Photography company describes Cannes Press Lions entry as ‘love job’
The owner of a photography company has described a print campaign entered in the Cannes Lions advertising awards as a “love job”. The ad qualified for the awards by running once, across a sixth of a page, in the Rouse Hill Times shortly before the closing date.
A Mumbrella reader raised questions about a campaign for Queensland-based courier company InXpress which ran three print ad executions in the Rouse Hill Times in April, the same paper which controversial one-off ads for McDonald’s and Band-Aid also featured in.
Whilst the campaign was run through Sydney photography studio Freeway, the campaign credits also mention Saatchi & Saatchi creatives Nils Eberhardt and Veronica Copestake. The duo were both credited on a series of ads featuring dogs enjoying Panasonic air conditioning which won a Silver Lion this year, although the agency has refused to disclose where they ran.
However, Saatchi & Saatchi has claimed to Mumbrella that Eberhardt and Copestake worked on the InXpress campaign “in a personal capacity” and said the agency had nothing to do with the campaign.
Photographer Andreas Bommert, who works for Freeway Reps, also shot the Panasonic campaign.
Freeway’s owner and manager Grant Nevin told Mumbrella: “InXpress was a client that contacted FreewayReps directly with a creative brief for their business”. He added: “I, as the director of the company deemed this brief interesting, highly creative and a chance to showcase great photography as well as 3D. A win win for all involved.”
Nevin said: “I showed this brief to a few creatives I have worked with in the past, whom I have a personal and good relationship with and asked if they would like to help me bring this fresh idea to life. All agreed that it would be a ‘love job’ worthy of our personal time and attention. I believe that the end result is one that all parties are proud of and I thank you for interest in the project. It is a great example of a team of motivated creatives pulling together on a project that all involved, including our client are most proud of.”
Each of the executions ran on a sixth of a page in the Rouse Hill Time, which Mumbrella understands is the cheapest title in News Corp’s News Local stable. “Bob cat” ran on April 2, “Fountain” on April 9 and “Piano” featuring on April 16. (The campaign can be viewed online via the NewsLocal viewer – search for the Rouse Hill Times and the appropriate date on pages 9, 27 and 36 respectively.)
Whilst the executions were entered into the Press category in the Cannes Lions they did not make the shortlist.
InXpress, which has franchises in NSW, said it had commissioned the campaign claiming in a statement that it ran as “our sales were targeting Rouse Hill businesses for the month of May and we thought it would be a good point of entry to see if people had seen our ads”. “It was a great project and we’re very happy with the results”, it added .
The ads are the fifth set entered by Australian agencies in this year’s Cannes competition to come under scrutiny, with Saatchi & Saatchi’s Silver Lion winning work for Panasonic, DDB’s Bronze winning McDonald’s executions and JWT’s Band-Aid and Banlice work also in the spotlight.
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.
Credited on the campaign alongside Bommert, art director Eberhardt and writer Copestake, are Cream Studios’ Mark Stearne (retoucher) and Toby & Pete (producer). Copestake is a senior copywriter for Saatchi & Saatchi Sydney and has worked with the agency for just over a year, according to her LinkedIn profile. Eberhardt also works at Saatchi & Saatchi, joining the agency in February 2012.
Nevin said he was unable to comment on the Saatchi & Saatchi Panasonic work which won a Silver Lion at Cannes in Press. Mumbrella has still been unable to locate the campaign, with media monitoring services Ebiquity and Nielsen also coming up blank.
If you have seen the campaign, we welcome all information via anonymous email if preferred to alex@focalattractions.com.au.
The InXpress campaign:
Miranda Ward
Miranda Ward worked for Mumbrella from 2013 to 2017, eventually becoming deputy editor. Miranda joined Mumbrella in September 2013 from Sky News.
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The owners of the Rouse Hill Times must laugh all the way to the bank every April.
On a positive note, my little agency are going to put an advert in for the Lions next year for a HUGE client we don’t have, not charge anyone for it, and run it once in the local Brisbane Coffee News flyer. WIN.
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Tim, and team:
You DO know that if you plan to expose every Cannes print entry as somewhat-on-the-dodgy-side, you’re going to have about 3,000 entries to expose?
This story could go on for years.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O_lnq0HYBQE
Mumbrella takes on the industry!
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I can see bookings for News Corp’s second cheapest paper going up next year, don’t want to be too obvious.
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@AdGuy – yes, that’s the point. Are you suggesting we should take the current situation as OK because its too big a job to change?
Well done to Tim for exposing scam ads, one at a time.. now who’s NEXT?
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“Company decides to advertise, all involved try and do a good job. Local blog spits dummy.”
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@hmmm
no, I’m saying that in a world where practically every one of the 3,000+ print entries is dubious, it’s going to be a very tedious exercise calling them out one by one by one by one.
Ooh look: another spec ad that was done as a love job or paid for by the agency!
Better to find the handful of print ads entered that were 100% legit.
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“Company decides to advertise, all involved try and do good job. Local white-anting blog spits dummy.”
