Ted might get his Liberal Party Ads up.

Ted might get his Liberal Party Ads up.

I know what Ben Coulsen will get...

http://www.bestadsontv.com/ad_details.php?id=12108

“Because the last thing we wanted was to destroy this classic tune from Midnight Cowboy. "

Isn't Ben too old?

I'm sure Ted will be pushing his Jetstar campaign too

OMG this list seriously bodes the question - Is Garth Agios, the News Limited guy, choosing the judges? Please, I and many, many others need to now how this list was put together

I prefer Ted's over 50 work for APIA. That woman presenter! whoa, down boy!

then again Ted might not

I reckon it's great to have someone like Ted on the jury at Cannes. It'll help to keep things grounded in reality.

As Mo told him many years ago, "while you and your adwanker mates are pissing in each other's pockets about how clever you are, the consumers are singing my jingles".

This industry needs a bit of reality. For example, I've just had a look at the CB Agency of the Year's work. I wonder how many teams Tonka, Super Glue and Hubba Bubba employ? Okay, it's good work, but aren't these the kind of briefs we give AWARD school students?

I'm not saying that briefs like this should be ignored. Indeed, they are fun to work on but they should be taken with a grain of salt when it comes to judging time.

Coulson & Dejan!!! The new guard. Having the pleasure of working with both of them I can say that they're both exceptionally talented and deserved recipients of such an honour.

Is that you again Monty, 2.18? Come on open up and tell us the truth. As Mo told him many years ago....have another martini with three Olives.

2:18.

Unpopular sentiments, perhaps. But bang on the money for mine. Show me the last brand that was built on the back of the kinds of ads lauded at award shows. There are very, very few, if any. Most of the brands that have been built in recent times have either been established on the back of the kinds of ads we creatives think are crap or they were built without advertising at all. It all nicely justifies our continued irrelevance to corporate Australia. I think it's high time a grumpy old creative like Horton was sitting at the back of the room calling it like it is.

No, 2:55, I'm flattered that you're still thinking of me despite my having departed the business over 2 years ago.

2:18 is not me.

But I rather tend to agree with everything he/she has written.

Love yous all,

Monty

Oh yeah, 2:18,

I totally agree, brands like Apple, Guiness, FedEx, Coke, are REALLY struggling. All those award winning ads are a total waste of time and had bugger all to do with the fact that these beautifully crafted ads promoting sometimes shitty products (eg miller lite) to customers making then famous is a TOTAL disconnect.

(sarcasm off)

Somebody is in the wrong industry, there's a difference between not fucking up and taking a risk and making your clients famous. I guess you're in the first category.

Has Dejan done any good radio recently?

A particularly strong jury across the board and it's good to see some new talented faces in the mix as well.

Go Ted!

Ahh, the timeless debate of creative awards leading to business success. I see everyone's point but I would have to agree that winning awards for work that was never asked for, or paid for by the client, is spoiling the credibility of awards to the outside world. No wander they think we are a bunch of wankers. Lets look at ourselves from the outside. So much work is a scam. What seperates advertising to hobby craft is the fact that advertising is about coming up with ideas that meet a strategic brief, not only make money for the agency but also don't cost the agency anything to make. All the client is probably involved in with much award work is just agreeing to run it once in some obscure local magazine. That's not an achievement. It takes skill, insight, teamwork with suits and planners to make and sell in awesome creative work to brief, makes money for agency, and the client happy to back. No awards should be given out just for pretty pictures that whlst are quite clever, is not advertising. I can't believe that so much effort and time goes into them. Award submissions should be accompanies by client signed off creative brief, a media plan with not just one placement on it, and some sort of evidence that the client had requested it in the first place. Come on industry, grow up. This isn't an arts and crafts fair, it's business.

I think you'll find that all the big awards at Cannes are won by big brands and big work. Ideas are more important than ever in this business. By the way, there is a lot of art and craft in our business. There's nothing wrong with that that and it goes hand in hand with bringing great ideas to life.

The agencies that will struggle are those who can't originate ideas that people want to seek out. Creative rules in this day and age.

Hey Monty,

If you left the business over 2 years ago as you say, what are you doing scouring the blog?

x x

8.55am Creative rules with integrity.

