D&AD Diary: Richard Muntz on the Radio jury

JWT Melbourne executive creative director Richard Muntz represented Australia on the D&AD Radio Advertising jury. Here’s his report, exclusive to CB, from London’s Olympia Exhibition Centre.

All award shows are not create equal.  

“The toughest award show on earth” isn’t part of the judges’ briefing. You won’t find it perfectly kerned in a sans serif font in bold in the judges kit. And it certainly doesn’t come from the mouth of D&AD CEO Tim Lindsay’s mouth (pictured below). 

It’s a case of every judge musing to themselves, “I never had it easy getting my nom or yellow pencil, so why should the punks entering this year be treated any differently.”  And this unspoken judges’ imperative holds true year after year. (See second from bottom pic).

There is one point they do make very clear: a great idea isn’t enough. It has to be flawlessly executed. And when you have the legendary designer Nev Brody as your President, it’s doubly daunting. Crafters from all disciplines take note.    

Radio and not radio.  

The best work fell into two categories:

1. Truly great radio; original idea, expertly crafted, well paced, with barely a T or C in the script. Listening to the finalists in the over 30 second category had me tearing up the craft of advertising writing’s death notice.  

2. The best discussions in the judges “jumping castle” (we all sat in white inflatable rooms) all started with the same riddle, “Is this right to be in the radio category?”  The answer, after much discussion, was invariably yes. Just as Orson Wells’ ‘War of the Worlds’ was a prank, these ideas subverted the traditions of radio to create some of the freshest work I’ve seen.  

After judging branded content at AWARD at the beginning of this year, the originality of thought in the radio category I saw over the last couple of days, made the thoroughly ‘new’ category of BC look as stale as left-over Christmas ham in February.