Stupid gets the Grand Prix.

In light of Diesel's "Be Stupid" campaign getting the Grand Prix nod in the outdoor category at Cannes, I thought it prudent to revisit the campaign.

I'm actually pleased it won, a feeling I would never have imagined experiencing when it first appeared months ago. Back then I thought it was an inane, frivolous piece of work open to the obvious charge, "Of course you have to be stupid to pay hundreds of dollars for a pair of jeans!"

So why the change of heart? What I've come to realize in the time since the campaign debuted is that the folks at Anomaly/NY and Diesel were far-sighted to enough to see that "stupid" has cultural resonance like never before. And so they cheekily made a virtue out of it.

For starters, they understood that stupid is the antidote to smart. And smarty hasn't been doing too well lately. Take the two major crisis of the last couple of years, the financial meltdown and the oil spill in the gulf.

The financial crisis in large part was a direct result of smart people getting way ahead of the game. Left to their own devices they conceived complex products that only a few could understand. In other words, smart unregulated leads to very bad things.

Conversely, the mess in the gulf, so far, hasn't been solved despite the smartest minds working on it. It's become so desperate that advertising agencies and actors are grasping for straws. Smart can't solve everything.

And it doesn't stop there. Cars may be smart but most still have negative impacts on the environment. Phones may be smarter, but they haven't made our lives easier. Rather they deluge us with excess information that distracts and interrupts. Bombs may be smarter but we're no closer to finding a smarter peace.

Smart then can be evil, and smart can be impotent. Stupid, on the other hand, is innocent and contagious. Take the all important social media space. Stupid makes up a large part of the conversations in it.

There are stupid pets videos via YouTube, stupid human engagement via Chatroulette, and stupid insignificant dialogue via twitter. Just the other day I was pleased to read on twitter that @heavho went the bathroom. Hope it was a number 2, there's nothing worse than feeling irregular.

The thing is that this kind of stupidity is very now and very human. Exactly where a brand wants to be. Dare I say it, but it took a very smart strategy to come up with stupid. And the best part is that no world economies were harmed in the process.