Search results matching tag 'Creative Britain'

Why some awards aren't a waste of time and money.

1319935 — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 15:51:00 GMT

The biggest criticism laid at the door of the big awards events is that they are a money spinner for events companies and celebrate only the most selfish or the most sophisticated self promoters. Sir John Hegarty and Steve Henry tell us that more than 90% of the work out there is rubbish. Obviously all of you are trying to do something about that. On the awards front, this year's BIMA awards have had a rethink, for the better.

I declare an interest here, as I'm on the committee. And we've made a few changes that are relevant and useful to entrants. We've made it a criteria for judging to give feedback to every single entry. No other creative award does this. We've also made the cost of entry accessible. Not just to entering work, but also to attending the event, which will be a big party bash rather than an expensive sit down do. We've gathered a list of luminaries that might be worth putting work in front of. Best of all, we've made the judging criteria simple - equally weighted across strategy, creativity, interactivity and effectiveness. And awards will be made for craft skills as well where the work is particularly cleverly executed.

Need proof? Here are some of the judges. Paul Hammersley (The Red Brick Road), Robert Campbell (Campbell Lace Beta), Will King (King of Shaves), Gareth Jones (Revolution), Kelly Wright (Warner Bros.), Jody Smith (Channel 4), Adam Powers (BBC), Alex Smith (Microsoft). Need to enter? Click here.

See you in November.

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Vote for best blog in BIMA awards. (Not necessarily this one).

1319935 — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 17:20:00 GMT

Enter now people. This year the Best Blog awards will be decided via a public vote in two rounds. In the first round BIMA will take nominations for your favourite blogs and in the second BIMA will shortlist the nominations and publish a poll to allow the community to vote for their favourites. Entry is open to any blog as long as the content is not offensive in any way. Industry bloggers, are of course a jolly polite bunch, and will no doubt vote for others rather than for themselves!

go here to have a go http://www.bimaawards.com/categories/best_blog/

PS you don't have to vote for me. I'm on the awards committee already :)

PPS Embed the link below in your blog if you'd like people to vote for you.

The future's bright. The future's digital.

1319935 — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 10:51:00 GMT

The Creative Britain report was about helping creative business move from the margins to the mainstream. The Digital Britain report is about establishing a proper platform for the digital economy, and will have far reaching impact across many industries, not just this one.

From a creative perspective, the Government is keen to leverage Britain’s internationally-recognised talent in online, as well as move on from a leading position in global entertainment formats, advertising, marketing services and research. There is indeed a lot to do to take the economy back from gloom to boom, but there is no doubt that a strong position in digital knowledge and understanding around content generation and ‘how to code’ is as important as the massive infrastructure issues facing the telecoms sector to deliver economically viable broadband to everyone in the nation. And what is the ‘second public service’ provider to consist of? All this and more will be debated over the coming months. I felt the Creative Britain report was about looking backwards to how great it was being a digitally illiterate creative director in the sixties. The Digital Britain report is about looking forward to how great it should be being a digitally literate creative business in the future. I, for one, welcome it.

Digital Britain. Don't bank on it just yet.

1319935 — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 10:40:00 GMT

Lord Carter's interim report on Digital Britain is due out next week. I was at the briefing he gave to the Westminster forum, which made the front page of the FT at the weekend, along with a few TV luminaries. There are a few big unanswered questions. First, is it really 'universal' access? Second, if 'free to air' is no longer viable, how do you create a framework that allows quality public service broadcasting to continue that isn't singly funding the BBC? Third if there is no publicly supported creative industry, how will programmes that sit low down the commissioning table (investigative public interest programmes for example) ever see the light of day? As the government continues to bail out the banks with our money, government investment in the 'digital content' industry pales somewhat into a relatively small proportion of the £3.5bn BBC funding. By comparison, the Government injected £37bn into RBS, Lloyds TSB and HBOS in October, and pledged £450bn to guarantee banks' debt. It's now adding another tranche of money for the bankers. If we are to become a serious digital player in the world, the government needs to put its money where its mouth is.

Creative Britain's future depends on not giving away copyright. Right.

1319935 — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 09:38:00 GMT

The Creative Britain debate rages. Well, sort of. Thanks to the IPA for an intriguing debate last night about the ‘new improved’ knowledge economy. A distinguished panel of Peter York, Moray McLennan, Will Hutton and a nice lady called Christine from the design industry talking about copyright as our commercial future, and new interest and energy on the subject from the government which has suddenly realised that our other forms of exports are suddenly screwed. For those of you that saw the launch in Golden Square, it’s a great initiative, but I worry that the commercial premise needs a little more thought.

The debate, whilst witty enough, studiously ignored two fundamentals. One, the Chinese economy, soon to be the largest in the world, represents a billion new capitalists with a different point of view on copyright laws. Competing on the world stage will be tougher. Two, the ad agency business, in general, hands over all copyright to its clients. Intellectual property will be a new battleground for agencies to learn about. We do support the copyright of our supply chain, as it happens, with image rights and usage rights and so on, but give away our own ideas on the basis of monetising the upfront advice in the form of fees and charges over production.

In my own company we do ideas and make stuff, but we also develop software. This makes us an unusual combination, but a useful one in this context. Years of experience of warranty on the applications we develop (those now ever so trendy brand utilities) and code libraries that (in theory at least!) help us sustain new product at a commercially viable rate. I think all the digital agencies do this to some extent, but as we have to compete on the world stage, we’re all going to have to get a bit more serious about this.

PS Loved the definition “Intangibles are fluff, tangibles are stuff.”