Media & Marketing:The annual Shark awards, which celebrate creativity in advertising, took place in Kinsale last weekend.
However, having sat in a dark room for two days with his five other judges, scoring over 1,200 advertisements, Mal Stephenson, creative director at Irish International/BBDO, has concerns about the levels of creativity in Irish advertising.
He said: "Clients are becoming more and more risk-averse and the bland ads being created are not getting noticed. With so much media, the need to cut through is greater than ever. Now a beer ad is competing as much with a car ad as it is with other beer ads for people's attention.
"So much advertising is researched to death now and that's killing creativity. If you treat research as a god, it will control the process. It should be a voice in the room but not the final arbiter."
Stephenson has worked on the Guinness account for the last five years. He credits the Diageo marketing team with listening to the research without being slaves to it.
A case in point is the current "Music Machine" television ad for Guinness, the one with all the golden space cadets bouncing around the interior of a pint glass. When the commercial was researched, it provoked some negative feedback, but other respondents said that they really loved the advertisement. "Credit to Diageo, who left the ad unchanged, despite some of the negativity," said Stephenson.
He added: "Ad agencies can only do great work for great clients. Halifax must be a great client to work for because they are brave. That bravery has to come from the top in an organisation. Not enough clients are turning around to their agencies to tell them they want something totally different. I call it 'operation cover ass'. Clients come into agencies with a bland brief and the agencies get worn down. I see more good work turned down than getting made."
As it happens, this year's top Shark award went to Irish International/BBDO for the Guinness space cadet commercial. The advertisement also won the best special effects and sound design categories and was named best television commercial of the past 12 months.
Publicis QMP won six Sharks, including four for the Halifax "Dance Off" commercial, the one where two men throw shapes under a Bronx skyline.
McCann Erickson won two Sharks for Heineken's "Memory Hotel", an advertisement that is definitely an acquired taste.
Cawley Nea/TBWA also won two golds thanks to radio advertisements narrated by comedian Dara Ó Briain that aim to lure drinkers back into pubs.
Other agencies which had reason to pop the champagne included McConnells (for Ballygowan) and Chemistry, whose three Sharks included a silver award for Irish Life's "Diver" campaign, targeting women who have no pension. According to Stephenson: "This was just a beautiful simple idea that really stood out."
There were no awards in the digital/viral category because, Stephenson says, the quality of entries was "atrocious".
He explained: "We are told viral and digital is the future of advertising. If the quality of entries we had to judge are anything to go by, the future of traditional advertising mediums are safe. The entries in this category were universally wretched, long-winded, unfocused, indulgent pieces of creative with poor production values."
Cranky old geezer or what? No, fellow judge Kieron Walsh, director of Blinder Films, concurs. He said: "For the digital category, even though the client is unlikely to be breathing down the creative's neck, the entries from Ireland and abroad were really disappointing."
Walsh added: "Some categories, like music, stood out for exceptional work. But by the end of the judging process all the judges thought the quality of work was down on last year."
Workplace strategy proves hard to sell
Talk about a hard sell. The National Centre for Partnership and Performance (NCPP) has been instructed by the Government to encourage employers, managers, employees and trade unions to be more open to the benefits of partnership and innovation in the workplace.
The result was an advertising blitz created by Ogilvy in June for the National Workplace Strategy which featured on television, radio, outdoor and the internet.
But did it work? Post-campaign research indicates that 90 per cent of people surveyed correctly identified the main purposes of the strategy. However, when respondents were questioned on the recall of the radio or television advertisements, the results were a bit below the return on investment norms across these media.
Conor Leeson, head of communications at the NCPP, said: "We think this can be explained by the fact that our media spend on the first burst of the campaign was relatively modest."
Leeson will be hoping for a greater impact from a second burst of the campaign which will run across television, radio and on Dublin Bus from this week.
Broadband rivals step up promotion
Eircom has spent a fortune advertising its broadband products this year. Now UPC - owner of cable providers NTL and Chorus - and Irish Broadband are ramping up their advertising spend to target the digital consumer. The two companies say they are spending €3 million on campaigns that launched this week. UPC's message for its digital TV service - implemented by Chemistry and Carat - is that price is king.
Meanwhile, Irish Broadband's €1.5 million campaign, created by Irish Broadband and Leo Burnett Associates, with animation content produced by Piranha Bar, is pushing its wireless and fixed-line broadband products.
