The world’s biggest scam ad scandal?

Before I discovered Australia has almost as much sunshine as Dubai but the added benefit of a free press, I wrote about advertising and marketing in the Middle East for nearly two years.  

It was not the cleanest of markets, and it was certainly hard to get together a fair and transparent advertising awards.

Which is why I always felt the organisers of the Cannes Lions were brave to lend their credibility to the Dubai Lynx Awards. Anyway, this year, things went badly wrong, with arguably one of the biggest scam scandals advertising has seen globally. The agency particularly in the firing line is Fortune Promo Seven, which is affiliated to the McCann network.

The lessons could be applied to any market.

One of the local publications – AdNation – has just published an excellent, and lengthy, analysis of what went wrong at the Dubai Lynx. It’s well worth a read. Do you think it could happen here?

Tim Burrowes – Mumbrella

Tim Burrowes

Tim Burrowes is the founder of Mumbrella. At various points he's been editor, content director and editor-at-large of Mumbrella. He's written about media and marketing in Australia, the Middle East and the UK.

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topics AdvertisingawardsDubai Lynxscam ads

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Comments: 4

Tony@TacticalTV 22 Apr 09

When you have a communications industry crisis, use this simple test:
try explaining it to your Mum or Dad.

How would they respond to the idea of
– a creative director who didn’t work on real briefs
– an agency that paid for it’s own media placements
– a small regional agency spending $1 million on award entries?

My folks would find this utterly surreal.

Reply

Ian 22 Apr 09

Unfortunately some agencies and individuals are fixated by awards and use them for self promotion. Maybe singo had it right!

Reply

alexander 22 Apr 09

Isn’t it all MARVELLOUS???

Reply

Really 23 Apr 09

Award locally and Cannes globally are plagued with scam work – from the top down with few exceptions mainly from the UK and America. Think Tour de France teams, coaches and doctors.

The difference is that the French now want to stop doping.

If they stopped scam imagine the massive income hit to the bottom line…

Reply

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