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A message from CRAIG DAVIS, CANNES LIONS 2008 FILM & PRESS LIONS JURY PRESIDENT
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RICK BOYKO APPOINTED NEW DEAN OF THE CANNES LIONS ROGER HATCHUEL ACADEMY
London, 6 May 2008 – The Organisers of the 55th Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival are pleased to announce that Rick Boyko, Director and Professor of VCU Brandcenter and former Co-President Chief Creative Officer of Ogilvy & Mather North America, will be the new Dean of the Roger Hatchuel Academy.
Founded in 2003, The Roger Hatchuel Academy provides a complimentary course week to a selection of 35 advertising students from around the world. Whilst attending the week long Festival, the students are taught by both the Dean of the Academy and by tutor Clive Challis, Head of the Advertising Course at Central Saint Martins in London who provides daily training sessions and guides the students through their schedule. They also have a series of tutorials held by leading advertising figures.
“We are truly honoured that Rick Boyko is the new Dean of the Roger Hatchuel Academy. Rick is such a distinguished and well respected industry figure who will bring to The Academy expertise, knowledge and advice. The students could not be in better hands,” said Philip Thomas, CEO of the Festival. Rick Boyko commented, “Having participated by speaking to the Roger Hatchuel Academy since its inception, I have admired what Michael and Clive have built. It is therefore an honour to accept the Deanship from Michael and hope I can continue to help Clive build upon what they have begun.”
Rick began his career in 1974 as an art director at Leo Burnett Chicago and moved to Chiat/Day Los Angeles in the 1980s. He joined Ogilvy & Mather New York in 1989 and in 1997 was named Chief Creative Officer and Co-President of Ogilvy’s $1.5 billion flagship New York office. The following year Rick was also named North American Chief Creative Officer, ascending to that post with the mission to reclaim the creative ethos of legendary founder David Ogilvy. While Rick has won most every advertising award there is, he feels most proud of two accomplishments unrelated to advertising. In May 2001, in honour of his career achievements, Rick was awarded the prestigious Ellis Island Medal of Honour. Then, in October 2001, in the aftermath of the September 11th tragedy, Rick conceived of and was the driving force behind Brotherhood, a tabletop
book honouring the 343 firemen who perished. It sold more than 200,000 copies with the $1.5 million proceeds going to the families of the firemen. In light of Brotherhood’s contributions to the Fire Department of New York, Rick was designated an Honorary Deputy Chief in the FDNY.
After being an active member of its Board of Directors since 2000, Rick joined the VCU Brandcenter on July 1, 2003 as its managing director. In addition to teaching, he is responsible for financial and personnel management, as well as fundraising and outreach to individuals and firms in the advertising industry.
He currently sits on a number of boards including Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia Inc and the Art Directors Club.
Rick Boyko takes over the Deanship from Michael Conrad.
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Sharing a stolen experience
Yes, I have stolen a confession and now I’ll share it with you, just like the money between the members of a robbery. I’ve robbed information about the Dubai Lynx Festival from our board media representative there, Zoltan Szigeti from The Group. So, he was the agreed victim of my fraud. Now, I’ll start counting the money launching the first coin in your jar of curiosity. Dubai Lynx is a more exotic Cannes baby, dedicated to the Middle East advertising industry.
Countries like Dubai and the Emirates show that their excellence in communication has the same number of zeros as their income. A transparent process with representatives from countries which don’t enter the competition, under the circumstances of hidden agency names. The only influence on the jury is the creativity wind, shouting its power onto the numerous selections behind the scene. For a Romanian representative in the jury, this experience is like a most pleasant trauma, lived at least three times at once: as a spectator, as a consumer, as an advertising professional, as a businessman, as part of a far away advertising industry, etc.