5:37pm - Do you seriously think advertising was the main reason why these brands/products you mentioned have become famous? Don't you think it has something to do with the fact these products are the best in their categories? Wake up. You are currently living in bull shit land. I could just imagine one of your rationales when presenting an idea.

i reckon good advertising and marketing can make or break a brand.

Well 9:40, it goes something like this:

I decided for the good of my sanity not to go back for another kicking after a particularly unpleasant 2005. Come to think of it, the whole 21st century in what used to be a fun business was pretty awful.

So I've been having a well deserved break.

But deciding not to work in advertising doesn't automatically and immediately mean you lose your fascination for it.

And as anyone who's reading this knows, the blog and its commentators are genuine entertainment.

Which, if you'll allow me to be rather cryptic, brings me to my new venture which will be launched soon.

It will be, to paraphrase Monty Python, something completely different.

Monty. x

7.24 PM:

Oh come on. You don't need to have done a lot of radio to know what a good idea is, and there are few more qualified from Australia to judge a good idea than Dejan. The whole concept of splitting work into copy and visual categories is near-sighted. Good writing and good art direction fall out of a good idea. Otherwise they wouldn't be copywriting and art direction; they'd be creative writing and design. What we do is all based on an idea - or at least it should be - and the jury for award shows like Cannes are selected on their ability to judge the best ideas. And with that in mind, Dejan is an obvious choice for any category.

Well done Dejan, really well deserved. And well done to you too Ben. Two talented, nice guys who have earned their place on the jury through the quality of their own work. You'll both do Australia proud I'm sure. (Nothing against the other guys, I just don't know you well enough to comment.)

An unkind person might say that Dejan, with his starting point as an art director is indeed not ideally suited to judge radio.

But then, radio does suffer from a chronic lack of art direction.

Shows like Cannes are going to get more important than ever for clients. It's no longer just for the creative teams. Without ideas that your client can engage with - a brand is left stranded in a sea of ads on television with the hope that someone will see them instead of seeking them out. If I was a marketer, i'd be checking out the work that helps make brands famous. The argument that it's just arty farty creative stuff no longer sticks. The audience has taken control and the agencies and clients who decide not to embrace will be left out. Go register I say.

Surely creative people on this blog aren't arguing that creative work doesn't sell product? If you are, then get out of the biz. However it's quite a different point about the proliferation of scam-ish ads, often generated by large agency networks, that populate most award shows. It all makes us all look like idiots and makes our clients distrust our obsession with awards. Bring on the highly creative and, more importantly, real work!

Has 7:28 done any good radio recently?

12:12 is right.

I'm sure the person that started the debate at 2:18 was only trying to say that he/she doesn't want the term "award-winning creative" to become synonymous with "clever little ads for clients who don't really do that much advertising".

If we allow that to happen, all we do is lessen the value of an award.

What the hell is happening here? I had suits in my office briefing radio and saying I just need the writers.

Then people here suggesting that an Art Director has nothing to do with radio.

Are we going back to the pre Bernbach era of Writers slipping ideas under Art Directors' doors for them to do the pictures.

I hope not but it's a worry, especially when people on this blog, who I assume are the younger elements of the industry, start suggesting it.

It's like saying writers have nothing to do with the visuals on ads.

Hear hear, 12:12, 5:01 and anyone else who understands and supports this view.

Now all we need to do is spread this gospel without fear of being publicly stoned by the awards-at-any-cost brigade, which unfortunately seems to be the dominant species, at least amongst CB bloggers.

Unfortunately it's extremely unfashionable to question the abuse of awards. These trinkets have assumed such a level of importance in the minds of many creatives that something which should be a reward for good work has become a cancer on the industry and on the credibility of the creative community.

It's easy to become obsessed by awards, as Ted was in his earlier days, and as many including myself were, and lose all perspective about the type of work we produce and who it's targetted at.

Perhaps it's something you only grow out of with age and maturity.

It seems to me as someone who won a lot of awards a while ago that the work which wins these days is mainly incomprehensible and assumes that the viewer or reader is sufficiently fascinated by the puzzle presented to them that they'll take the time and trouble to try and figure it out.

A good test of most of the current award-winning work and that which aspires to awards is to see if you can understand it in miniature form, for instance as it typically appears in Campaign Brief magazine. I'm buggered if I can figure out more than about 10% of it, so what hope have the punters got: ie, the target market?

In my day at least we helped the poor bastards out by having a headline you could read, and usually have a good chuckle at.

Monty