DDB’s Amir Kassaei: I’m not against scam, as long as majority of agency’s work is genuine
Amir Kassaei speaking at Mumbrella360 this morning.
The global creative chief officer of ad agency DDB, Amir Kassaei, said today that he is not against “scam” – work created purely to win awards – as long as the majority of an agency’s output is genuine.
“It is our responsibility to look for ideas that might not be realistic at the moment. But the majority of the work should be solving real problems with genuine ideas,” Kassaei said.
“At Cannes, there are winners with real work for real clients. But the majority of winners are not real,” he said.
Problems arise when agencies seek fame purely off the back of “prototypes”, he said. This gives clients a false impression of the agency and the industry as a whole.
He also likened the advertising industry’s relationship with awards to the car industry.
“If a car company is amazing only at producing prototypes, they will not be taken seriously. I’m not an enemy of prototyping, but you have to get the balance right.”
Kassaei said that he did not think, as has been suggested, that a new awards show should be set up that focuses solely on prototype or scam work.
“That would send the wrong signal,” he said.
“A big problem with awards is that people are not judging ideas, they’re judging the quality of case study videos – the packaging of an idea.”
“It would be great if we get to the point we judge ideas purely as ideas, not in categories [such as print, film or direct]. But for awards organisers, this makes no economic sense.”
Kassaei finished his presentation with a case study video for StarHub by DDB Singapore, which has been widely recognised at awards shows.
Kassaei courted controversy at Cannes in 2012 when he accused rivals – indirectly referring to WPP – of vote rigging and threatened to pull DDB out of the awards show if the activity did not stop.
“I became enemy number one of Martin Sorrell,” Kassaei said at Mumbrella360 today. “But I take that as a compliment.”
Robin Hicks
Word to the wise.
Never say you have no objections to scams, then show work don’e by your company.
Context matters.
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Good analogy; /cars.
Vote rigging, scams, enemy number one. Has anyone considered the children?
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Anyone who’s trying to win awards from scam clearly doesn’t get the fact that Cannes and every other award show has changed.
It needs to deliver real results for consideration, you’re dreaming if you think TV, radio or print are in any way relevant to the Australian market.
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