‘No good deed goes unpunished’: Grey returns Cannes Lions won for I Sea app
Grey Singapore has returned the Bronze Lion it won at Cannes for the controversial ‘I Sea’ app after what the agency has described as “unwarranted, unfair, unrelenting attacks by unnamed bloggers.”
Grey Singpore’s I Sea app was called out as a fake by tech bloggers
The move, announced overnight, comes a day after marketer Alastair Bullock called on clients to push the agency to return the award, saying he would never hire a Grey agency until they did.
In a statement signed by global head of comms Owen Dougherty, the agency said:
During Cannes we said the app was real and its creator, Grey for Good in Singapore, is a highly respected philanthropic unit that has helped numerous non-profit organizations.
Moreover, Grey is one of the most creatively awarded agencies in the world with the highest ethical standards. We won over 90 Cannes Lions this year alone so there is no need for scam projects. However, given the unwarranted, unfair, unrelenting attacks by unnamed bloggers, we are putting an end to this and returning the Bronze Lion so there is not even the hint of impropriety or a question of our integrity. The saying no good deed goes unpunished is apt in this case.
The ‘I Sea’ app claimed to help refugees by locating their stranded boats in the Mediterranean, but was proven not to work by tech writers who tested it and called it out as a fake, which was widely reported by the international media.
The app was removed from Apple’s app store and heavily criticised by Migrant Offshore Aid Station, the client associated with the work. Even so, it won a Bronze Lion at Cannes last month.
Grey has defended its work by insisting that it was only a prototype, although in the case study video for the app, which helped win the award at Cannes, the agency claims it can help locate stranded migrants.
It is the second Lion returned to festival organisers this year, after Brazilian agency AlmapBBDO was told by its global creative head to hand back a Bronze it won for a heavily criticised outdoor ad for pharma giant Bayer, which it transpired the agency had paid to run.
Almap was later named Agency of the Year at the festival, an award handed to the agency which wins the most awards and gets the most shortlisted work.
In retrospect I think I fucked that up. I think I should have just humbly apologized rather than reinforce the fact that Grey for Good is a sham and we have our head so far up our own ass that we are a global embarrassment.
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TLDR: #sorrynotsorry
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“We did nothing wrong, but we are going to hand it back anyway just to stop the haters!”
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Maybe I’m wrong (old print designer here) but surely they don’t allow prototype apps in the App Store?
Seems like a 100% clear cut case of liar liar pants on fire with added petrol thanks to all that “boo hoo poor us it was the invisible bloggers what done it” crap.
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Jesus… what an appallingly worded statement from someone who is supposed to be a communications expert. None of the negative commentary I’ve seen has been from ‘unnamed bloggers’. And as for integrity, that ship has sailed. If only we had an app to locate it…
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One cursory glance at the ‘Grey For Good’ website lists numerous projects. (Interestingly enough, you can sort them by ‘most awarded.’)
I clicked a random project.
A project for Malaysia Telekom. An umbrella that has an attachment that turns it into some sort of Dengue fever killing dispenser.
Of course, a tiny bit of digging and you realise that it’s just a submission to a website run by Telekom, where anyone can pitch an idea. The more votes it gets, Telekom will make it.
In this case, Telekom didn’t make it.
But I doubt it stopped Grey from entering it into shows.
In fact, they sent a PR release about the umbrella to almost every website on the planet.
So it wasn’t their client (even though the website claims that the ‘client’ is Telekom. It wasn’t a real project, just an idea submitted to a fun site where any Malaysian can enter.
So, to all intents and purposes, complete scam.
I’m sure with our combined resources we can unpick almost every project on there and expose it for what it is.
Have fun, go for it.
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Owen and the Grey leadership team should perhaps take a moment to read this – https://medium.com/the-development-set/the-reductive-seduction-of-other-people-s-problems-3c07b307732d#
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Just appalling. Especially as their actual day job is supposed to be communications experts. They’ve lost sight of that and seemingly everything else. Just ban them from ever entering any awards ever again. What will they do then?
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Sometimes it helps to see the other sides to the story. My take on the Grey for good scandal here
https://t.co/vi3WqWcrC6
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