MEDIA & MARKETING:ADVERTISING CREATIVE work from more than 24 countries was celebrated at the 49th Kinsale Sharks International Advertising Festival last weekend.
The jury of international and Irish ad professionals found it an easy decision to award the Grand Prix award to Nike for its World Cup 2010 television advertisement Write the Future, starring Wayne Rooney and Ronaldo. But handing out gold awards for Irish creative work proved more difficult.
Of all the Irish entries, the judges felt only one could stand side by side with the best of international work. That was the suite of press advertisements devised by Publicis QMP to promote the TG4 television series Seven Signatures, a series about the 1916 Rising.
To promote the series, Publicis QMP placed figures representing the seven signatories in their everyday dress, and placed them in front of a firing squad.
Says judge Jake Walshe of Screen Scene: “It was a beautifully shot and crafted ad with a strong idea . . . It stood out straight away as world class. In awarding gold, these international jurors are always looking for a great core idea as well as excellent creative and production values.”
Judge Paul Silburn, creative partner in the London ad agency Saatchi & Saatchi adds: "The Seven Signaturesad was the best piece of work from Ireland. The photography portraits were fantastic. It was a simple idea with a brief that was handled very well with a lot of style."
The National Lottery series of TV advertisements won a silver award Irish Television category for ad agency DDFH&B.
“In the lottery commercials people are talking about what they would do to win a few million euro, and there’s the basis for some really funny advertising,” says Silburn. “If you put that idea in the hands of some of the best American copywriters, you would bring that campaign to a whole other level. There is an opportunity for the agency to come back next year and win gold by just pushing that idea further and making it even funnier.”
Other silvers for Irish television advertisements went to ad agencies Chemistry and Boys and Girls, while Publicis QMP was awarded a bronze for its Pridecommercial showing a rugged-looking chap wandering around the new terminal in Dublin airport.
Says Walshe: “The jurors thought this ad was nicely written but a little bit boring and repetitive. They expect high production values – that’s a given. So you won’t get a gold award just because the commercial looks nice. It’s about the concept.”
He believes most Irish-made commercials don’t measure up to international comparison because clients are too cautious.
“There are extremely talented people working in the advertising industry in Ireland. The good scripts are there, but they are being thrown out by the clients. Perhaps the trust between the client and the agency has broken down and they think they are just being sold to. The clients who get the really good work are those who let people do their job. That’s the philosophy in the UK. Of course, the clients can have a view – but they have got to let professionals do their job.”
There were no Irish entries shortlisted in the digital categories, where the clear winner was Dig Deeper, an interactive website promoting the DVD of HBO's vampire series True Blood. As the host of the DVD encouraged viewers to look closer, the site allowed viewers to do so by zooming in to try to identify 60 clues within the video clip. When successful, the viewer is prompted to enter a competition to win a holiday.
Judge Emma Pueyo, of London digital agency Poke, said: "The Dig Deeperpiece of work was outstanding. It wasn't something we hadn't seen before, but it was so clever and so well targeted to fans of the show, and used social media in exactly the right way."
Also on the Sharks jury was Damien McLoughlin, professor of marketing at the UCD Smurfit School of Business. His favourite ad was the short story competition campaign for Powers Whiskey in The Irish Times, which won a gold award for ad agency Vizeum.
“I love newspapers, and this campaign really demonstrated what newspapers can deliver for advertisers . . . What we need to have happen is for the bean counters to regain confidence in marketing’s ability to deliver results. The big difficulty right now is that clients are losing confidence in marketing, and they are fighting on price again. We need to protect ourselves from that.”
See www.sharkawards.com.
