McCann boss: our other work has been overshadowed by Dumb Ways to Die
The boss of the agency behind the award-winning Dumb Ways to Die viral has said that the campaign’s success would hold no sway with the jury at Spikes Asia this week.
Ben Lilley, CEO of McCann Australia, told Mumbrella that although Dumb Ways was heavily awarded at Cannes Lions and other awards shows, there was no guarantee that the campaign would dominate Spikes – even though the client has already been awarded advertiser of the year.
“We’ve learned from experience not to speculate which way awards juries might go. You never know,” he said.
“But if the other shows we’ve entered are anything to go by, we’re hopeful to pick up a few gongs.”
“…..incidences of dangerous behaviour at Melbourne trains stations falling since the campaign launched” hilarious that one just never gets old
“half a million Australia dollars ($US462m) ” … good to see the Aussie dollar is bouncing back !
If you were the creative team on ‘Dumb Ways to Die’ and were still there you might be wondering what this rather odd declaration really means.
“…the cyber jury did now award…”
Not?
It means, McCanns is still McCann. Disloyal to people that work there, currently on an ego trip, it doesn’t win much business in competition with real agencies, can’t get a look-in on GM one of it’s older traditional accounts, so what’s changed, basically, nothing!
Even a broken clock is correct twice a day.
This article is based on a broad ranging discussion here at Spikes about McCann’s creative output, including Dumb Ways to Die, which is not fully reflected in the headline above. We are of course immensely proud of Dumb Ways to Die. We are humbled and honoured – and at times frankly overwhelmed – by its success and recognition. And I am grateful for the number of people here at Spikes this week alone who have come up to John and me wanting to discuss the campaign and share their best wishes for its success.
I am equally proud of the other campaigns McCann has been awarded and recognised for over the past year, including L’Oreal, Corelle, MasterCard and our other two Cannes-winning campaigns for V/Line Guilt Trips and Impossible Orchestra, amongst many other great campaigns and clients. I’d love for all of our work, and all of the brilliant McCann teams behind it, to get the full recognition I think they all deserve. But of course I’m biased.
Ben Lilley
What a lot of American style advertising corporate spin, we’re used to seeing this BS in Ad Age. Lilley needs a reality check!
Every dog has its day. Or one hit wonder. How long will this work float McCann? Is the other ‘awarded’ McCann work any good? think not….
I was a judge at the EFFIES and judged the DWTD paper.
I must admit to being surprised it won any EFFIES…not because it wasn’t an excellent campaign but because the results were so thin – they only cited a 3 month period in comparison to the year before, which…for a behaviour change campaign is very light on and practically impossible to properly attribute to advertising – we know from following something like the Christmas road toll how ‘results’ vary vastly from year to year.
they would have been better entering the campaign into EFFIES in future years and imho any awards they received this year were due to affection with the campaign and not a compelling case of it’s impact
I’m not in the industry and can I say from the comments here that most of you behave like a pack of biatches to one another. Quite ironic given its your job to bring a fresh perspective to any given product.
Not in the industry but read an industry blog… what are you NUTS??
@ Alex M & @ Tom I would say that he is not in the industry because he doesn’t have the nuts for it………………………….
Yes, quite possibly!! 😀 But I randomly came here surfing after seeing DWTD on Gruen Transfer last night. The 24 Hour Orchestra piece I also saw was uplifting! Props for that.
How’s new business going for McCann? Oh it’s not? That’s right…
Ha – @ Alex M great to see you taking such an interest. I can assure you that on the whole ad people are actually great admirers and supporters of each others’ good work. Blogs like this are a great forum for us all to be able to discuss and dissect the work – the good, the bad and the ugly.
It’s a truly great industry to be part of. Many of the more colourful comments you see are in fact a great reflection of the creativity and passion of everyone in the business! Stories like this would be a lot less interesting without them.
Here are the latest statistics (second quarter 2013).
http://wp.me/p23FXR-dQ