2006 Grand Prize Awards
Commentary by Advertising & Design Jury President, Graham Warsop

The task of Jury President is not an overly vexing one. A neat package arrives through the post. It contains all the Statue winning work as selected by the various judging panels around the world. A few pleasant afternoons ensue, evaluating the work for the elusive Grand Prize winners. It’s a delightfully non-democratic process, the Jury President being accorded virtually unfettered freedom to exercise supreme jurisdiction.

Actually, there are some guidelines issued by The London International Awards: the need to consider Creativity (the big idea), Originality (does the work attempt to re-invent the media) and Innovation. The Grand Prize winner should not just be the best of the Statue winners, it must be “the best of the best”.

This year, at the behest of the Jury President, the LIA is publishing a commentary on the thought-process behind the Grand Prize selection. I wanted to honour the work that won as well as the work that came close. These comments will make more sense if you look at the Statue winning work before reading them.

Television/Cinema

A delightful reel of 33 Statue winners from which to select a Grand Prize. Really spoilt for choice.

Before I get to the shortlist, I’d like to commend Ikea Canada “It’s Not a Mistake” for such a fresh take on the stale old message that a furniture store has a sale. In the post Christmas advertising splurge, furniture stores are the worst offenders, bludgeoning you over the head with ghastly voice-overs full of mock excitement. Congrats Ikea.

One of the best Public Service ads I’ve seen in a very long time is for the IAC. The viewer is tricked into thinking it’s an ad for Alzheimer's – loyal, sympathetic daughter visits mother who doesn’t recognise her… then comes the twist. Very powerful.

Some superb computer animation/special effects in evidence; Artsen, Zonder, Grenzen “Human Ball”, Guinness “noitulovE” and Ariston Aqualtis “Underwater World”.

Turning to the shortlist. And what a shortlist it is: Honda “Impossible Dream” (Automotive), Guinness “noitulovE” (Beverages-Alcoholic) (Special Effects), Sony Bravia “Balls” (Home Entertainment) and Canal+ “March of the Emperor” (Media Promotion).

I would happily award any one of these four commercials the Grand Prize. They are wonderful ambassadors for the business of advertising. Big ideas which differentiate clients brands in the marketplace, build loyalty and increase sales. Commercials like these are living proof that the advertising business is still alive and well and adding enormous value to clients’ brands. So let me salute all four agencies, their clients and the talented teams responsible. Each of these four ads is distinctive, relevant, strategically insightful and a pure joy to watch.

So how does one choose a winner?

I loved the ability of “Impossible Dream” to showcase an entire range of client’s products through the decades in such a likeable and engaging way. Having the driver mime the lyrics was brave; but it works. Honda really does own The Power of Dreams. (The fact that I neglected to select “Choir” – and others might have deemed it a better
candidate for the Grand Prize, only serves to reinforce how all-powerful the Honda work is in its category).

March of the Emperor is gloriously silly. And it makes me feel really good about watching movies on the Canal+ channel. I would have loved to have been in the meeting when this idea was presented to client.

Anyone who drinks Guinness will know it takes longer to pour at the pumps. So it’s quite appropriate that in its advertising, Guinness plays the “waiting” game. It’s a tough brief to create something as memorable as “Surfer”. The “noitulovE” execution succeeds. And is justifiably deserving of the praise heaped upon it and the big plaudits awarded by various advertising juries around the world this year.

A few words about Sony Bravia “Colour Like No Other”. An interesting brief - to communicate (on TV) a TV set with better colour, when the vast majority of viewers will be watching it on TV screens with inferior colour. Quite a challenge. That aside, how many TV manufacturers’ advertisements can you remember? (bearing in mind, if you can’t remember any, there’s no way a consumer can be expected to). Advertising for TV sets generally tends to fall into a vast amorphous wasteland of features, more often than not given to you all at once with a questionable voice artist and the product centre-screen. Enter Sony Bravia “Balls”. The idea does what big, genius ideas always do – it blows a hole in the category. The “Colour Like No Other” positioning has the potential to work as strongly for Sony as “Safety” did for Volvo (providing they continue to deliver on it). If I think of the Sony range of TVs as a brand, where were they last year in my mind? The answer is nowhere. Today they’re centre stage. All down to the power of creativity and the big idea.

That’s why, tough though the decision was, Sony has it. It’s the brief I would have wanted least of the four.

Radio

It was certainly not a vintage year for Radio. I asked the LIA to defrock four prospective Statue winners because they simply didn’t cut the mustard. Two radio spots stood out above the rest. Bud Lite (Humour) and Airport Outlet (Retail Foods and Stores).

But, this Bud Lite “Real Men of Genius” ad isn’t as good as previous spots. One simply can’t reward a previous Grand Prize winning campaign, when the work has not improved or evolved to a fresh place. The Airport Outlet spot, using George Bush’s stupidity as its principal content, is amusing (George Bush’s stupidity is after all either very sad or very funny). But the technique of lampooning world leaders in one form or another is not the personification of originality.

