The Campaign big awards: celebrating the best of…um…dutch advertising.

Apparently, tonight’s Campaign Big Awards are going to give TV Ad Of The Year to this*:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=idLG6jh23yE

Now, leaving aside the question of financial doping (I think if you gave quite a few creatives £27m – the rumoured final budget, including £3m on post – they could probably create something pretty good for Nike), I have a slight problem with this.

The ad is from W&K Amsterdam (although I believe the creative team were from W&K London), so what is it doing winning the TV section of the Campaign Big Awards, an award scheme that must surely be UK-based?

Well, a quick check on the CBA website explains that ‘The Campaign Big Awards celebrate the best creative advertising that has appeared in the UK. Yes, many of the entries will be from UK agencies, but agencies from around the world can enter work that has been published, displayed, or transmitted in the UK.’

Why on earth would you create an award scheme to celebrate the best creative advertising that has appeared in the UK?

The BTAAs has overseas category for work from UK production companies that appeared abroad (helping Trakto/Partizan to some good wins), but that was just one award out of the others that were there to celebrate the excellence British advertising.

Campaign, the UK’s only significant ad mag, is about to celebrate the advertising of Holland.

Why?

Fuck knows, but for me it’s just going to emphasise the paucity of the UK’s creative output in the last year.

Rather a strange thing for Campaign’s award scheme to do.

*My information about this result could be wrong. If so, apologies. My point about the awards still stands.