Terry, Richard and Mark: Tell me, are these winning Australian ads actually scam?

great to see you staying on this Tim…it’s essential that things are resolved for the integrity of the agencies involved as well as Cannes

Tim, thank you.
Whilst working in media sales – press, I had the good fortune to work under a Director of Sales whom has a supreme passion for creativity. We were charged with driving creativity in the press category with agencies and clients alike.
I saw some wonderful work produced in my 4 years under this DOS… however very, very few of the creative ever ran…
“Accountability of the medium”, “significantly reduced budgets” and “change in brand strategy” were some of the excuses we heard. We even went to the lengths of offering heavily discounted schedules to inspire the industry leaders to “think differently”…. with little success.
I know I am not alone when I say I am genuinely excited by a truly creative advert, no matter the medium… it delights/entertains me, it drives me to think differently about the brand/product and above all I respect them for respecting me… it’s just been a while since I saw one such ad (in real life)…
I look forward to responses from Terry & Amanda and Richard & Mark.

Great work. Nice investigative stuff. More of this please!

I can’t see how these can’t be legit – I mean come on, in this day and age with 24 hour worldwide scrutiny, surely not one is silly enough to think a scam at Cannes won’t get jumped on?

Great article Tim.
Intrigued for the outcome.

Dog with a bone.
Hats off.
Sir John Hegarty spoke about this pervasive scamming.
In the UK it’s called ChipShop advertising. There are even awards for ChipShop.
It’s a legitimate way to show your capability in work you’d like to do for clients’ you’d like to win, but on Chip Shops and the like who have no budget and are grateful for any publicity. ‘Ambient’ is the biggest category.
Everytime I see a video production company post a video on youTube purporting to be for a client and it’s longer than 30 seconds I raise an eyebroow.
Had many rows with these folk.
I client isn’t legit, if the work isn’t paid for, if no media spend was invested – it’s a scam.
can you imagine if Cannes investigated every winner – it would be like dope testing every winner in the Olympics… oh they do that? That’s because legitimacy underpins the value of that brand. Cheaters are outed, prosecuted and derided. In sport, politics and business. And Advertising is a pretty huge frigging business.

While your at Tim, please look into where Leo Burnetts wwf ad ran . .

Nice to see some vitriolic truth… and totally warranted by the looks!

Apologies, it seems legit

now that was worth reading…good stuff

Can I nominate you for an award for this piece?

Sadly this is not a new situation, it’s something that has happened for years, it’s just the industry chooses to turn a collective blind eye because the lure of a future potential award is more attractive than the feeling of integrity gained from only doing work that was commissioned to serve a purpose higher than pure award show fodder.

There are some wonderful things out there. Things that show the real value and creativity of this industry but this tsunami of scam undermines us all and yet we let it happen … again and again and again.

This is why I (occasionally) tune in to Mummy and not the others: the hard questions being asked. So thank you.

If only you were around when a well-known so-called now-ex CD got busted for copying an award-winning ad from NZ that featured white crosses on a road (you can publish this Tim as I doubt anyone would remember the storm that ensued – and the protests of innocence).

Maybe a performance-based Cannes Lions?

I can seem to hear “make it go away…” from various places around Australia right now.

Make it stay Tim!

Good work. Sadly this has been going on for at least 30 years – one of my earliest jobs was to book 1 x 30 sec on WIN TV Wollongong for a normally non TV client in 1984 just so the agency could legitimately enter some award thingie. I’m not even sure if the client was even aware that they were nominated.

As a content creator, I must say congrats to the Mumbrella team.

Your tone is excellent. Civil, yet subtle in its implications. And you haven’t meandered into “rant” territory. Which is VERY hard to do in these sort of situations.

I see big pageviews and a future for this post on the RHS as most commented for the month.

Well done. Good journalism for pinko leftie communist latte sippers.

@Harpo : Well I remember the storm that ensured – the creative in question sat next to me at the Cannes screening where is was shown and later denied ever seeing the spot. To be fair he may have been asleep at the time, or had his head down. It was on the show reel of the agency I joined subsequently and was a severe embarrassment to the organisation that unwittingly recycled it. They needed HELP to forget it, I’m sure. Suits should always see the Cannes winners as well, just to check for recycling.