Dubai Festival is like eating something you’ve never tasted before, in a place you’ve never seen and enjoying it more than your favorite course. The social interdictions, customs, air, religious aspects and even the skin color create a face of a different consumer . Apparently in need of a larger freedom, but still being liberated enough to create a 21st century communication using innovation, behind the fence of all traditions. The local touch is the strong brick of creativity inspired by rather strange insights to our culture. 120 wannabes and just 20% chosen ones in the shortlists. Capital questions for an entry sound like the Murphy’s laws to me : does it have a strong and believable insight, is it fresh, what are the results of the campaign. Highlights have been turned on the flexibility of the approach, taking in account all the “don’t”-s of the Middle East, the conceptual view, the guts, the power to invent new media, the SIMPLICITY (once again to be mentioned, remembered and applied). All generating the well known and so frightful frustration of “how comes I didn’t think of such a thing?”. Sounds like a Muslim Cannes to me. An important spice of the Dubai Lynx Festival is the prize generated joy, which in Cannes, believe me, is rather shy. Comparable to a stadium delirium, all are happy for all, no hard feelings, no back knifes, no pretended smiles. Joy for one is joy for all. And respect is priceless, even in a part of the world where everything has one and even quite expensive. A Middle East advertising Oscar , the red carpet leading to Cannes, as any grand prix or gold in Dubai is suspected of a future Cannes, all showing the worldwide concept of communication. If the last sentence doesn’t make great deal of sense is maybe because I’m running out of time to hide the robbed thesaurus.
Thank you for covering my outlaws,
Alma
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The first edition of Dubai Linx has ended. Here are the winners.
The Gold Winner Young Creatives print.
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DUBAI LYNX WINNERS ANNOUNCED
Grand Prix goes to Egypt, Lebanon and United Arab Emirates
Dubai, 2nd April 2008 – The winners of the 2nd Dubai Lynx Awards, the leading creative advertising competition for the Middle East and North Africa, were revealed this evening at the Awards Ceremony which took place at the Dubai International Convention and Exhibition Centre, attended by over 1500 guests.
After selecting a shortlist of 513 ads from the 2023 entries submitted, the jury awarded a total of 180 Dubai Lynx trophies.
The Print category was the strongest with a total of 45 winners, followed by Outdoor with 40, 28 in Direct, 24 trophies were awarded in the new Media Category, 20 in TV/Cinema, there were 15 Interactive winners and 4 in Integrated as well as 4 Radio winners.
U.A.E. won the most awards taking home 127 trophies, followed by Qatar with 18, Lebanon with 12 and Egypt won 7 awards, including 2 Grand Prix.
The Print Grand Prix went to FP7 DOHA, Qatar, for EA Games B.D. Group, “Back Home”.
The Outdoor Grand Prix was awarded to Leo Burnett Beirut for Procter & Gamble’s “Natural Colours Change’.
Leo Burnett Cairo won the TV/Cinema Grand Prix for the Melody Channel campaign ‘Akon’, ’50 Cents’, ‘Madonna’, ‘Shakira’, ‘Pussy Cats’ and ‘Britney’.
The Direct Grand Prix was award to Bates Pangulf Dubai for Dubai First credit cards ‘We Know Who You Are’.
The first Media Grand Prix went to JWT Cairo for Vodafone Egypt, ‘Truck Stickers’.
The jury decided not to give a Grand Prix in the Interactive, Radio and Integrated categories.
JWT Dubai were honoured with the Agency of the Year trophy with FP7 Doha coming in second place and Fortune Promoseven Dubai in third.
The winners of the 1st Dubai Lynx Young Creatives competition were the MediaOne team, Abdul Shafeeq and Greeshma Nair from U.A.E.
The winning work, which was judged over the last week by 29 top international creatives and media experts from 17 countries in Dubai, can be viewed at www.dubailynx.com/winners
I just found out from the Purple Turtles’ blog that Nokia is using bloggers to promote their N82, probably counting on a great on-line word of mouth.
At the PR Forum this year I heard that Audi did the same thing for its new A4 model. The official launch of the model was done on-line in the following way: 10 bloggers with high traffic and also good writers were given an Audi A4 for 2 weeks, with the condition of writing about this experience on their blogs, good or bad. The results of the campaign were impressive.
