Search results matching tag 'D&AD'

Sweden & Miami Ad Schools clean up at D&AD Student Awards

322703 — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 01:15:00 GMT

Tonight was a great night for foreign colleges at the D&AD Student Awards. An amazing standard of work as usual judged by the industry’s best. Few would disagree that this is probably one of the worse years you could graduate with few if any jobs, but the mood was positive and upbeat.

One the big winners was Sweden’s Berghs School of Communication, based in Stockholm. The college has a two year ad course with just over 50 students on it, yet they were winning awards all over the categories. Recently the school was named World’s Best Ad School at Cannes and collected a One Show Grand Slam, 4 golds, 2 silvers and 3 bronzes and a Gold Medal at the global Clio’s. Seems Stockholm is the new creative generator, whatever they are doing there they are doing it right. Must be all that Omega 3 in the fish.

The Miami Ad Schools did very well too with US, Germany (Hamburg) winning awards but Spain (Madrid) doing exceptionally well. I for one have always rated the Spanish, they are brilliant designers, perfectionists, very visual and that Latin sensitivity means their work always has a passion about it. Their weakness is being self publicists.

Another American based school, Creative Circus, found an inventive way to pay for their trip to London and one that’s generated a lot or chat about them. They set up a website called The London Project and invited agencies to help ‘pack our bags for London’ to sponsor their trip. In exchange they’d take any object (the odder the better) over to the UK send them back a photo of it in any London location they wanted. The six young creatives managed to get agencies on board, despite the recession, and all made it to the ceremony to pick up their award.

There were the usual British colleges winning, St Martins (28 finalists), Buckinghamshire New university (10), Kingston (10), Northumbria (10), Chelsea (9) and Middlesex (8) but the foreign colleges stole the show. Miami Ad Schools got 30 shortlisted, Berghs got 11 and there were many other over sea colleges getting nominations too. Ironically we can’t dominate theirs as few allow us to enter their country’s ad awards.

My favourite UK entry was from Chester University, an amusing film of a kid lost in his mobile for Blyk. As he walks along his journey he is oblivious to things happening around him, all those things being references to ads – drumming gorilla, kid with Hovis, coloured balls, 118 118 runners, Tango Man, iPod. It makes a simple point, kids these days don’t notice traditional ads so you need to reach them via mobiles. Very funny. Check out the link below.

Judging the student awards is very different from the normal D&AD awards. As one of the speakers said, “normal D&AD is like going into a diamond dealer, you expect to see beautiful diamonds. But with the student awards you see the unexpected.”

I think this year there was a notable lack of traditional advertising style work but a notable number of brilliant ideas. I think it marks a turning point for our industry. There is a new order and the younger generation think in a very different way. Like music, styles change and we are seeing a transformation from the traditional approach of 40 years to a more technology influenced approach. I also think that foreign students are less influenced by the English style and are exploring pushing the boundaries more.

Students are also producing more business savvy ideas too. The ebay brief produced a very clever idea, ‘Find it’ created by students at Berghs. The concept is simple, you see something you want, you take a picture of it and post it on Find It on ebay and they try and find it for you. The ideas received a special award.

Between the awards they ran a few short films about collaborative projects like City Brand, Shellsuitzombie and Onedotzero. The common factor was bringing together kids from different disciplines. Not something many agencies have risked doing but personally I’ve found it highly effective as I believe Mother and W&K have too. One of my favourite ideas was an urban design project for street furniture (City Brand) where the item looks like it’s been peeled from the pavement, hard to describe but an awesome idea.

Even though job hunting will be tough (we’ve had over 500 people from 11 countries apply to us at Creative Orchestra since we launched in March) there is a lot of great talent out there. Recession or not, I’d urge every agency to take on at least one team as an investment in future talent, because without it we’ll just become a manufacturing industry rather than a creative one.

And finally, congratulations and high praise to all those at D&AD who worked so hard to make this event possible. It’s an important event, more so than the main D&AD Awards I believe because it’s cultivating the industry’s future supply of creative talent.

And well done to all those that got nominated, you are this industry’s future.

Where's Dave Morris now we need him?

1762305 — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 08:28:00 GMT

Last week I spent four days at D&AD, judging TV and Cinema advertising. Over the whole four days there was one amazing piece of original, creative, thinking that totally blew me away. But it wasn’t any of the adverts.

It was something one of the judges told me. Chris Birch, from Leo Burnett, was telling me about his first day at art school. He’d been taught advertising at Bucks, by Dave Morris.

On the first day, everyone walked into the classroom and sat down. They waited for the advertising lesson to start. Dave Morris walked in and sat at the front of the class. He didn’t mention advertising. He opened up “The Art of War” by Sun Tzu. And he just started reading it aloud.

