Comprehensive review raises questions over nine of 20 Australian Press Lions entries
An exhaustive review by Mumbrella of every local entry into this year’s Cannes Press Lions has raised questions about at least nine of the 20 campaigns entered from Australia this year.
Samsung ‘The dog and the cat’
The additional campaigns where Mumbrella has been unable to find evidence of them having run in mainstream media include two from Leo Burnett Sydney which promote safe driving messages for Samsung, and one from Saatchi & Saatchi Sydney, for mineral water brand Capi.
Another campaign by Leo Burnett Sydney for Bundaberg Rum has also raised questions about whether the same version entered for the awards ran in print.
Earlier this month Mumbrella readers raised questions about Bronze Lion winning work for McDonald’s by DDB Sydney and a Silver Lion winning Panasonic campaign by Saatchi & Saatchi Sydney.
It later emerged that the McDonald’s campaign ran only in suburban newspaper The Rouse Hill Times on the final day it would qualify for this year’s Cannes contest, while Mumbrella was unable to find evidence of the Panasonic campaign running at all. Yesterday McDonald’s CMO Mark Lollback suggested the brand was a victim of “tall poppy syndrome” over the questions being raised by Mumbrella.
In addition to the two award-winning campaigns, Mumbrella has previously reported on a further three campaigns which ran just once in cheap, small circulation outlets. They were by JWT Sydney, for Johnson & Johnson products Banlice and Band-Aid, and for packaging firm InXpress which was created by photography studio Freeway Reps working with Saatchi & Saatchi staff on a personal basis.
The issue of “scam” ads is a growing one for the advertising industry, with claims that some work is created to win awards, rather than solve clients’ marketing problems. A hallmark of scam advertising is when work for a major brand appears only once, in a low cost publication, close to an entry deadline.
The agencies and clients responsible for the following four campaigns have failed to respond to Mumbrella’s requests for comment sent last Tuesday, whilst searches by media monitor Ebiquity of main media outlets have failed to uncover where any of the following executions ran. (You can see each execution from the following campaigns at the end of the article).
Capi – Saatchi & Saatchi Sydney:
Three executions were entered for drinks brand Capi by Saatchi & Saatchi Sydney. The trio entitled ‘Alpine Marmot’, ‘Marathon Cyclists’ and ‘Toilet’ play on the Italian sounding name of the brand but play on various gross-out aspects of things that happen in Italy using the tagline ‘Sounds Italian, thank God it’s not’. The campaign also featured three radio executions.
Capi ‘Marathon Cyclists’
Samsung ‘S-Drive’: Leo Burnett Sydney
Three executions were entered for Samsung ‘S-Drive’ by Leo Burnett Sydney. The ads called ‘Crossing’, ‘Forest’ and ‘Intersection’ show the distance you would travel as you sent a message, and the damage you could do. The ‘S-Drive’ program ran a a pilot around the Newcastle area of NSW in March this year, and aimed to promote safer driving by turning any Samsung phone into a device that collects rewards the further someone drives without touching it.
Samsung ‘Intersection’
Samsung ‘Texting and Driving’: Leo Burnett Sydney
Three executions were entered for the Samsung ‘Texting and Driving’ campaign by Leo Burnett Sydney. The ads, called ‘Pop’, ‘The dog and the cat’ and ‘Boom’ show animated versions of everyday objects which traditionally do not go together, and end with the line ‘Texting and driving. Keep them separate’.
Samsung ‘Pop’
Bundaberg Rum: Leo Burnett Sydney
One execution of the ‘Bundy’ campaign was entered. The execution celebrates the 125th anniversary of Bundaberg Rum and is designed to look like a carving with the words ‘A monumental occassion’ and ‘celebrating 125 years of Bundaberg Rum’. It also has a “plaque” underneath it which reads ‘The Rumnaissance’.
‘Bundy’ for Diageo
A search by media monitoring firm Ebiquity was only able to turn up a version of this execution which ran in Brisbane’s Courier Mail in November 2013. However, the double page image is subtly different as it carries a Dan Murphy’s logo and a Bundaberg logo, and is missing the plaque underneath which reads “The Rumnaissance”. Under the rules of the Lions all work must be entered “as it ran”.
The Bundaberg execution as it ran in the Courier Mail
The following 11 campaigns were also entered in the Press Lions:
AWARD School: Saatchi & Saatchi
Three executions of a campaign for the Communications Council’s AWARD School were entered. The three executions called ‘Shat’, ‘Shoot’ and ‘Stab’, which were covered in the trade media when they launched, take anonymous comments from Campaign Brief criticising creative work and end with the line ‘Prepare yourself for the real world of advertising’.
