ivan's blog

Before I start my rant, let me say that I love award shows. They generate the best ideas in the industry and they take advertising forward. Award shows also bring attention to the best talent and a great occasion to celebrate ourselves.

However, there are several things wrong with them and they should change to make them promote creative values even stronger. When I'm talking about reforms, I refer to reforms to our own AotW Awards as well.

Here are the four things I consider needs change:

1. Effectiveness isn't considered

Effie award winning creative work.

Most award show jury members do not take effectiveness into consideration. While creativity is something very subjective and hard to measure precisely, there is one aspect of an advertising campaign that is possible to measure objectively. Effectiveness can be measured by return on investment. Let's put on the table how much profit did you make for spending each advertising dollar. Did the campaign raise brand awareness or perceived value measurably? Such numbers have been measured by all large brands for years. Why aren't they influencing the award show results at all?

One might argue that award shows are about creativity and not business. However we should not forget that the process of advertising is only complete with it's audience. It's mass art that supposed to be understood by the target. If only the only people who get it are insiders and the jury it failed to do its job and it can't be categorized as good advertising. It still can be great conceptual art, but then we should call the award shows art competitions, not advertising competitions.

My suggestion is that ROI is taken into consideration when judging creative and if an ad is counter productive or generates negative ROI it should never be awarded regardless how "creative" it is.

The company known for having “Probably the Best Beer in the World,” has announced the winner for the “Probably the Best Mate in the World” competition. Carlsberg Canada yesterday announced that Wesley Watt will be taking his entourage on a VIP weekend to Las Vegas. “This is absolutely amazing!” said Wesley. “It was some serious competition. I’m still in shock that I won and I can’t wait to party in Vegas!” When asked who he was taking on the trip, Wesley said “Not sure yet…maybe I’ll hold my own Best Mate competition!”

Becky Kwiatkowski, Brands Marketing Manager for Carlsberg Canada Inc. said “This has been a complete success and has greatly surpassed our expectations of how far the competitors would take this challenge. It has achieved our goal in compelling and engaging consumers while still enhancing awareness of Carlsberg as a premium import brand. GJP understood what we needed to do and they made it happen.”

"We're People — Wanker" reads the campaign, which was created a day after the highly controversial Wrangler "We are animals" campaign won the most prestigious Cannes Lions Press Grand Prix award. Clearly people are divided about the Wrangler campaign and either feel offended by it's message or the lack of. I personally like the campaign, I think it works. And, I like the humor of the spoof as well. Good work!

Ads of the World has been assigned the #2 position in the Advertising blogs Ultimate rank by blogrank. I'm really happy about this and will work on becoming number one. Thank you for your support and ideas on making this site what it is.

Also, let me congratulate to all the blogs taking top scores! Good job!

Joe Sedelmaier

New York, NY – June 18, 2009: The 2009 New York Festivals Advertising Awards, honoring “The World’s Best Advertising” will present iconic commercial director Joe Sedelmaier and legendary advertising creative Neil French with NYF Lifetime Achievement Awards. The NYF Lifetime Achievement Award recipients will be honored in separate ceremonies during the inaugural New York Festivals International Advertising World Tour.

Joe Sedelmaier, the brilliant award winning commercial director known for his quirky humor and off beat casting for client’s such as FedEx, Wendy’s and Alaska Air, will be presented with a Lifetime Achievement Award at the Chicago launch of the seven city 2009 World Tour. Sedelmaier’s hysterical, instantly recognizable commercials include Fed Ex’s “Fast Talking Man” and Wendy’s “Where’s the Beef.” His quintessential comedic point of view hit a nerve with audiences while lambasting the workaholic corporate culture of the 70s and 80s. The comic genius has garnered countless international awards, was inducted into the New York Art Directors Hall of Fame, and most recently was an official selection in the Sundance Film Festival for his film “OpenMinds.”

Crispin Porter + Bogusky (CP+B) (see work here), an MDC Partners firm, announced today that they are expanding their European base of operations with the acquisition of renowned Swedish digital agency, Daddy. Currently CP+B has service offices in London, Spain and Germany but will now count Gothenburg, Sweden as its first creative hub and factory within Europe. This is a true launch of CP+B Europe with Gothenburg as the center of European operations. The move strengthens CP+B’s global presence and allows them to better serve their current global clients, Burger King and Microsoft, as well as pursue new business with global demands.