I didn’t understand whether Nokia did this with Romanian bloggers or not, but I see two general tendencies here: first, to start treating bloggers like journalists – the traditional press release or even press conference, can be replaced with ideas like these; the second one and maybe most important, to start using the blogosphere as a promotional tool; and since life generally tends to move from off-line to on-line, this just might become a must for those that want a truly efficient communication campaign.
You can find out more about the campaign here: http://generatia4.ro/
Last Wednesday we talked with Florin Dumitrescu about memorable slogans and their connection to their brands. Many examples were brought up, both Romanian and international, but I would like to emphasize on a particular brand that was only very little under discussion. Namely Guinness, with their slogan “Good things come to those who wait”. Now, this is not an expression that rimes in any way with the name of the product, and it could easily be attributed to other brands. If you just take it as it is, it doesn’t say much. “Guinness. Good things come to those who wait.” Does this mean that I have a lot of waiting to do before being able to get a Guinness? Because, if that is the case, than I’d much rather get a Stella or a Bud. They might not be just as good, but they are available to me now.
The trick with this slogan is that it is heavily backed by Guinness ads. You don’t have to try to give it a meaning yourself, the meaning is right there, in every ad since this slogan was introduced in 1996. You could easily understand from the first paragraph that I am not a usual Guinness consumer, because if I were, I would have known that it takes about 119.5 seconds to correctly pour a pint of Guinness from the tap and I would have understood the message of this campaign. Still, it looks like I’ve got it almost right. The idea of this message was given by BBDO as a solution to the problem that the brand was facing back then: customers were unsatisfied that it took bartenders too long to give them a pint of Guinness. A non-consumer would react to this slogan just like I did in the first paragraph, but a fan of the brand would understand that the message is addressed to him exactly, for being the one that got angry for waiting.
I think this is a classic example of a brand relating to its consumers and addressing them only, of sending the message to only those that know what it is about. It might not have made other beer consumers switch to Guinness, but it definitely made Guinness consumers relate more to the brand and lose their negative opinion. After all, Guinness is a premium brand.
The bottom line message is very simple: it really is worth waiting those 119.5 seconds for a Guinness. But I wouldn’t have figured it out, and you wouldn’t have either, unless you were a usual consumer of this product. An extremely memorable and simple expression was used to express something that only a certain number of people could relate to. Other than this, the ads are brilliant.
The campaign initially lasted for four years, from 1996 to 2000, and what is now known as one of the best ads of all times was released in 1999 – Surfer (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IJnAFL7UOmE). After a few other attempts, the company returned to this slogan in 2005, and BBDO released the most awarded ad of the year in 2006 – noitulovE (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DhJVquxl-sc).
Rogalsky-Grigoriu had a very nice surprise for us last Friday – they invited Catalin Tolontan ( http://www.tolo.ro ) to join our meeting. Apart from the fact that he seemed to be a very down to earth journalist, we talked about many interesting things. It was extremely useful and inspiring to find out how PR is seen from the other side of the barricade. But what draw my attention in particular was the idea that the press has a big problem nowadays. It has lost a lot of its credibility from the general public as well as from companies; also there is a really big discrepancy between the public’s need of information and the mass-media agenda. We don’t get what we need from the media, we don’t find the kind of information we need in newspapers, instead we learn about all kinds of things that don’t make any difference to the most of us.
The evening TV news programs come after a day in which whoever wanted to be informed has already read all the news online. We are watching less television each year, the internet is on the way to becoming the main source of information. But this one is not perfect either, in a world where you can basically find any kind of information, it will soon become difficult to separate authentic information from fairytales, thus the risk of the Internet being dominated by myths appears.
My question to all this is: what next? What should the press do to regain the public’s lost confidence? How should televisions react to the ever dropping public interest and availability? Will we ever have a press that will give us the information we really need?