Awesome work, well done! Let’s see what will follow…

Good work! And I love the “butter wouldn’t melt” tone.

Hi Tim,
Thank you for your courage. No fear, no favour shown. The questions you are asking…. this is pure journalistic gold. My greatest admiration.

Perhaps the Mumbrella Awards could include an award honouring those agencies that participate in scam.

Palme D’oh ?

annoying all the right people – nice one Tim.

It all feels a little ‘Lance Armstrong’ – we all know the stories about the increasing number of scam entries in developing nations, or the stories about French agencies essentially taking a month off each year to produce scam ideas for Cannes (True). But even if everyone else is doing it, doesn’t mean we should too. Lance was still an amazing athlete who overcame an incredible hurdle, but sadly for Lance, his name now is merely associated with lies, cheating and deception.

Simple solution and I’m certain Caxton entries at one stage in the late 80’s had this as an entry requirement.

Every press category entry MUST contain a printed tear sheet from at least 1 publication pasted to the back of the beautifully crafted digital print with the publication name and run date on the entry, then there is no question it at least ran, and easy to track down who actually paid for the insertion through the publisher.

Try reading this without Churchill’s distinctive tones in your head 🙂

“We shall go on to the end. We shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be. We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender”

But seriously Tim and team – give them stick – your integrity and dogged determination might bring some long-overdue discipline to the industry. And plenty more amusing posts on the matter …

Dear Mumbrella,

It is rather churlish of you to question our credentials.

For the record, we have allowed this work to be represented as such because we are stuck in airless offices all day for most of the year conducting endlessly pointless meetings. The only reward we can find for ourselves is to go to Cannes and hang out with arrested adolescent-types in ironically humorous t-shirts and PARTAYYYYY!!!!!

Get a life. No-one will care about your attempts to get to the truth. Why? Because your conscientiousness does not penetrate the upper executive echelons where malfeasance is concealed with a nod and a wink.

We have lobbied your owners to appoint Janet Albrechtson as your Executive Creative Direction Editor. That should shut youse up.

Sincerely,

The hurted trio.

@Groucho – brother, you must be old. But Tim is right to pursue this issue as it is THE elephant in the room. I think the then B&T ran articles on the aforementioned rip off by the aforementioned CD – checkable Tim if you’re interested, circa 1990 I reckon – oh how one would welcome a comment on propriety and other misdemeanours of the creative kind from the Usurperer now he’s smirking all the way to the bank…

Hi Tim, great piece, maintain (the subtle and controlled) rage!
cheers
matt

Funny, I think this whole article is about brand (moderated by Mumbrella for legal reasons – nice try Harpo)

Why does anyone really care about this so much? We all know its navel-gazing and self-congratulatory stuff, but this really comes across as a bitter and sanctimonious crusade. Let them have their shiny door-stoppers. It’s no skin off your nose.

Way you can back investigate a lot of anti-gun ads in the mid 2000s?

Do not let this one go Tim. Not until you have an answer. The silence is damning.

The agency has done wrong but lets not forget the role these marketers have played. Shame. Shame. Shame.

Maybe the word “Award” is misused here. If Cooper Cronk won the Daly M Award last year and may of come off the bench in a game, if at all what would the Rugby League community think of that?

To ‘Really’,

It’s important because:
– shit like this does further damage to an industry already struggling for credibility.
– it highlights the flawed system of remuneration, kpi’s and career promotions being tied to awards
– it highlights the compromising situation of award shows potentially upsetting their revenue stream (agencies) by penalising them.
– it makes it even harder to sell in ‘genuine’ creative work.

Look, if you want to really get picky on award winners, look at some of the results touted in entries.

Leo Burnett claimed a 20% reduction in road fatalities on their Samsung S Drive mobile lion winner. Along with a 67% reduction in road accidents.

According to the description on the Samsung app store the app wont work outside the Hunter Valley region because it was a pilot project only available in the Hunter. Did fatalities and road accidents decrease by that amount in the Hunter?

