‘Stop the madness’: DDB global creative chief says agency is pulling back from award shows
One of the world’s biggest ad agencies DDB has announced it is scaling back involvement in award shows, with its lead global creative Amir Kassaei saying the industry is “willing to sacrifice our integrity” over them.
Amir Kassaei at Mumbrella 360
Kassaei made the announcement in a column published in UK trade mag Campaign overnight titled ‘The end of false recognition’, saying the agency globally would be entering less work to shows, although he did not mention any by names.
In Australia DDB has been at the centre of allegations of scam – work created to win awards – twice in recent years, while the Cannes Lions has come under scrutiny for awarding campaigns with dubious credentials and failing to follow up on its own entry rules.
The announcement appears to signal a change of heart from Kassaei, who said during his keynote address at Mumbrella360 in 2014: “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.”
“At Cannes, there are winners with real work for real clients. But the majority of winners are not real,” he added.
In today’s column Kassaei says: “We have to stop the madness. Not only by talking about it, but by also doing something against it. So we at DDB will not play this mad game. We will be coming up with a plan to divest ourselves from the madness. We at DDB want to be recognized for the real work that we do for our real clients and their real problems, and if, on top of that, we get some applause from the industry for it, we’ll be happy.”
At Mumbrella360 Kassaei did flag “prototype” work which was winning awards as an issue the industry had to tackle, a theme he revisits in the column.
He writes: “You will see less work from DDB at some of the shows. And maybe they won’t win much against the phony prototypes. So what? We want to be the best and most influential company in our industry, not the most awarded. We may be saying goodbye to the made-up empty titles like Agency of the Year, Network of the Year or whatever. But when we do receive these recognitions, you can be sure it is only because we were the best with the best work and not because we were the network with the most prototypes or who spent the most money.”
In recent years the Omnicom agency’s London shop Adam&Eve DDB has won a host of awards at major shows, including the Agency of the Year award at Cannes Lions in 2014.
The DDB work for McDonald’s (Click to enlarge)
In 2014 Mumbrella discovered a Cannes Lions-winning print ad for McDonald’s from DDB Sydney ran just once in the Rouse Hill Times, the cheapest newspaper available, on the deadline day to enter work into the awards.
The agency was not alone, with print ads from Leo Burnett and Saatchi & Saatchi also coming under scrutiny after Mumbrella was unable to find where they had run.
Organisers of the Cannes Lions refused to reveal the media schedules with chairman Terry Savage likening the run-once work to Super Bowl ads.
DDB Sydney was also embroiled in scam accusations in 2007 when ads ran in a small format in another local newspaper The Manly Daily to qualify for entry.
Last year WPP agency VML was allowed to withdraw an entry which had been shortlisted by Cannes jurors called Blackspot Beacons, after Mumbrella revealed client Transport for NSW had not signed off on the entry.
The issue of scam is particularly prevalent in Asia. Last week two ads by Malaysian agencies Dentsu Utama were disqualified from the Kancil Awards for copying other artistic works from around the world.
Alex Hayes
“Protoypes”.
That’s an interesting new euphemism.
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Should have been ‘Prototypes’
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Good on Amir for tackling the out of control crapfest that awards have become.
I hope he can make it stick and that other networks follow DDB’s lead instead of inventing those “International Councils” whose job is to select and fund pro active campaigns purely to win awards.
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The unfortunate reality though will be a severe lack of great Creatives wanting to work there.
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So we’re not entering scam anymore, nor the second tier shows? Why not walk away from all the award shows then if it’s such a defunct system? I’ll tell you why, because the actual creatives who do the work for you and need to advance their own careers are given nothing to replace those awards as a measure of their creativity. They’ll leave DDB in droves. But I suspect that, in reality, DDB regional offices will still continue entering their own, second tier regional shows anyway. This is upper management puffery and bravado masquerading as commitment to a cause. Nothing to see here people. Won’t change a farking thing anywhere.
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Junior creatives might get ahead with big shiny awards for low hanging fruit. And regional bosses do look for the AoTY titles based on metal counts. But if their head office genuinely stops caring about the BS then the regional and local bosses can take some of their huge budgets for creating and entering awards and spend some of it on keeping and growing their department.
The vast majority of creatives who want to remain relevant and sustain their careers learn that awards wear a little thin when you’re 40.