POSITIVELY DEVIANT
http://www.animalssavetheplanet.com/
And then, after amusing ourselves with the short videos about the animals saving the planet, we may also need to find a few arguments behind them. Or just remind ourselves about such arguments, about the hard facts which are by no means amusing. As we witnessed many comments on our yahoo group, ‘The Story of Stuff’ (www.storyofstuff.com) may well act as a reliable reminder and at the same time, add a few more connections to the environmental ‘story’ we have started to share, whether we like it or not. Although the focus is on the American consumption-driven society, the argumentative structure is not less applicable to our own lifestyles. Oh, and don’t miss out advertising in this story of stuff. We should all consider our own role as (future) communicators in the whole chain and maybe discuss about it during one of our meetings. Our team’s opinion on the topic is actually the motto of Cesar Chavez – whom we recently discovered – and that is ‘Si se puede’ (it can be done). We have the power to ‘deviate’ into a better, more sustainable direction.
If ‘European Film’ and ‘Advertising’ were humans…
Usually I play a game with myself and also with the others. It’s automatic…Let’s say that the game is called ‘if they were something else, not humans’.
What are the rules? I imagine people around me as if they were objects, films, fruits, dishes…
Today I decided to play this game inverted… What if ‘European Film’ and ‘Advertising’ were humans?
I imagine ‘European film’ as a timid guy, a little bit effeminate, mysterious. He likes to read newspapers next to his coffee in the morning and books before he falls asleep. He eats his meals during an hour and he is a very talented cook. He paints, plays the guitar, dance sophisticated styles. He is very analytical. He has absent-minded eyes. He is looking desperate for ‘the one’. The perfect one!
I see ‘Advertising’ as a luxury prostitute. Very beautiful, smart, sophisticated. She is also very subtle and ironic. Her ‘day’ starts at sunset and ends at the sunrise. She used to dream to be an actress. She is a ‘connaisseur’ in telling lies looking in other people eyes.
What if these two characters meet accidentally?
Only a memorable one-night stand…
Cretive Thinking with Yonathan Dominitz
By Paws Communication
On Tuesday, the 3rd May, the Kindergarten held a very interesting training on Creative Thinking, chaired by Yonathan Dominitz, whose presence was possible with the support of Starcom Media.
The training covered a variety of topics, ranging from whether creative thinking can be practiced to the situations when creative thinking can be used best. The training had a very pragmatic approach and Mr. Dominitz presented us with several creative tools that we can use in different situations. Also, his way of teaching, so to speak, had a very strong impact on us, since he didn’t just bring out the tools, but helped us discover them on our own, by leading us in the right direction.
The training focused on the issue of solving the problems that brands face in a creative way, and we got a taste of what creative thinking means. For instance, we found out that one of the best ways to solve a problem is to use the problem itself to generate a solution. In many cases, such an approach can help a brand, or a company, gain the trust of its consumers.
And we were indeed able to see this in several examples of great campaigns, most of which were winners in the Cannes Lions Advertising Festival.
The second most creative technique used nowadays, as Mr. Dominitz highlighted, is the extreme consequence. This implies showing an extreme effect of using the product. This method’s effectiveness is highly appreciated, since it can positively influence the consumer’s choice even when bringing out a negative consequence.
A third and very challenging technique is the absurd alternative. We found this one most appealing, because in this case, we don’t just find a creative way of presenting our product, but we are basically communicating an alternative solution that is so absurd, that the buyer would prefer our product. We can either find an absurd device or procedure that only seems to solve the problem or absurd ways to hide or live with the problem.
What we realized was that by identifying specific patterns in creative solutions, we do not restrict creative thinking, quite the opposite. The paradox with creativity is that the more boundaries it has, the better the solutions it provides.
Working with patterns, does not mean we leave aside creativity. It helps us establish which creative approach would be most relevant and effective. Therefore, we believe that this training session will prove useful to the young and eager advertisers such as ourselves.