AWARD ‘Shat’
Saatchi & Saatchi Sydney failed to respond to Mumbrella’s requests for comment on where these ads ran. However, the Communications Council said the ad ran in print in free Sydney music magazine The Brag in April, although it has not confirmed whether it ran more than once.
Coopers Brewery: Showpony Advertising
One execution for Coopers Brewery was entered by Showpony Advertising. Called ‘Behind every good festival’ the execution uses festival posters plastered onto a Coopers bottle and highlights the brewer’s sponsorship of the Adelaide Festival. The agency said it ran in the Adelaide Advertiser on February 23.
‘Behind every good festival’ for Coopers Brewery
Nissan GTR: Whybin\TBWA Melbourne
Whybin\TBWA Melbourne entered three ads from a Nissan GTR campaign. Called ‘Signature’, ‘Happy Birthday’ and ‘Quick Brown Fox’ they illustrate how far an action you could get before the car has accelerated to 100kph. The agency confirmed the ads ran in the April version of supercar magazine EVO as full pages, and says it has since appeared in May, June and July issues of the magazine. The agency says it is expected to roll out further later this year.
Nissan ‘Signature’
Nissan: Whybin\TBWA Melbourne
Ano ad for Nissan called ‘Take Off’ was eneered by Whybin\TBWA Melbourne. It shows a car in what appears to be a take off for a space shuttle with a plume of smoke behind it, which can also be viewed as it running across a salt flat for the Nissan Patrol. The agency said it featured in a number of newspaper magazine insertions, including the Australian Financial Review Magazine.
‘Take off’ for Nissan
The following executions were for charities or not-for-profit organisations which ran in multiple publications.
RSPCA Queensland: Engine group
Brisbane’s Engine Group entered four executions. The executions, called ‘Pig’, ‘Chicken’, ‘Dog’ and ‘Cat’ juxtaposed the animals with a different human feature with a different strapline for each highlighting how similar that animal is to a human. The executions ran in several publications in Queensland including the mX Brisbane, QNews and Toowoomba Telegraph with pro-bono placements according to the agency.
RSPCA ‘Chicken’
Doggie Rescue: M&C Saatchi
Two ads for Doggie Rescue by M&C Saatchi were entered. Called ‘TV’ and ‘Couch’ show dogs stood on a pile of furniture with a human hand reaching out and the strapline ‘Rescue a dog and it will do the same for you’. According to the agency the ads ran several publications during March, including the Daily Telegraph, Recipes+ and TV Week, as well as niche publications including Backyard Design and Garden Ideas and Small Gardens, Balconies and Courtyards in April and June.
‘Couch’ for Doggie Rescue
Australian Indigenous Education Fund: Host
Host entered one execution of the #IndigenousPM campaign for the Australian Indigenous Education Fund. The campaign shows an indigenous man stood in the Prime Minister’s office with the words ‘This will never happen’ emblazoned across it. The campaign ran as a teaser last May in The Australian, before two reveal ads later that week showed who the ads were for.
Australian Indigenous Education Fund ‘#IndigenousPM’
Lost Dog’s Home: GPY&R Melbourne
Two executions entitled ‘Intern’ and ‘CEO’ for The Lost Dogs Home were entered by George Patterson Y&R Melbourne. The executions, for the ‘Human Walking Program’ use large text setting out a problem which applies to lost dogs, and a small picture of a person ending with the line ‘Let a dog rescue you’. GPY&R said the executions ran in mX Melbourne and Herald Sun across a three week period leading up to the event on April 4.
The Lost Dogs Home ‘Intern’
The following campaigns were print executions which ran as part of wider campaigns:
Harley-Davidson: 303Lowe Sydney
303Lowe entered one execution from the ‘Harley Book Club’campaign. The campaign was to promote the new Harley-Davidson 2014 catalogue, and shows a group of bikers sat around reading books and drinking tea. The agency, which represents both creative and media duties for the brand, said the execution ran in a number of motorbike publications from October to December last year including Australian Motorcyle News, Live to Ride, Cycle Torque, OzBiker, Just Bikes, Heavy Duty, Fuel Magazine and Riding On.
Harley Davidson ‘Harley Book Club’
Tourism Victoria: ClemengerBBDO Melbourne
ClemengerBBDO Melbourne entered two executions for the Tourism Victoria ‘Remote Control Tourist’ campaign. The executions show colourful cartoon images of heads with hats with cameras on, saying ‘Watch and control October 9-13’. The executions ran in Good Weekend, Q Magazine and Elle.