After about an hour he stopped reading. He said, “Your homework is to think about what you just heard.” How great is that? “The Art of War” was written in China, over two thousand years ago. It was written by a great general, and is still studied at Sandhurst, West Point, and Harvard Business School.

It’s about how to out think an opponent. How to out-manoeuvre them and mainly, at all times, how to take unfair advantage and turn the situation to your benefit. So that you win.

Dave Morris has just demonstrated that, before we start to learn anything about advertising, we’ve got to learn the purpose of advertising. Why we do what we do. Why does anyone pay us to put words next to pictures in the first place?

I’d just spent four days looking at hundreds of films that thought advertising was the end in itself. As if the sole purpose of advertising was to make nice little films. Without ever asking why. Why do we do TV and Cinema commercials? Is the sole purpose to make people laugh?

Or to put lyrical images against charming music tracks for people’s pleasure? Almost everyone who did these films thought the films were the end in themselves.

That’s why I was knocked out to hear how Dave Morris taught advertising. He didn’t start from advertising. He started from the object of advertising. And the object is to win something. To take something from someone else.

To out think someone else. Years before ‘new media’ Dave Morris was telling people to open up their minds. To get upstream of the problem. Instead of kneejerking into the same old traditional solutions. Or kneejerking into new versions of the same old solutions, in ‘new’ media.

Dave Morris taught that we shouldn’t just go on auto pilot. However, uncomfortable it was, we had to use our brain.
We had to come up with a different solution for each problem.

To reinvent the wheel every time, instead of just defaulting to whatever we think advertising should be. Advertising doesn’t start with visuals and headlines. Advertising doesn’t start with digital or online, or TV, or press, or posters, or radio, or ambient, or direct mail, or any of our other disciplines.

Advertising doesn’t even start with advertising. Advertising starts with out-thinking other people. Advertising starts with finding a way to get a result. Against often superior competition. And sometimes the answer may not be advertising at all. Isn’t that a great lesson? To approach the problem out of a question. Not out of an answer.

They should teach Dave Morris’s lesson every year, before each D&AD jury starts to vote.

Pervert Penguins save the planet

322703 — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 01:32:00 GMT

There are some amazing stories around and some that just make you laugh. None more than the case of the two environmental campaigners who dressed up as penguins and were seen as being potential paedophiles.

If you thought they were nuts, meet Telford Council! This story comes straight out of the ‘Barmy Britain’ category. Telford & Wrekin Council have managed to reinforce the idea that people who become councillors are probably the last people on the earth who should be councillors. And certainly not let near children! They obviously have little else to do than panic.

Having been reading too many stories about Gary Glitter in the News of the World, they fear that Telford’s children are being preyed upon by dirty old men, so they have started targeting any single men in the local parks. They claim they are trying to prevent paedophiles and perverts preying on kids and womenn. No doubt they’ll also evict Arabs and muslims (who may be terrorists), anyone with a hood (could be a mugger) or any large red people with horns (could be Hellboy).

So when Rachel Whittaker and her friend (note, not a man) were spotted dressed in penguin suits giving out leaflets to educate kids about climate change, a pair of fascist park keepers moved in and moved them on. Not surprisingly, the penguins got the last laugh with lots of publicity, meanwhile Telford got egg on their face.

For great fun in the ethical arena pop The Gruen Transfer into YouTube and enjoy. You find some great ads promoting child labour and the benefits of global warming. Yes, that’s right. The former ads points out that kids in the third world earn money, learn about responsibility and the value of work young. Stay health and learn skills. By contrast, kids in the West are spoilt, get fat, watch TV all day and corrupt their minds with violent video games. They have a point.

Global warming is helping people who live on the streets. So every time you drive you car you can feel good that you’re helping people not freeze in winter. There are a few of many very funny ads from this Australian TV programme The Gruen Transfer that likes to take the mick out of advertising, the world and especially New Zealand – “lets invade New Zealand” is the cry of one ad. They especially like to tackle subjects that others wouldn’t dare. And finally, take a trip to the world of SPAM “it’s a big world out there, and it’s full of meat.” What a great slogan It may not be organic or vegetarian, but the US site is kitsch to the point of art.

There’s even a museum “sure beats an art museum and it’s free”. Or check out the merchandise – SPAM costumes, boxer shirts, ties and everything you could want for Christmas presents. You can even join their fan club. We once set SPAM as a brief for a D&AD workshop – after all, who better to sell it to than students – they’ll eat anything. The best lines were “All meat no greens” and “If you want greens, leave it out on a plate for a week.”. Nothing like truth in advertising.