Subscriptions is a feature on AotW that allows you to be notified by email when certain content is updated on the site.

This subscription feature has been updated on Ads of the World today to make it fully customizable to your needs. Please take time to read what the current system does and how you can modify it to you liking.

It's increasingly more important for all parties (advertiser, agency, media) to deliver ads to reader that are relevant. And, in the near future I feel relevancy will drive the industry.

Traditionally good media planners knew where to place ads to make sure readers are interested. This method is not very precise, but this is what off-line media could offer for a long time.

If you're out of touch with your inner creativity, but need to come up with something creative, just visit: http://stealourideas.tumblr.com/

Is the Wrath of Cannes a bitter response to the self-congratulating, glad-handing, marblebag-wearing, Dom-swilling, bronzer-slathered soirees that fester up on the beach in Cannes?

Now more than ever, yes. And make no mistake, Wrath of Cannes’ creators—indie agency Woods Witt Dealy & Sons—would rather be there.

But due to unprecedented layoffs, agency budget cuts, management fear of the perception of extravagance, and plain disinterest, Wrath of Cannes resonates this year more than ever.

2009 is kicking our industry’s ass. It’s time you kicked back with a foolish, boozy, pointless celebration of the best work your battered but too-dumb-to-quit souls can muster.

Visit www.wrathofcannes.com for more info (before you dive in, don’t forget to roll over the “firing squad” videos on the homepage).

We will collect here all the videos AotW users want to post. Feel free to enter your YouTube video URL in the comments and I will put into this post.

Whether because of economic circumstances or technological developments, agencies are changing. As we steer into a different genre of advertising, both structures and roles must evolve, says Intermarkets' Siddhartha Banerjee.

It’s a lazy Friday afternoon and, for once, the sun isn't playing its usual game of hide and seek. Instead, it's raining outside - which is very unusual for this time of year. But since the entire world seems to be taking unexpected turns lately, we can't blame Mother Nature for joining in.

Take advertising, for example. All agencies are suddenly suffering. Clients are using the recession to try to reduce fees, and many agencies have made multiple redundancies. Others have enforced pay-cuts and frozen recruitment; essentially everyone is battening down the hatches, pitching like crazy and working hard to maintain their existing clients. And in this turmoil, we will slowly but surely abolish the agency pyramid structure.

With a challenging economy, many marketers are cutting budgets and don’t have the ability to tap into seasoned marketing talent. Addis Creson has put together a top ten list of tips that marketers should consider when creating an ad.

Great ads have one thing in common. They sell things. Things like products, services, ideas or lifestyles. If they don’t do this directly, they are memorable enough to influence a consumer at the time he or she makes a purchase.

Bad ads are brand poison. If you go public with a half-baked concept, a forgettable headline, or a me-too message, chances are the ad will have the opposite effect you intended. It will drive consumers away. Even worse, it will drive them to the competition.

Below are 10 principles to keep in mind when creating an ad. Read them before, during, and after you have created your ad. Make them your checklist. And remember, every ad represents not just a product or feature or price, but what your brand promises.

Sorry for the relative slowness and temporary issues with AotW. We are aware of the problems and working on fixing them. We should be able to solve most issues within days. Sorry about it and thanks for your kind patience.

Here is a letter I received from Fabio Fernandes / President and CD or F/Nazca Saatchi & Saatchi:

In 2009, F/Nazca will not submit its pieces to any festival that charges registration fees.

Our decision is in line with a broader objective for the agency in 2009—to focus on the qualification of our professionals, their well-being, agency growth, expansion of our facilities and double our attention on everything that is really the core of our business.

F/Nazca has absolutely nothing against advertising awards and does not agree with those that find them irrelevant or harmful to the business. To the contrary, the agency owes much of its reputation to the visibility reached through these local and international contests, which have, consistently and frequently, recognized F/Nazca’s creative quality.

Therefore, our decision merely reflects our feeling that 2009 should be a year to channel our resources to that which will more rapidly turn F/Nazca into an even bigger agency, even more professional, even more human and, because of that, even more wanted by advertisers and talented professionals in our market.

Next year, we will resume participation in festivals with all our strength, as we have always done. Because we are very intense in everything we do.