Tourism Victoria ‘Remote Control Tourist’
City of Perth: Marketforce
Perth agency Marketforce entered three executions for the City of Perth. The text-heavy adverts relay a story about someone having a frustrating day at home ending with the line ‘Don’t waste your time in the suburbs’. The agency says they ran in March and May this year in the two major newspapers in Perth, The Sunday Times and The West Australian.
City of Perth ‘Lawnmower’
Alex Hayes and Miranda Ward
Below is every execution entered by an Australian agency to the 2014 Cannes Lions competition:
Samsung ‘Pop’
Samsung ‘The dog and the cat’
Samsung ‘Boom’
Samsung ‘Intersection’
‘Forest’ for Samsung
‘Crossing’ for Samsung
‘TV’ for Doggie Rescue
‘Couch’ for Doggie Rescue
Australian Indigenous Education Fund ‘#IndigenousPM’
Nissan ‘Signature’
Nissan ‘Quick Brown Fox’
Nissan ‘Happy Birthday’
‘Take off’ for Nissan
RSPCA ‘Pig’
RSPCA ‘Chicken’
RSPCA ‘Dog’
RSPCA ‘Cat’
City of Perth ‘Watching TV’
City of Perth ‘Totem Tennis’
City of Perth ‘Lawnmower’
Harley Davidson ‘Harley Book Club’
Coopers Brewery ‘Behind every good festival’
The Lost Dogs Home ‘Intern’
‘CEO’ for The Lost Dogs Home
Tourism Victoria ‘Remote Control Tourist’
Tourism Victoria ‘Remote Control Tourist’
AWARD ‘Shoot’
AWARD ‘Shat’
AWARD ‘Stab’
Capi ‘Alpine Marmots’
Capi ‘Marathon Cyclists’
Capi ‘Toilet’
Diageo ‘Bundy’
There is absolutely no credibility in the print and poster categories at Cannes.
None.
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I’m loving that you guys are calling foul on this. Keep up teh good work.
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Desperate is not pretty.
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Ahhhhhhhh, my god I am enjoying this comeuppance so much. Keep going Tim. Right now agency PR people are sweating bullets hoping this all goes away. Please ensure it doesn’t.
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So Mumbrella continue to accuse these agencies & their staff of being frauds & liars. Marketing Managers & award show execs are also being implicated by what are surely actionable accusations. Why is no one picking up the phone & calling in the defamation lawyers? Is that the sound of silence that is deafening us all?
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But it’s very good work though. Most of it anyway.
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I applaud the broadening of this research and am not surprised by the findings. as I mentioned in a previous post in an earlier thread, I know that several of the awards won by my teams over the years when I worked in agencies either ran extremely ‘sparsely’, were paid for by the agency or had significant art directional or editing changes made between the version that ran and the ‘awards version’
I believe it is therefore fair on the original three agencies that the focus is now broader. M ybelief is that this isn’t a particular agency thing, or an Australian issue but something which is absolutely standard practice across most (every) category and country around the world.
the global industry has created this scenario – networks, agencies and individuals are rewarded by the judging of ‘work’ almost completely in a vacuum by experts who rarely have knowledge of market, category or competitive context. The importance the industry grants these awards is self perpetuating and the number of awards grows each year, as does the pressure to win them.
This debate (which is an incredibly worthy one) should inevitably shift towards whether awards themselves are worthwhile, rather than whether individuals and agencies can/should work within every inch of the rules to try to win them
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The really sad thing is, if these ads were done without client interference, you’d think they’d be a lot better than they are.
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Don’t let up guys. What the industry purports to be and what it is, are 2 very different things.
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I fully support the investigation by Mumbrella, but I’m a bit concerned that this appears to be a list of 20 odd scammers rather than an assessment of each entry.
Our entry for Coopers was commissioned by the client to promote their sponsorship of the Fringe, ran in a major daily (surely the Advertiser is still mainstream) and as street posters (geddit??) around town. The client loved it and I have no doubt that they’ll run it again next year.
If you want to be balanced in your reporting of this issue, maybe you should be clearly acknowledging the difference, rather than painting as many shades of grey as you can.
Tim. you should be a bit clearer in this article. Most of the later ads ran legitimately but by including them here, for anyone scanning this article, you imply they are scam ads.
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Hi Jamie and Guy,
Thanks for the comments.
We’ve tried to be clear here that there are nine campaigns which have question marks still to be resolved, which are the Nine at the top of the article (including the five we have already reported on which we are not carrying images of here).
What we’ve done is an investigation into all 20 entries (a time consuming process) for the sake of completeness. Here we’ve published what the campaigns are, their contexts and media placements as best we can.
