Mumbrella back-flip? two journos heading to Spikes Asia despite Burrowes’ anti-scam stance
Today’s Australian’s Media section reports that, after several desperate pleas and knockbacks, two Mumbrella journalists are finally being allowed to attend the Spikes Asia Festival, a joint venture between the Cannes Lions and Haymarket starting this week in Singapore.
Which is obviously of interest to the Australian, as News Corp Australia is the official Australian representative of Spikes Asia as well as Cannes.
Says Media: It’s only been two months since Mumbrella’s Tim Burrowes made the following sanctimonious statement: “It’s time for us to leave the tent. We can’t change the system, but we don’t have to be a part of it.” Media is referring to Burrowes’ ‘The Cannes Lions: count me out’ post on July 30.
According to Media: Spikes Asia has the same rules and jury system as Cannes Lions so why is it OK to attend Spikes Asia? Could it be Mumbrella Asia is struggling to make an impact in the market and the festival is the only game in town? As acclaimed adman Bill Bernbach once said: “A principle is not a principle unless it costs you money.”
On Thursday CB also heard that Mumbrella was heading to Spikes Asia and out of interest asked Burrowes (right) for a comment – which we chose not to publish at the time – given that, if he thinks Cannes is scammy, surely by his definition, the Spikes is scam central. “We only ever talked about our position on Cannes Lions. I understand that the ownership structure of Spikes is different,” responded Burrowes via text.
Burrowes then referred us to Mumbrella Australia editor Alex Hayes for further comment. Hayes texted CB he was busy and would get back to us with a comment later in the day but as of this morning nothing had come through.
Spikes Asia has confirmed that journalist Miranda Ward from Mumbrella Australia and Mumbrella Asia editor Robin Hicks (both pictured left) are heading to Spikes Asia.
CB will of course also be there so look out for daily reports on CB Australia and CB Asia starting tomorrow.
31 Comments
Can’t imagine them getting many invites to the agency parties. So what happens when they report on the first scam campaign (shouldn’t be too hard to find according to the Mumbrella criteria)? Will Spikes revoke their press accreditation? You can bet the Guinness campaign from BBDO Singapore they accused of being scam at Cannes will get a Spike or three.
He’s got no idea how much damage he’s caused to his own brand.
The thing about the Asian ad industry is they all talk to each other. You attack one, you attack them all, is my experience up here (and I’ve been here 20 years). They also do not want to lose face so if you embarrass someone in Asia they don’t say anything, they just never deal with you again.
Great piece on the part of the Australian and Campaign Brief. Two publications that no doubt love a good story, but also take a much higher ground in supporting the creative industry. Mumbrella now deserve a taste of their own medicine. One moment they’re on their moralistic high ground, then as soon as it pleases them they start contradicting themselves. Tim and his team need to take a long hard look at themselves… They have a long road ahead of them if they’re to garner the support of creatives in our creative industry.
Stay clear of Mumbrella journos, both pictured above, at any of the parties /events, if they’re even allowed to attend. They are the smiling assassins of the creative industry. I’d hate to be them right now, no agency creative leader would want to be seen talking to them at the Spikes.
Proof, if ever it was needed, that TIm is full of it. He overreached with his misguided and naive scam campaign and is now walking away with his tail between his legs. And just look at how he is doing the awards for the Publishers Australia. How can he accept a job to promote print publishers after undermining their businesses with free job ads and aggregating their content? Anything for a dime.
Great quote from Darren, “A principle is not a principle until it costs money.” Mumbrella are paying alright. It may not be directly obvious to them now, but this will be a slow death of many cuts over time… Burrowes, Hayes and his crew are going to need some new thermal underwear as its going to get cold, real cold.
Good on Terry Savage, he is clearly the bigger man here. I mean Tim Burrowes personally and professionally went after Terry, took him to task even when he responded to all of his questions. Good on you Terry, you’re showing Mumbrella what real integrity is all about. Hopefully they will take note.
