of commitment they have to promoting anything that elevates the industry to a new level.

“I was very pleased when The NEW Category judges approached me to discuss the possibility of creating a special award for this documentary,” stated Barbara Levy, President of LIA. “It not only showed how dedicated they were to the judging process, but it also gave us the opportunity to step out-of- the-box in the Awards world. We had the opportunity to showcase something new that didn’t belong anywhere.  So in that same spirit, we created a Special Award – The Greatest Award Ever Sold. In keeping with the theme of the winning documentary of product sponsorship, I would like to thank JetBlue Airways for sponsoring this award.”