The new year was coming around. We needed to come up with an idea for our Leo Burnett Calendar, which was to be given out to creatives, clients and friends (harsh judges, to say the least). We needed an idea that would engage them, inspire them and one that spoke in their own language.

Sticking to our roots, the black pencil (as Leo Burnett once said, "It takes a big pencil to create a big idea"), we created a calendar consisting of 12 pencils, where each pencil was banded with the days of the month, whereby the calendar's owner had to work and sharpen the pencil everyday in order to get to the next day; communicating the fundamental advertising notion, that to write down one good idea, you need to write a whole lot of mediocre ones first.

During the two first months of this year at least 50% of the calendar's recipients shared a story of how the calendar dared them to keep thinking; which is rare for a calendar in the ad business, and we feel a success not only in terms of buzz, but as an inspirational idea making tool.