The app launched Feb 28, 2014 according to the app store. The entry board says results since March 2014. So in 30 days, fatalities and accidents were down?

The fact it was a pilot program isn’t mentioned anywhere in the entry.

Given this lack of disclosure, would the jury think differently about it?

@Groucho – brother, maybe he was hanging his head in shame – or just going down on himself?

Tim,
as an ex Client who had the odd request from an Agency for a one off piece of creative to be run once so it could be entered in some Awards event my answer was always the same.
“What if it wins, won’t I look like a dill for having this great award winning creative that I only ran once. I’m not going to look like a dill so you can be famous.”
Bet these Clients wish they didn’t look like dills now!

What about Leo’s “small world machine” [sic – singular] from last year?

@Really? Just curious; what do you expect Tim do do?

Dear Tim
I am suddenly seeing the trades in two clear camps.
Those who are just happy to turn a blind eye and pretend the decline isn’t happening.
And the only who isn’t afraid to ask difficult questions because they truly believe we can all aspire to be better.
I salute your principles, backbone and civilized manners.

Good article and well done for shining a light on this. Having been on both sides of the fence for over 20 years agencies use these shiny awards to dazzle clients, and win business.

But if its a fake ad than never ran, or was never paid for, that won the award, that wins the account, then that is actually false advertising.

It’s long overdue that some of the bullshit practices this industry prides itself on, were challenged and someone held accountable.

It’s a widely accepted ethic that juniors get themselves jobs slaving away on ‘proactive’ work, conceived solely to chase awards. Often this is done for the benefit of keeping some barely relevant ECD in a job for another year, lest he miss his target. For a junior, it’s one way to get yourself into a job, or keep yourself in one should your day to day brief not cut it from an awards perspective. Clients are encouraged to play along too, because they starved the agency of award opportunities in their standard briefs, and so this will be a morale booster for the creative teams. Oh and they’ll get the benefit of being seen as a creative/innovative marketer / brand too.

Everyone wins, right?

This is standard fare, particularly in the larger agencies that chase the points from award shows to claim their status as best network, regional office or other such title.

I thank the team at Mumbrella for persisting.

Great journalism.

Great piece, Tim. Well done on asking the hard questions of the big end of town. Nice that you include the emails sent and all the other guff, so readers can see how you’ve investigated. Top job.

The real culprits are the owners of big agency networks. They pressure their CCOs to bring in the metals, who then pressure their country ECDs to produce the goods, who then hire award junkies to create them. Like in narcotics, we can’t rid the menace by just targeting the pushers while the drug loads walk free.

Excellent work. Best trade pub in the biz.

Great reporting. I’m also VERY surprised that DDB Melbourne’s ‘Minute of Silence’ for the RSL took gold when the exact same idea won silver in 2011 for British Legion’s ‘2 minutes of silence’. Looks suspiciously like some cozy judging arrangements going on with that award too.

Well done. Good piece – as usual Mumbrella has outdone The Australian’s media section, whose Darren Davidson had this to contribute: “ONE boring and deeply unimportant issue surfaces every year at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity. …. and so on.

If it’s so boring and unimportant why did the Oz devote 400 words to it?

I only wish there was a Asian Mumbrella and a Sth American Mumbrella doing this.

Pat (#48) and Another Admirer (#45) are spot on.
Some scammers do it because the pressure to win is the unspoken KPI global CCOs use to evaluate whether it’s time to extend or change their country CCOs.
Business results are the CEO’s KPI.
Effies are the Planners KPI.
So Cannes has become the country CCOs’.
The trouble is that Cannes is broken. Juries can be manipulated. Case studies fixed. And everyone knows its better not to ask the hard questions: Did it run? Are the results true?Can such an innovation/prototype/ambient actually work?

The hungry team does it to keep their minimum wage job.
The country CCO cracks the whip to keep his six-figure job.
The global CCO cracks his to finance his multiple mortgages.
But it’s at the level of the global holding company where the real money is.