Totally agree with Bigger Man. Pretty disgusting to see the way in which Tim and Alex smeared Terry and the awards with a self-important and extremely naive campaign. How embarassing they begged to go to Spikes and how cowardly to send two journos in their place.
“In a world rife with scam ads, one man finds the courage to saddle up his high horse once more time. And, this time, Asia will be on the receiving end as he waves his wand of righteous indignation against the evil ad industry.”
Good on CB and the Oz for taking this hypocrite to task.
So presumably all the posters above agree with doing scams?
@scamtastic, no one is defending scams. The problem is that it was shown that the Aussie ads Mumbrella attacked weren’t scams, neither was the BBDO Singapore campaign for Guinness.
Yes, let’s continue to celebrate scam and also continue our slow walk into being completely irrelevant.
Why isn’t anyone talking about what matters? If it’s scam, it’s not advertising. It’s art. These are supposed to advertising awards. Supposed to be real clients, real problems and real campaigns created to solve them.
Maybe he stepped to far in his approach, but why is no one talking about the core issue?
What scams? Really? Proven not to be scams? I must have missed that, got a link?
Sure, Mumbrella behaved like a bunch of tools. However, what I remember out of the process is the names of 2 big multinational agencies who I won’t be looking to work with in the foreseeable future.
The ads in question were authorised by their respective clients and verified as legit by the Cannes organisers – that’s been reported by Mumbo himself, which should have been the end of the story, as they are the rules. Problem is Mumbo didn’t like that answer and continued to accuse several clients, agencies and Cannes of creating and condoning scam.
@Hey Ben
That doesn’t mean they weren’t scams. They obviously were.
They just managed to bend the rules enough to get away with it.
I’m not against Tim calling out scam, just against the fact he printed libellous and professionally damaging things not just against agencies but, also individuals – with very little retraction once the things he said were proven untrue.
The ads met the judging criteria of the awards show and weren’t scam by any true definition of the word. He should be taken to task and thank god someone is doing it.
if anyone here is going to be honest (seems everyones drinking the kool aid) they’ll know the ads called out were scam. perhaps not by definition (face it the clients had as much to lose) but definitely in spirit.
these are insulting to creatives who bust a nut day in and day out on real briefs, that run in legitimate publications, numerous times.
the creative industry should be dark on the lazy scammers, not a magazine for doing its job and calling them on their bullshit.
hopefully soon effectiveness will become a deciding factor when awarding all ad creativity.only then will the cheats be shown for what they are.
Now they’re publishing confidential, off the record texts. Who in the industry would trust them now? I know I’ve been burned a few times with comments taken out of context. Even some of the simplest campaign PR releases end up twisted on Mumbrella.
I just don’t get the derision being shovelled at Mumbrella here for… being against scam award entries.
How do you mock someone for uncovering facts (and that’s all they are, facts about when ads really ran and where) that people with power and influence in the industry found very very uncomfortable?
Who on earth goes on record with bluster and pride as being pro-scam? Well, plenty it seems. See above. Talk about “damaging your brand”. Hopefully you guys end up on the wrong side of history.
The problem for Mumbo is the lack of facts. The fact is all ads Mumbo questioned were officially cleared by Cannes, end of story, as someone above said. If they weren’t, fair enough, but the fact is they were cleared by the umpire and along the way Mumbo defamed a lot of great creatives, agencies and clients.
I think the biggest issue now is that Mumbrella can’t be trusted with off the record info as all good journos are. Can’t imagine an agency or media boss taking them into his or her confidence from now on for fear of it being aired for all to see at a later date.
You are right.
That being said, I think most agencies realised that Tim was a hater a couple of months ago and stopped feeding him tidbits.
McDonalds
Ad run once
Rouse Hill Times
Last day of Cannes entry period
Never seen again
Sounds legit
Wow. You really don’t get it yet? “..the fact is they were cleared by the umpire…”
But that IS the whole point. The umpire is clearing campaigns that aren’t real “campaigns”.