Thus I decline to award a Grand Prize for Radio this year. It sends out a better message than rewarding either of the above two spots (or indeed any of the others up for contention). Don’t know why it is, but no one seems to be pushing the radio medium forward. With a world of “theatre of the mind” possibilities to explore, it seems to be
straight-jacketed in male and female voice-overs reading scripts into the microphone (albeit some of the scripts are well written). Print strives to push the boundaries. Radio feels tired.

Print

An impressive selection. 24 of the 31 Categories produced Statue winning work. My Grand Prize shortlist comprised two candidates. Before introducing them, a couple of comments:

Disappointing to see an Economist ad that’s the wrong colour red (presumably the Economist doesn’t intentionally vary the colour of its corporate communications from country to country?). May sound like a small criticism but it’s not. “God is in the detail. (The LIA, generously in my view, corrected the red for inclusion in the Annual).”

Also had some difficulty imagining a publication capable of running a print ad the size of Sony PlayStation’s “Maze”.

If there was a Grand Prize for Subtlety in Branding, Apollo Tubeless Tyres “Note” would have driven off with it. A nice idea but finding the client’s brand name just shouldn’t be this difficult.

Special commendation goes to VW “Polo Crossed”, East Timor “Chickens”, Marmite “Squeezy” and Concordia Children’s Services “Piglets”.

Runner-up for Grand Prize is the Levi’s Slim Jeans execution. Loved the purity of thought; a fine example of the extraordinary power of a simple idea, executed with restraint.

I confess I didn’t predict I’d be awarding the Print Grand Prize to a campaign that brazenly sets out to amuse with cocks and pussy references, but there you go. No hesitation in awarding the big one to the 42 Below Vodka Campaign - (winner of 2 Statues - for Consumer Campaign and Alcoholic Beverages.) It’s superbly engaging;
laying down the gauntlet to the reader to interpret the action and complete a visual narrative, with the product as an integral part of the story. It’s genuinely fresh, conceptually and executionally, (The client no doubt loved the fact there were no full-colour media costs). In terms of the Jury President’s mandate, this work is Creative, Original and Innovative and “the best of the best”.

Poster & Outdoor

11 Statues awarded out of a possible 15. So less than half the number of Statues awarded in the Print medium. Competition was still tight.

What a pleasure to see the craft of copywriting is alive and well and at a museum near you. The Tate Britain campaign is clever, accessible and well-written. BBC “Maps” is a beautifully illustrated and crafted campaign. FedEx/Kinko’s “Highlighter” raised a smile. The Groovearte DJ School “Scratch Here” was a fresh use of the medium and for those of us who grew up assembling Airfix model aircraft, the Actiongroup.landmine.de “Child” execution is arresting indeed.

The Grand Prize is awarded to jobsintown.de “The Wrong Working Environment” because it is conceptually strong, strategically appropriate and highly innovative. I don’t know if advertising has ever been run on the sides of ticket dispensing machines before, but I guarantee it has never been used on them in such a relevant and distinctive way. All three of the executions have been carefully considered and are obviously tailor-made to be relevant not just to the brand (finding a better job) but also to the ticket machines. There is an execution for a passport photo machine, a coffee machine and a banknote dispenser. I really enjoyed this campaign. Once again, highly Creative, Original and especially Innovative.

Design

Next to Radio, this was the most disappointing of all of the media. The LIA only give Grand Prizes for Package Design every second year (and this was not one of those years), the design discipline was represented by the Statue Winners in the general Design section. I expected more. Given the importance of Design to brands, this should have been a medium where the Jury President was spoilt for choice. But overall, there was little work that was inspiring and nothing that distinguished itself at both the aesthetic and conceptual levels.

I have no hesitation in following the recommendations of my Design Jury to decline to award the Grand Prize for Design in 2006.

Integrated

For a campaign to win a Grand Prize in the Integrated medium it has, in my judgement, to excel in not one but
two respects:

1. The campaign has to be seamlessly executed over a number of media platforms.

But that is only the starting point.

2. The big idea and the individual executions in the campaign have to be sufficiently strong that they succeed in their own right. (And not only when they are placed together across various media platforms to form a campaign.)

The eBay “it” campaign certainly scored highly in the first respect. When it came to the second, I looked to see whether individual executions had impressed the jurors in any other categories. When I saw that the TV jury had awarded a Statue for eBay “Anthem”, I decided this campaign should be given the benefit of any doubt. It certainly fulfils the criteria of taking a big idea and single-mindedly applying it across a range of media platforms. It worked from teaser to resolve and “it” is a lovely word to own in the context of “you can get it on eBay”.

The Integrated campaign category is, or should be, the one everyone’s most proud to win. I suspect the bar will continue to be raised and that in future years we will see the sort of competition at the top that we witnessed in the TV category this year. I hope so.