In your case Jamie it is clear this was an execution for a specific event which which was supported in the major paper in the city. I agree that’s a legitimate Press execution, hence it running as part of the 11 that have answered all our questions. Thanks for doing so.
Hope that clears it up.
Cheers,
Alex – editor, Mumbrella
I thought it was widely accepted (if not publicly acknowledged) that this kind of thing happened in all categories? Didn’t [Moderated under Mumbrella’s comment submission policy] win a Cannes Lion a couple of years ago for an identity that didn’t actually ever go to market?
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Surely to be eligible there should either be a minimum media spend threshold or a minimum campaign duration.
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Thanks Alex but all that separates the ‘passes’ and ‘fails’ is the phrase: The following 11 campaigns were also entered in the Press Lions:
Doesn’t exactly point out ‘this next lot is okay’…..
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I don’t like the direction this has taken. The tone and framing of the article definitely implies (or did when first published anyhow) that all these ads, most of which are 100% legit are less than worthy of being entered according to the standards of the mumbrella editorial staff. Way to ingratiate yourself with the local industry, there’s some genuinely good stuff here, so my thanks at least for bringing them to my attention. But a few apologies are in order, and you may as well come out and say what, as an organisation, mumbrella views as ‘scam’ by definition – because this is definitely gone beyond the realm of journalism and into opinion, based upon the innuendo and tone of this entire series. As for the sickening display of schadenfreude displayed by those commentators pulling out the pitchforks, I hope you’ll be satisfied with blandsville in the category next year.
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And that’s just Press. Imagine if you dug into all the other categories.
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look further than the press category guys. you’d be surprised at what you’d find.
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Hi Icky Stuff,
You seem to be implying there’s been a change to the “tone and framing” of this piece. That’s not correct.
You’re entitled to your view, but I do feel you are potentially misleading readers by not declaring an interest. I see you are commenting from an IP address of one of the agencies where questions have been raised regarding their media schedule. I wish your agency was as willing to discuss the issue on the record.
Cheers,
Tim – Mumbrella
Clearly the above agencies had:
1-Too much money for entry fees and media placements
2-Too much free time
3-No shortage of mates in the supply chain
4-Not very high internal creative standards
5-Abundance of optimism
6-Hired grads from AWARD School
7-All of the above
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Thanks Mumbrella for the on-going commitment to quality journalism.
As someone who has worked in the MSM, broken stories and then seen the “mates” and “Old boyz” network conspire to have follow-up articles quickly relegated to a small par on a left-hand page in the middle of the publication, and then just as quickly “spiked” as “no longer having news value” – I am full of respect that you are continuing to cover this topic.
Again, drawing on personal experience, I imagine there has been a full suite of abusive emails, counterbalanced with a plethora of other “inducements”, encouraging you to “move on” from this. So thanks.
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Anyone a little put off entering the Mumbrella Awards in 2015?
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Up until this article I have been on the whole supportive of your campaign to out the scam ads. However, this article is the worst I have ever read on Mumbrella (even worse than the Ferrier beard farce). It is far from clear what is scam, suspect and perfectly legit. Despite stating ads are legit the underlying tone in the language implies the opposite e.g ‘according to the agency….’, ‘the agency says….’
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Guys…there are some seriously big names in the world of advertising who scammed their way to prominence. There are countries like Singapore who were hotbeds of the stuff with Australians leading the way in creating Cannes winning reputations for themselves. During several months before entries closed, whole departments would dedicate themselves to scam work. This was soon known to others around the world. And instead of calling them out on it…they joined in as well. South Africa, Europe Brazil…no one was willing to do anything about it. And now we have this blind eye mentality. Ask prominent people who worked in these places what it was like. Get them to shed light on what went on. Maybe people like David Droga knows what happened and can illuminate us all.
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Looks like Melbourne is hands and heels in the integrity stakes
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There are some awesome people in agency land. Equally, there are some awful people. Ability and smarts aside; awful refers to ethics and morals and there are some of the lowest of the lows in this industry. (Probably a few more in investment banking mind).
Dodgy, greedy, not always self obsessed (it can be institutional / ignorance too). It is very sad because often an agency can be firing and then it just takes a clan of greedy execs to promote an unethical culture and you watch an agency fall from grace. Many have done and many will continue to do so.
Well done Mumbrella on taking the moral stance on this. The acerbic commentary from who I perceive to be guilty parties, on this thread and many other threads, sums up that they are truly unaware of their short sighted, cowboy approach. Kick them out and clean up the industry = the client will win. After all, we are serving our clients. So many short term greedy fools in it for themselves and not for their clients.
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