The measure to win creative awards keeps the senior level salaries and average age low.So there’s more for the Man at the top. It’s an efficient way to control wage bills and exits can be fast tracked without legal liabilities of unfair dismissal.

The standard reaction for the agencies is to either stonewall media scrutiny until the next industry news cycle. Or if the client’s bottom-line is affected, act all indignant and mortified, and fire the teams involved.

At the end of the day, the drug mules are expendable while the puppet masters live to keep their million dollar bonuses.

Any wonder why, our industry doesn’t attract smart talent?

Why hasn’t Campaign Brief run this story?

There’s a great ‘how to guide’ on the Mumbrella Asia site all about the pressure on ECD’s to win…

At least #Darren #Davidson has officially promoted Mumbrella from “conference organiser’ to ‘marketing website’. Keep up the bad work Tim et al and he might one day call you a news site.

Good work…now can you apply a similar level of deduction and dedication to the real issues and please tell us what really went on at essendon, afl, asada, wada, dank et al? fairfax seem to be trying but not really getting there. news just want to cheerlead whoever is most popular / hard done by at any given point in time. its all digital’s fault really having killed off the funding for all the good journalism.

I think there is one clear take away from this saga and it’s this:

Ad people are terrible at PR.

Wow.

Well and truly busted it seems. I have to wonder if it even matters if they respond or not now? The silence is damming. The prestige of the competition damaged, and its failure to enforce it policies is very public. Will the Cannes Lions awards ever mean as much as they did pre-2014 again?

Kudos Tim, well done!

@Peter W – typical client attitude. It’s too good to run lol.

As an ECD trying to produce great work on paying clients in Asia, I’m despaired at the task. I understand why we resort to scam. Like I understand why people do drugs. There is an easy fix to the system…make entrants send the media schedule with the ad.

Hi Tim.

Sorry about the radio silence. Cannes is tough going so we’ve all been on vacation and didn’t really want this little hiccup to disrupt it. But seeing it has gone viral and is the talk in all agencies in APAC we’ve decided to issue a joint release:

“Yes the ads are scam. But because they definitely did run in some undisclosed media they are technically eligible. We would not have been so silly as to not cover our tracks. Ever so sorry.” Terry, Richard and Mark

wasn’t there a statement a week or so back from mcdonalds saying that the ad campaign in question ran in April and May?

if so, do they really need to supply you with a media schedule?

Is there a point to all this pathetic bitterness? Get a life you lot!

After reading Tim’s outstanding piece and most of 64 comments that followed, my faith in advertising is (ironically) higher than it has been in years.

Excellent post. Very well written, balanced and most importantly, gentle. No unnecessary sensationalism – just setting out the facts on public record and seeking a response that remains forthcoming. Thank you for investigating this – keep us posted!

i bet rebelo and browny at DDB are hoping this thing blows over once and for all over the weekend….don’t think so…everyone wants answers. Just do the right thing, come out and say they were both scam pieces respectively, give the trophies back and everyone can move on to something else

@Cam there certainly is a point. But perhaps only for someone with the attention span to read the articles and the posts. It’s like a brief really – everything you need to know is in it. Look for it.

Cam, if you bothered to read most of the comments, you would realise there are many important points to this story.

I couldn’t give two shits about scam and the halfwits who pursue them if it wasn’t for the following travesty:

People who win awards off of scam are deemed as more creative and get obscenely high salaries, while those who do good work on real briefs are ignored by the sham ECDs who see no personal benefit in hiring them.

Clients and agencies then both complain loudly about falling standards of real work and scarcity of ‘talent’.

What effin hypocrisy.

Does anyone have any proof that winning loads of awards translates to winning loads of new business pitches? I doubt it.

If so, McCann Sydney should have won billions of dollars worth of new business by now.

It’s time to stop this unfair and damaging practice once and for all….and clients should lead the way in not allowing scam on their business.

