‘No good deed goes unpunished’: Grey returns Cannes Lions won for I Sea app
Grey Singapore has returned the Bronze Lion it won at Cannes for the controversial ‘I Sea’ app after what the agency has described as “unwarranted, unfair, unrelenting attacks by unnamed bloggers.”
Grey Singpore’s I Sea app was called out as a fake by tech bloggers
The move, announced overnight, comes a day after marketer Alastair Bullock called on clients to push the agency to return the award, saying he would never hire a Grey agency until they did.
In retrospect I think I fucked that up. I think I should have just humbly apologized rather than reinforce the fact that Grey for Good is a sham and we have our head so far up our own ass that we are a global embarrassment.
TLDR: #sorrynotsorry
“We did nothing wrong, but we are going to hand it back anyway just to stop the haters!”
Maybe I’m wrong (old print designer here) but surely they don’t allow prototype apps in the App Store?
Seems like a 100% clear cut case of liar liar pants on fire with added petrol thanks to all that “boo hoo poor us it was the invisible bloggers what done it” crap.
Jesus… what an appallingly worded statement from someone who is supposed to be a communications expert. None of the negative commentary I’ve seen has been from ‘unnamed bloggers’. And as for integrity, that ship has sailed. If only we had an app to locate it…
One cursory glance at the ‘Grey For Good’ website lists numerous projects. (Interestingly enough, you can sort them by ‘most awarded.’)
I clicked a random project.
A project for Malaysia Telekom. An umbrella that has an attachment that turns it into some sort of Dengue fever killing dispenser.
Of course, a tiny bit of digging and you realise that it’s just a submission to a website run by Telekom, where anyone can pitch an idea. The more votes it gets, Telekom will make it.
In this case, Telekom didn’t make it.
But I doubt it stopped Grey from entering it into shows.
In fact, they sent a PR release about the umbrella to almost every website on the planet.
So it wasn’t their client (even though the website claims that the ‘client’ is Telekom. It wasn’t a real project, just an idea submitted to a fun site where any Malaysian can enter.
So, to all intents and purposes, complete scam.
I’m sure with our combined resources we can unpick almost every project on there and expose it for what it is.
Have fun, go for it.
Owen and the Grey leadership team should perhaps take a moment to read this – https://medium.com/the-development-set/the-reductive-seduction-of-other-people-s-problems-3c07b307732d#
Just appalling. Especially as their actual day job is supposed to be communications experts. They’ve lost sight of that and seemingly everything else. Just ban them from ever entering any awards ever again. What will they do then?
Sometimes it helps to see the other sides to the story. My take on the Grey for good scandal here
https://t.co/vi3WqWcrC6