They are campaigns in no normal sense of the meaning of the word “campaigns”. The entrants are loophole jumpers… And the problem is as much the umpire’s duplicitous complicity, as the players. They all stink.
I fucking hate scam ads, and having won all of my awards legitimately I think the fuckers who do shitty little print ads and create a career off them should be shot.
But for a trade publication to call them illegitimate when they actually are legitimate entries is against the rules. It’s like a try that’s been won off a forward pass. We all know it’s bullshit and the pricks that did those ads should be flamed, but the ref allowed it, therefore you can’t call bullshit on it.
For the record, I tried to scam once in the 00’s… it didn’t work out. Hence my hatred for scam.
Tim might have ‘gone too far’ and come across a bit sanctimonious at times, but the fact is he was calling out a legitimate issue that the entire industry has turned a blind eye to forever, because it suits us.
We think of scam as pretty innocent, but the reality is that it affects agencies’ showing at awards, which affects their rankings in things like AdNews and the Gunn Report, which affects their ability to get onto pitch lists and to win business. In other words, it has a real measurable financial impact.
No client in their right mind would award an agency their business based on a couple of print ads, but they would consider an agency based on their rankings.
I’ve spoken to plenty of potential employees who base their agency choice on their rankings too, many of which are based on their performance at award shows.
So at a very basic level, scam is fraud. It’s a lie. It denies legitimate operators the opportunity to take a shot at big accounts, denies them the opportunity to hire good people, and so on.
Obviously there are shades of scam – some not approved by clients at all, some run in the Rouse Hill Times the day before the final due date, not targeted at any legitimate customer of the client, not following any sane media strategy, not an effective use of dollars in any true sense. So, not “technically” scam, but pretty scammy.
If the ACCC or anyone could actually be bothered investigating, I think they’d blow a massive hole in the entire industry. How comfortable would your agency be with someone forensically investigating your last five years of award entries? Ever quietly omitted an uncomfortable result?
The reality is, our bar is incredibly low. If you want to have any legitimacy in the scientific community, you run double-blind trials, you have peer-reviewed papers, and so on. Why? Because they know people can bias themselves. And even then there are cheats. Planners even talk to our clients about behavioural economics and the various biases all humans are subject to.
But what are our criteria? We write our own entries, we create an award video that conveniently misses out the failings of our campaign and highlights the successes, show a few pictures of newspaper headlines, quote the best results, use percentages because it makes the results look better, and then ask the people who can also benefit (the clients) to sign them off… I mean, come on. It’s pretty ridiculous.
And now we’re all turning on someone who actually points this out, because it doesn’t suit us. Honestly, is this not quite obviously bullshit?
A principle isn’t a principle unless it costs you money, according to one commenter. So … yeah, good point. Which principle was that exactly?
This article is about the hypocracy of Mumbo, after vowing to never send journos to Cannes ever again unless rules were changed, then begging and finally being allowed to send two journos to Spikes Asia, which has exactly the same structure and rules as Cannes, and is half owned by Cannes. The reason he is doing that is that without attending Spikes Asia, Mumbrella Asia may as well pack up and head back to OZ.
As to CB, remember they have been scam-busters for decades. I recall Lynchy’s ‘Scams in Cannes’ stories going back to the early 90s, and particularly his exposure of the Guinness scam in Singapore (the campaign won three Gold Lions I recall). It turned out that the client wasn’t actually Guinness, it was a little ad pub in Singapore.
And who can forget Campaign Brief’s massive exposure of a certain ECD at APL Sydney. He was fired a year later when he entered the totally scammy print campaign for Taronga Zoo.
Or CB’s ‘Grand Larsony’ expose of the Bug Bomb fly spray campaign that won the Outdoor Grand Prix for Grey New Zealand.
When print was king in OZ (and scams and ripoffs were everywhere), it was CB who always exposed them. CB even had a regular Deja View page, so don’t say CB is for scams.
The thing is these days, largely because of CB, there are very few examples of scam in Australia. Most OZ agencies do brilliant, integrated campaigns for big clients, in fact we lead the world, which is is always championed by CB.