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.
There is absolutely no credibility in the print and poster categories at Cannes.
None.
I’m loving that you guys are calling foul on this. Keep up teh good work.
Desperate is not pretty.
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.
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?
But it’s very good work though. Most of it anyway.
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
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.
Don’t let up guys. What the industry purports to be and what it is, are 2 very different things.
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.
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?
Surely to be eligible there should either be a minimum media spend threshold or a minimum campaign duration.
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’…..
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.
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
And that’s just Press. Imagine if you dug into all the other categories.
look further than the press category guys. you’d be surprised at what you’d find.
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
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.
Anyone a little put off entering the Mumbrella Awards in 2015?
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….’
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.
Looks like Melbourne is hands and heels in the integrity stakes
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.