@CAM (95% probability works at DDB, 5% error margin) – you probably don’t work in advertising/marketing because if you did – you would CARE. Period. True advertising is about using creativity to move products. Not just about a witty headline. And how would you feel if Whybins or Clems or Leo’s or Droga won a CANNES LION for a supposedly, allegedly “fake” ad??? #youshouldcare #maybeadvertisingisnttherightcareer4u #thisismy(work)life

@Cam
Having to ask ‘what’s the point ?’ betrays a lot about your professional attitude and reveals more about your maturity.
Suffice to say, it’s my policy never to argue with fools.
I pity the clients who have to work with you.

@Cam. First rule of Scam Club. Don’t get caught.

Shitty hashtags aside, let me tell you the real truth.

‘You haven’t won an award in three years’ is seen as a legitimate reason to fire somebody. And if your clients aren’t buying the real, category busting, effective work that’s going to be well loved by people and juries alike, you resort to easier ways to win awards.

Most scam is pretty easy to spot. There is however a bunch of scam that isn’t so easy to spot. A single coke vending machine that bridges the gap between Pakistan and India is one very questionable example. Charity, which also includes government services is another.

There is another point. In categories like direct, promo and activation, pr and digital, results are the real difference between a finalist and a medalist. Since the last time you read a magazine, or a newspaper, clients and ECD’s alike have had little regard for the print advertising in your book. Even if it’s award winning. Outdoor, that’s still relevant.

However, there is a real solution to this. I have seen so much brilliant work presented to clients, only to not be bought for the most stupid of reasons. The easy solution, that benefits everyone is simple.

Buy better work. Your sales will go up especially if there is a big media spend behind it. You will get promoted. You will have an increase in market share. You will be liked more by your agency and by the consumer. Heck, you might even get laid more often.

Don’t blame creatives for wanting to be good. Most want their work to be seen by everyone and hear it was effective. They’re on your side. Just under enormous pressure from their bosses.

Remember in 2000 when Frank Lowe apologised for Lowe Sydney’s fake Zoo ad? The story was p3 of the Sydney Morning Herald and ran widely overseas in the trades. And the rogue CD was let go.

http://adage.com/article/news/.....ner/27673/

Nowadays, sadly, Cannes is full of hubris and the self-interest ensures all parties are unable to admit they’re complicit.

Terry, Richard and Mark are for sure reading all these comments and wanting this story to just go away. I don’t think it will. Great job Tim.

just asking a legit question again amidst the bile. Didn’t I see a statement from a Maccas client a week or so back saying that their ad ran in April and May?

@Jimmy, your’s is the nose that always knows. Very wise words there.

But there’s more truth. These ECDs load up their creative departments with potential award-winning juniors. These juniors get the occasional potential award-winning brief, but their day-to-day role is dealing with stuff the ECD doesn’t want to know about. Mundane work that is the real earner for the agency and that these kids have no idea how to address properly. They might try to give it a nice ‘awardy’ sheen but if they can’t even get that approved then they don’t give a rats. So the rest of the agency’s roster suffers in the diligent pursuit of the award-winning few.

And don’t start me on Tier-C and -D Creative Directors who chase this pipe dream without a chance of succeeding.

The Panasonic and McDonalds stuff above is really nice thinking, but what was the brief? As per the VW ad that originally used this concept, the dog idea might be appropriate as part of a larger swathe of communications building a set of benefits for an automaker. As they stand, these beautiful dog layouts are at best OEM trade journal fodder.

If Mark Lollback is so proud of this McDonald’s stuff, why is he not punching Tim in the nose with a media schedule? Are the paper folds in the layouts an attempt to make these things look genuine? At a guess, there was no brief. Just some creatives who came up with the idea and sold it into the client with the promise of Cannes partytime. Hey Mark, it’s your budget. But maybe you should have just stuck this on your office pinboard if you weren’t prepared to test it in the real world. Because it looks to me like you’ve drunk the Koolaid. Please tell me you ran this. Please tell me how successful it was so I can use it as an example when I try to sell a great idea without a logo.

So what’s the real harm? A single discarded confectionery wrapper doesn’t destroy the environment. A single insider trade doesn’t put anyone out of their home. A single scam ad doesn’t harm any babies. But the compounding effect certainly compromises what little integrity we creatives have when we try to sell in genuinely good work. Work that might actually produce results for the client.

