An invisible problem

There were 2,357 entries in the Direct category and 227 campaigns made it to the shortlist. Or 10% of the total number of submissions.

The end of our sixth year. And there is some fabulous work for you to look at and learn from. Much of it was on show at the Cannes Festival of Creativity, back in late June.

Wherever you look Direct Marketing is on the rise and clearly has a bright future because it’s all about relationships. But what about in Greece? How successful is Direct in the land of low budgets, safe decision-making and lost dreams?

The past five years have been challenging for Ireland, to say the least. In the face of a severe recession, Finance Directors took the lead and cut, slashed and saved in every area possible.

In this issue of Directory there is work from Australia, Belgium, Brazil, China, Croatia, France, Germany, New Zealand, Norway, Spain, Sweden, The Netherlands, the UK and the USA. We also feature the top winners from the AnPost Irish Direct Marketing Awards and The UK's Best Awards.

Howard Luck Gossage was a direct marketing man who died in 1969. You may not have heard of him, but you are his protegées.

Best Awards Awards 2012. Where the people who buy it judge it

QR codes were originally created by Toyota in Japan to help them track car-parts as and when they were needed. The letters stand for Quick Response and the copyright is still owned by the car maker even though usage for these clever little code decoders has spilled out into a much wider world than its designers could ever have imagined.

It’s the publication of the global rankings of 2011’s most awarded campaigns, agencies and people. “Where are we?” I hear you ask. “Did we beat DDB?” “How can we be one of the most awarded agencies and I’m not on the top ECD’s list?”

The 2011 rankings are compiled from some 6,000 awards won by 4,048 campaigns on behalf of 2,461 clients by 1,302 agencies rewarding the efforts of 272 Chief Creative Officers, 690 Executive Creative Directors, 2,373 copywriters and 2,472 art directors.

In researching and writing his book, 'The Real Mad Men' about the Golden Age of Advertising, Andrew Cracknell was forced to ponder on the meaning of creativity. He interviewed over fifty people who were in on Madison Avenue’s heyday including the legendary George Lois and Jerry Della Femina.

When I collate the data for the media-specific categories, we see dimensional mail and large ambient attract a lot of attention, getting 124 entries each. Naturally, integrated and the broad digital stream get the lion’s share (excuse the pun) with 148 and 176 respectively.

Malcolm Auld is the Principal of Malcolm Auld Direct – or MAD. He is a passionate advocate of Direct Marketing though he accepts that getting people to respond in an increasingly advertising-averse, time-poor world is getting increasingly hard.

Directory in conversation with Ray Barrett, CEO of Hey Harry Worldwide, Toronto.

I know the Cannes Lions were a good five months ago, but following my stint on the judging panel I returned with a wealth of information and insights on the biggest award show in our industry. For weeks afterward, the geeky direct marketer in me crunched the numbers to work out some statistics around the Direct Lions. Which makes this the perfect time to share my findings as we all have just six months left to produce our big ideas to enter them in 2012.

Advertising awards shows exist in order to recognise and reward creativity. But for decades the argument has raged back and forth, does creativity sell?

“Where are we?” I hear you ask. “Did we beat DDB?” “How can we be one of the most awarded agencies and I’m not on the top ECD’s list?” Such important questions - dueling for significance only with the one that I suspect the more abstemious in our midst are asking: “WTF?!” And I do think that you have to admit it’s a fair query. Because let’s be honest - The Big Won Report does look suspiciously like a kind of KFC for egomaniacs gorging on their vanities.

The ‘traditional’ agency no longer exists. All agencies are driven by decreasing budgets and by the migration of audiences to find solutions to their clients’ problems in areas other than the ‘traditional’ response of TV and print. So we see DDB London, a regular top agency in the Big Won rankings of the past through its press and TV now ranked the 5th most successful Digital agency in the world and Abbott Mead Vickers BBDO similarly achieving a Top 10 ranking as a digital agency and Colenso BBDO Auckland listed as the No.1 Direct agency in the world.

The Direct and Promo Gold Lions
We bring you the principle winners in the Direct and the Promo categories at the awards ceremony on Tuesday June 21st.

We hear a lot these days about neuroscience and psychology; but what do we do with this kind of new learning about the brain?' Because it seems obvious that there are lots of major implications here for how we create and how we judge advertising.

The big changes in ‘pro bono’ communications as revealed by Cannes 2011.

We’ve been going five years!
To those of you who have been with us from the beginning (Caitlin Ryan at Proximity, Ian Haworth at Rapp) many thanks.
To those of you who have become staunch supporters (Dylan Taylor at BMF, Marco Eychenne now at BCM, Matt Batten at Wunderman, Sydney, Carl le Blond at Ogilvy Moscow, Michael Killeen at Dialogue Dublin, among others) your friendly emails and your regular submissions have been important to us.

It ain’t easy, editing Directory. Just choosing which section to put a campaign into has become a thorny matter in recent times. These days, ideas work best when they hunt in packs. They may start off in one medium, but when they get people following them from media to media, they become more engaging, more motivating and more likely to generate response.