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scam ad? pfft more like great ad!
its in sync with the advertising industry anyway,,,lies…all lies
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AdGuy,
Your argument is risible.
Are practically all of the 3000+ ;print entries dubious?
This is obfuscation at its feeblest.
DB
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good one rouse hill times. the real winner in all this
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@doughboy
you’ve obviously judged at international shows, and been exposed to thousands of entries from all over the world. So, in your informed opinion, what percentage of entries in Press Lions would you consider to be within the spirit of the rules (i.e., what percentage of work in Press Lions would you consider had NOT been made solely for entry into awards shows)?
Please tell.
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@doughboy
And I’m not trying to obfuscate anything. I don’t do scam, I don’t support scam, and I make sure our agency doesn’t waste its time on scam. The whole Press category is rotten to the core, and I’m not defending Australian agencies who scam it up. I’m merely making the point that they’re scamming in a whole competition full of scammers. There is no glory to be had here.
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Awards are a sign of hunger. I’d rather a young team with the tenacity and initiative to find a client, find a photographer, find a way for the ad to meet the entry req. and get the job done than a team trying to force feed a conservative client, award winning ideas or worse , giving them what they think they want. Pointless witch hunt. Storm in a piss cup.
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Wish i was Ad manager at Rouse Hill, Id be hitting every agency in town in April with the Canne special offer 🙂
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Who’s the hungry one here?
The team who did them in their ‘personal capacity’?
Or the agency that enter them as theirs for clients not on their roster?
One man’s initiative, another man’s desperation.
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The witch hunt continues.
Naked are quiet at the moment, UM aren’t kicking off and I haven’t heard much about Ikon of late, so I guess I see where he is going.
Maybe ole’ Timmy B needs to find someone else’s career to try and mess up.
I don’t know but maybe we should celebrate the industry a little bit, and yes it’s not great these ads are running in small titles just to qualify…but Cannes is a festival of creativity after all, so maybe we should look at them and go “nice work”…
I don’t work at MuMbrella so i’m not the best ad man in the game, but just leave it.
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Why waste personal time doing stuff that, let’s face it, is dubious even calling it ‘creative’ in the first place. Part of the challenge of this job is convincing clients that your creative solutions are going to help their brand. If you can’t do that, you’re probably not that well rounded in the commercial arts anyway.
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Yaaaaaaawwwwwwnnn…
How is this an article? If you’ve ever legitimately won a lion, you know how much luck goes into it. I don’t begrudge these guys (the team) anything for going for it. Good luck to them. If the agency wants to parade it as real work, good luck with that too. It’s a best idea (nothing great) and certainly nothing approaching the infamous Lintas Taronga zoo stuff (that ruined an equal number of careers as I expect this pointless witch hunt will). Industry eating it’s own. Yawnage.
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Cannes lions are a dime a dozen.
Now, if that comment hurt, you should care about scam ads. They only serve to devalue the self-obsessed and self-serving effort you put into winning the little putty-dat.
And, god forbid, adds further weight to the argument that no-one should give a f**k about any award unless it’s based on transparent effectiveness.
Clients know this. Agencies know this. The only ones living in the dream world are the so-called creatives who can’t deliver a truly creative solution without cheating. But hey, sociopaths don’t feel anyway. Let them play with their little trophy and stare at it before beddy-byes.
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Rouse Hill Times has to be a bit of a industry secret – or not so secret – based on the surprising number of highly creative brand spots running in the ‘cheap’ publication just prior to deadline.
Can’t be a coincidence. Could be very interesting to see the publications from the same time last year as well.
There’s your next story…
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All in all the creative in these ads is wanting. There must be a worldwide creative block if these efforts are getting a look in.
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Forget Lurzher’s Archive. I’m subscribing to the Rouse Hill Times.
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@Wicked witch of the East
You are a tool.
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Strangely enough, this whole furore has been about media placement and the amount of times each ad has run.
Last time I checked, advertising agencies weren’t responsible for or even in charge of the media slice of cash. In fact, even though they recommend to the client where and how the ad should run, that choice remains firmly in the hands of the media agency.
So why are the ad agencies copping all the flack?
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@AmIMissingSomething
Why are ad agencies copping all the flack?
You just nailed them in your synopsis my friend.
Media DO all the booking. Yet for these ads, the agencies have orgnzd the placement and payment with the Rouse Hill Times themselves, bypassing the Media Agency.
Assuming you have a reasonable level of intuition, what does your gut tell you about an agency that booked an ad themselves (which isnt their dept) for a 1 week run in the cheapest publication in town, right before the Cannes deadlines?
Let me ask you something, had they missed the Cannes deadlines, you think they wouldve run it the following week, even though they couldnt have entered it in Cannes?
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Labeling a journalistic revelation as a ‘witch hunt’ is what fascists do.
Nixon’s men called Watergate a ‘witch hunt’. It’s in page 1 of the handbook. ‘If anyone starts digging into your wrongdoings, if covering up doesn’t work, accuse the dogs of being on a witch hunt.’
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