No, I’m not bitter about someone’s inflated salary. I’ve earned good money in this game and someone is always going to be earning more than me. No, I’m not spewy I’ve missed another party. I’ve partied well and good and will continue to do so. Yes, I’m pissed of that this hypocrisy undermines merit-based excellence in this industry.

You’re right about creatives wanting to do the best work they can, Jimmy. But somewhere along the way, this whole awards thing distorted the process beyond recognition. Things shifted from ‘recognition for great work’ to become the justification for forcing clients into work they don’t really need.

Without the commercial imperative, the ads featured in this article are nothing more than very, very expensive memes for a very, very select audience. And the rest of us in this game – both agencyside and clientside – have to suffer the by-product of this folly.

Love how The Oz called this BORING and UNIMPORTANT but covered the ipad incident with Mail Online for 7 days, as clearly that was important world changing news.

Good work Tim – the attention from D2 means Newscorp obviously view Mumbrella as a threat, as all that is covered within its pages are either negative competitor pieces or positive Newscorp related company pieces.

@me, agree with you whole-heartedly, but I think you’ve missed my point.

The onus isn’t on the individuals doing scam to change. Personally I’ve managed to have a great career as a creative without doing any. That doesn’t make me good, it just makes me very lucky. The awards thing is driven by clients ultimately. They select agencies based on how many awards they’ve won. And they know it will lead to them being promoted.

The onus is on clients buying better ads. It benefits everyone.

Be brave. I’ve seen Marketing directors become CMO’s then become MD’s off the back of a great, real, award winning (and successful) campaigns.

As an aside, I’m sure both the ads in question would resonate and be far more powerful in front of a consumer than a save $2.99 ad. Why? Because juries are people too. And not particularly clever. That’s why they work in creative.

Peace out.

Tim, kudos for the respectful approach when the outcome of your inquiries could be devastating for the recipients of your message. You, like Terry at Cannes, also must maintain a professional relationship with people/agencies for whom you may earn future revenue.

Jumping to a possible solution for this problem at Cannes (and possibly all creative awards) I noticed that one of the entry rules states – “The Festival reserves the right to request a full media schedule from each entrant company to verify the authenticity of the entry in the event that entry is shortlisted or a winner.”

Surely it wouldn’t be onerous to include a validated media schedule with each entry. The media agency should co-sign the entry form to affirm their role in placing the ad. Alternatively, it’s not hard to include a photograph if the ad in the newspaper/magazine.

A solution to the ongoing suspicion over what is/isn’t a scam ad could be dealt with if there was a will. That is the real issue that Tim has so eloquently exposed – again.

Tim and Miranda, great investigative work here. Gotta keep the bastards honest (as they say).

There is one question I’d like to get to the bottom of though…

Was Miranda really unwell that day, or was that just a scam?

Greta work by Tim and Miranda, pretty soon you’ll be snapped up by one of our major Media outlets to provide them with hard hitting investigative journalissss…. oh right…. as you were 🙂

Hi mumbrella. Have you heard anything more? I’m sure everyone involved is hoping it will blow over, but I think all here are keen to hear the response.

Aren’t all awards pretty baloney anyways? who cares if they ran or not? if they are to be judged against their results then why is there creative effectiveness awards?

Finger on the pulse, Tim!
How much can we really trust these award systems?
Is merit defined by creativity or wealth these days?

In the end, it will blow away and be forgotten. The ad boys get to keep their Lions and the show makes Terry and the rest of us a load of money. Keep scamming mates. This thing will never stop. (edited under Mumbrella’s comment moderation policy) Have your little investigation then go find another scam to chase. Must be a few others no doubt.

@Terry’s P.A. You’re probably right, but with your boss still to front up to the Creative Fuel conference, he’s probably going to cop a few awkward questions. Maybe there are media schedules, maybe they have run legitimately, but there is still the vexing question of the dog concept’s many lives. This internetty thing ensures this story hangs around like a mosquito that made its way into your 5 star hotel room and keeps buzzing in your ear.