Fabio Fernandes – President / Creative Director

Communication Department
F/Nazca Saatchi & Saatchi
Cacaia/Adriana
+ 55 11 3059 4907/ 4902

What can I say? During these times of economic recession and wide-spread lay-offs this is a very good strategy.

Free is good! AotW is free. And if you get to the front page of AotW you can get an award for free as well!

We tried to create a simplified design that allows the content stand out more. Allows for a better and faster browsing experience overall. (appr. 40% faster page generation times.)

Surely, it will take a few days to get used to it. I realize that change is always difficult to deal with. But, I hope you will like the new design on long term.

At this moment it's not 100% complete, but we're working on it. I'm sure you will find some bugs here and there. Please be so kind to report any problems or requests in comments.

Ads of the World is also twittering: http://twitter.com/adsoftheworld
Come an follow us, we'll follow you back! :)

I would like to thank CUOMA Design Studio, a graphic design studio based in Argentina who secured this twitter account for our use. Check out their site: http://www.cuoma.com/

Please comment here if you use twitter with your address!

You may have noticed a new menu point on the left: News, delivered by AgencySpy.

AgencySpy delivers breaking news and inside information from Madison Avenue and beyond. It reports on account wins and losses, new campaigns and the industry’s revolving door in an often irreverent but always unvarnished way. The sources are the very people making the decisions affecting the global ad industry every day.

You must have noticed the point next to member names. This is a humble attempt to reward those who are active on the site. You gain points for the following activities:
• Voting — 1 point
•• Commenting — 2 points
••• Creating a forum topic — 3 points

The points were added to your account retroactively, so all your past participation is correctly noted to the last point. In the future we have plans to introduce more features that are related to points.

In order to prevent gaming the system, it's literally pointless to spam with comments or forum topics to gain points, because deleted content will delete the points too.

Let me know your ideas on the next steps! ( and gain 2 points ;)

Dear members, please click My account, then click Edit and update the five sections in your profile. All fields are optional, so you can fill in as much or as little as you like.

Make sure to select if you're available for job offers and freelance work. You never know when somebody will find you with a great offer. From the emails I get, I estimate somebody gets an offer through Ads of the World every day.

Make sure you allow people contacting you by checking the box Personal contact form under the Account settings.

Under Account settings you can also upload your picture.

Thank you for your cooperation and stay tuned for more options in the near future.

“RDX Wall Art: The Making Of” is a new short documentary highlighting some of the pioneers of Bristol, England’s thriving street art community. The clip features the new Acura RDX, Ben Foley and Chris Hopewell from Collision Films (Radiohead’s “There There” music video), and internationally celebrated street artists David Whittle and Henry St. Leger (Sainty), and goes behind the scenes of this 30-second spot to illustrate this massive undertaking which fuses animation with street art.

Here is the making of video:

Here is the commercial below:

Photographer: Jean-Yves Lemoigne c/o Carole Lambert
Magazine: Amusement Magazine

We had hard time deciding the winners for the Ads of the World Research campaign, because of the number of quality submissions. We are very grateful for everyone who spent their valuable time and energy on coming up with ideas. Congratulation for everybody!

Gold Winner: Remember / 13 times / All type

Art Director: Ricardo Best
Copywriter: Daniel Jubilot

Silver Winner: Flags

Advertising Agency: Publicis, Mumbai, India
Art Director / Illustrator: Siddesh Telang
Copywriter: Anupam Basu

Bronze Winner: Engine / Bunny / Lamp

Art Director: Pablo Rodriguez
Copywriter: Hernan Palazzo

Shortlist

Title: Done
Art director: Marcelo Melo
Copywriter: Nuno Leal

Title: Mac / Bookcase / Brain
Art Director / Copywriter: Marcelo Pinheiro, Rita Cascais

Title: Idea
Art Director / Illustrator: Ana Neves
Copywriter: André Águas

Title: Brainstorming
Art Director / Copywriter / Photographer: Andrew Nhem
Brainpower: Kristen Wallace

Title: Avis / Rolls Royce / The Economist
Location: Ahmedabad, India
Art Director: Tilak Saha
Copywriter: Abhijeet Lakhotia

Title: Idea / Eureka / Award

Title: Gorilla / Stick man / Eric

I would like to wish you a happy and successful 2009. Hope you win your first lion this year. Hope you will find your true love. Hope you get whatever your dreams are!