If you don’t learn to solve real problems and help major brands you’ll end up on the scrap pile of has beens before you can blo wthe candles out on your 37th birthday.
Truth.
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I’m unsure that Amir Kassaei appreciated the consequences of this move for retaining and recruiting talent.
In an industry where creative agencies in-particular associate salaries and performance based measures, Kassaei will be relegating DDB as a “must do” place to work. Not sure that it is currently anyway but thats besides the point.
Clients want work that works and if that work is genuine and true and it demonstrates that once variables are discounted, that the creative actually worked, where is the harm in entering awards?
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I’m all for removing scam and applying creativity for the purpose its most fit – solving problems. And the award dog and pony show is far from ideal, no argument there at all. I’ve played it far long enough to know. But right now it’s all that there is. Amir, with all his piss and wind, neither goes ‘all in’ and walks away entirely from awards, nor proffers are workable replacement for them. He just rattles a sabre somewhere in the middle. He also commits to absolutely nothing, specifically. This isn’t brave at all, it’s just nothing said loudly. There’s a big difference.
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See I don’t work in advertising so the obsession that ad types have with awards passes me by. Is there no other way of demonstrating that you have done something valuable? Is there nothing more you can point to but a gong given you by some other advertising people?
N.B. The only people who care about “creativity” is ad people. Everyone else cares about effectiveness. In most other professions, the feedback “that was a creative solution but ineffective” would be a kiss of death. In adland, it will garner you a gong or two. And if a solution hasn’t been properly tested in the marketplace, how do you know if it is effective or not?
In some respects, the ad profession is not unusual. Every group has a deludedly self-important view of its own place in the world (probably due to a mixture of ego and the availability heuristic). Doctors, bankers, lawyers, rubbish collection people probably all think that they are the centre of the universe. However, adland awards culture makes its brittle narcissism more visible. And also easier to laugh at.
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but if awards shows stopped existing, where would Mark Tutssell wear his kaftans?
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This bloke must have so many splinters it hurts. Why not have some spine and say for the $20 million DDB wastes on awards globally, we’ll do something meaningful with it:
Pay rises? Training? More juniors? Projects for good. I mean he’s hardly thinking creatively is he?
Or is he really saying, the bean counters have cut my award budget?
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Problem is, if you’re looking for work as a creative every ad says: must have won awards…
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Your there to sell a product not win an award.
No agencies should enter awards.
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The best award show I’ve seen in Australia was the Outdoor Awards.
Run by Jonathan Kneebone (See his article. It is good).
– Free to enter.
– Judged impartially by overseas judges who had no bias towards the local market.
– Winners (the creative team) got a cash prize to go see something inspirational.
– Pissed off a lot of networks who thought they deserved to win.
– Rewarded bravery not work designed for judges.
I wish there was something more like that for a broader mix of media available today. AWARD (yes, I’ve judged there too) is too narrow in it’s focus. Entry should be free or at least affordable for your average creative, media companies sponsor each category anyway.
Agree with JK’s comment about the calibre of judges. Too many old heads in the room. When I say old heads I don’t mean age, just people stuck in the past. Get Alex Bogusky to judge a show and then I’ll sit up and pay attention.
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#13,
not many awards for punctuation on your shelf, I’d imagine
x
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As a client, I believe this just what the business needs.
If Amir walks the talk,scammers will leave.
Experienced pros will stay and focus on real business.
Clients will be spared the annual begging for client endorsements for scams. (He’s right, this is criminal in any other industry)
Businesses who have no AOR and work with other networks can see the improvement and will vote their support by swinging business to DDB.
Hopefully, DDB will share the extra profit from unspent award fees and case study videos with the people who clients actually rate and value.
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I’ve never seen a network more obsessed with awards. They fly creative directors to exotic locations just to sit and discuss the awards they’re entering. They have a hit list of which awards matter to them with a points ranking system for each award. Amir gives each office a ‘score’ they need to hit each year solely based on the awards they need to win.
So offices flood categories that their work isn’t even relevant for. The hit rates are understandably low. The worst bit is the culture becomes about creating the kind of work they think will impress juries rather than the kind of work that will shift product.
Award shows have finally gotten to a stage where effectiveness matters. They’re much harder to win. But for DDB, suddenly that doesn’t matter anymore.
I find this bizarre coming from a man whose directive for the last five years has been ‘win at all costs’.
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