Advertising , marketing, branding is all there at the end of the day to sell a product or service. Creatives hate this fact and so to them they would actually prefer it if their very original idea was used God forbid in a regional newspaper. Or their really clever TV ad went on air in the ad break on Today Tonight. I think Google, Facebook etc sold their service very well without a Creative Director in sight. There is an awful lot of dross out there.

Great piece, well done Tim.

Often the problem in this world isn’t that the rules aren’t in place but that they’re not enforced.

Please keep on this. Demand answers. How about a reminder at the top of the mUmBRELLA front page with a counter from when you posed the questions until they’re satisfactorily answered?

Hi Tim,

Great piece. Really intriguing and appreciate you asking those hard and potentially uncomfortable questions.

You’ll have to excuse my lack of knowledge into the Cannes entry process, but I was wondering whether clients nominate the work or does the agency?

In the case of these two pieces, did the client accept the award or did the agency?

I only ask the question because both clients seem to have come under a fair amount of scrutany in the article and on the surface one could argue that both agencies have escaped quite lightly in comparison – minus one photo and a couple of name mentions.

Interested to get your thoughts…

Tim, you could always buy a ticket to Creative Fuel and ask Terry and Mark together in person. After all, they’re both speaking on what it takes to win a Lion…. Seems like the perfect opportunity.

Maybe Terry will answer questions when entry numbers to his show drop.
I mean, really, why would you enter?

Thanks Tim. Really appreciate your quick reply.

I was thinking a bit about this yesterday, especially as to how I’d handle it if I were a client in this scenario. Perhaps we could assume by the lack of response, that there is something a bit dodgy going on – as I’m sure both agency and client would have sent through a media plan quick as a flash for all to see, if it were legit.

But on the other hand, most clients I know would have real difficulty throwing the agency under the bus and admitting the ad never ran. Firstly, because of the damage to a potentially strong relationship which may have yielded some great creative (that actually ran!) over the years. But add to that, potential relationships higher up the food chain at CEO or Board level, which would definitely dictate to the clients inability to speak out – even if they wanted to.

Very tough scenario – probably hence the silence.

While I’m sure the client has a serious part to play in all of this, I can’t help but feel like it’s up to the agencies involved to step up and do the right thing – if not for their clients sake. Which is why I sent the original note suggesting this story could have been aimed more at the agencies rather than clients.

Again, congrats on a great piece. I always enjoy it when you take an investigative journalism approach to something like this, beyond just reporting on new ads.

Cheers.

The silence is deafening.
The only sound louder is the dying cries of the credibility of all involved.
Agency. Client. Creative team.
It’s a lose-lose-lose situation.
The only real consequence is that nobody is gonna get an increment, promotion or bonus out of this debacle.
Which was the only real objective in mind.

I’m following the convo, but self-moderating under my new brand karma rules

Any update Tim? Would be nice to close this one out.. I suspect the old, ‘head in sand, it’ll go away’ PR approach is being used.

And still nothing?
Well, I think we can pretty much write Cannes off as having any credibility.
Perhaps put your Lion on display next to Ben Johnson’s Olympic gold medal, a framed yellow vest signed by Lance Armstrong, and a Platinum record by Milli Vanilli.

That’s right guys, sit tight, say nothing…..it will all go away. 24 hour cycle, tomorrow fish n chips and all that. Lubly chubly.

Following this from Singapore where the agencies are running really lean teams. Puts all the good work most of the Aussie industry does to shame.

As someone who watches most journalists reprint stories from the daily mail this investigation is thrilling. Real journalism, thorough, researched. It’s inspiring that Mr Burrowes has the balls to keep at this. Woodward/Bernstein etc etc – this kind of journalism keeps large corporations who are increasingly influential on government policy, accountable. Thank you. Fight the good fight.

There should be a Cannes category for ‘high standards of investigative journalism’..
Gold Lion in the wings for Tim & Mumbrella !

Wow. Great piece with some genuine questions backed by some genuine investigation. Tone was entertaining and walked the line between ‘truth in jest’ and outright accusation really well. Both enjoyable and enlightening.