Wieden+Kennedy Pie Making contest

This is one of my favorite days of the year, the W+K pie contest. As everyone knows, Dan Wieden loves pie, and would rather eat any pie over a piece of cake. So, every year we have a pie making contest that is judged by Mr. Wieden. This year was a little lean in the number of pies, there were only 60; in years past there have been over 80. However, there was still a lot of enthusiasm. The entire agency gathers in the atrium to participate. All the pies are arranged on tables in the middle of the atrium and there are five initial judges per category. If you are are a category winner, you go to the head table where Dan chooses a winner.


There are a lot of people that are very serious about pie making. In fact Allison Bick, who won three years ago, made a pie even though she has left W+K and now works for Nike. There were eight categories this year: berry, apple, specialty apple, wild card, chocolate, pumpkin, cheesecake and one other I can't remember. I had the misfortune of judging the cheesecake category. Most people do not believe that cheesecakes should be allowed in the pie contest, and that was obvious by the two lame entries we got. We did not give a first place, so cheesecake did not get to the top table.

Once the category winners were all announced, we got down to the serious business. Dan stepped up to choose the overall winner. Usually this takes a while as he goes back and forth tasting each one a few times. Not today. As soon as he tasted it, he declared the pumpkin pie the winner. It was a shock to everyone, but I have to say I tried it and it was an awesome pie..