2008 was great for our community. AotW has grown to 51,000 registered users and readers looked at 230,000,000 pages throughout the year. We have great plans for 2009.

It would be interesting to know what everybody's new year resolution is. Let me start the list below!

AotW: Which advertising award show do you think is the most prestigious and why? Where does CLIO stand?
MC: Winning a Clio award is an internationally-recognized sign of prestige. Unlike many of the newer award schemes it has been going for half a century and is therefore well established as the foremost mark of creative excellence in advertising. The only close international equivalent would be would be the awards given out at the annual Cannes advertising festival, although it is arguable that the growing multiplicity of award categories has diluted the prestige associated with winning a Cannes Lion. The event in the South of France undoubtedly draws a larger crowd, perhaps in part because of its location!

AotW: Do you think the role of small hot shop agencies will have more significance in the next 5-10 years than today? Are we seeing a decline in the popularity of large multinational advertising networks among clients?
MC: There can be little doubt that small, specialist shops have become more significant and will continue to do so. The impetus of media fragmentation alone will ensure this. But they will not necessarily become more significant at the expense of larger agencies and networks. The latter bring important economies of scale and are by and large remaking themselves in bid to be as responsive and creative as newer, smaller shops. Over time the picture that will emerge is probably a more complex matrix of competition and partnerships between specialists and large networks.

AotW: One-to-one advertising is gaining momentum over mass media. Do you think on the long term mass media will seize to exist and all communication will be personal?
MC: Even in the long term, firms will need to get messages to large audiences, but there can be little doubt that going to the mass market will become less common. The rise of online social networks and techniques such as behavioral targeting facilitated by the Internet will mean that specific groups will receive marketing messages that, in theory, are much more relevant to their needs and tastes. So marketing communication will become less ‘mass’ and more personal but it is unlikely that ‘all communications will be personal.

AotW: Is TV really dead? Is the significance shrinking? What's taking its place? Online?
MC: TV advertising is far from dead. According to researcher eMarketer, US spending on TV advertising will have increased by nearly 3% in 2008 to a total of $70 billion. Though 2009 will inevitably see a fall, the total is likely to remain above $67 billion through 2010. US consumers are, however, multi-tasking more than ever, which means that the online audience is growing faster than the TV audience and the ad dollars are following; eMarketer projects that having reached $24 billion in 2008, US online ad spending will total $26 billion in 2009. Print ad spending is a whole different story...

The AotW-R competition is an amazing success. Even after yesterdays extended deadline we're still receiving so many submissions, which I will put up till the end of the week.

I'd like to thank you so much for all the effort you put into this competition.

Now it's time to check out all the work and give your votes and comments. The 3 winners will be decided partly based on your feedback and partly based on my and my collegues decision.

Click here to check out the work!

AotW: Lot of people accuse advertising awards that the winning work isn't real work done for clients, but so called chip-shop or scam work that is only prepared for awards. Is this true? Do you mind?

WY: The juries that CLIO assembles are of the highest caliber and recognize these “scam” ads immediately. Once they are recognized as such, jurors usually vote accordingly, and the work doesn’t make it past the first round of judging.

AotW: Some say good ideas need to be recycled once in a while to keep them alive. Others say, it's inappropriate to have old ideas presented in a new form to win awards. What's your take on this issue?

WY: CLIO’s theme for the 50th Anniversary Celebration addresses this issue head on. CLIO is asking the industry, “What have you done that hasn’t been done?”

AotW: As multinational companies reach across the globe to advertise their products they greatly influence local cultures and they homogenize the world. Do you feel advertising is killing local culture bit by bit? Or advertising is just part of a bigger movement of globalization and there is nothing we can do about it?

WY: Advertisers are spending more time these days personalizing their messages to certain markets so instead of losing the local culture, they’re playing into it and in some ways promoting it.

AotW: Is there a wisdom you would like to share with our young student readers? Is there something you would recommend them to focus on to be successful in the next 40-50 years of their advertising career?

WY: CLIO knows that students are the future of advertising. I would say to them when asked to come up with a solution to a clients’ problem, put your time, effort and resources into developing powerful ideas as opposed to high-end, glitzy production values. Without an idea, you have no foundation on which to build on. Also, focus on how and when the consumer wants to receive messages from advertisers. This is even more important now in the technology-driven world we live in.