Over the last few years D&AD has given its top award to some incredible things: Millions, The Great Schlep, The Millau Viaduct, The Millennium Wheel, The iPod etc.

But are they really D&AD?

I only ask, because to me, they are all so beyond D&AD that it almost seems sad to include them in such a limited awards scheme.

All of the above are so goshdarn amazing that they exist far beyond the worlds of advertising and design.

For a start, everything is designed in some way, which means that anything can surely be included in the remit of D&AD.

But the above work (even though it has been entered into D&AD) is not advertising or design: the individual pieces are just entities on their own, existing outside the remit of ‘design’ and ‘art direction’. After all, in what way is Millions a piece of design or art direction? Ditto the Millennium Wheel? You might as well include the internet.

Oh, they did (President’s Award 2007).

This may be the problem with D&AD. When something exists within its remit it is probably too narrow to be worthy of the Gold. But if it is worthy of the Gold, it is probably beyond D&AD.

(By the way, the two other Golds this year, coins that make up a coat of arms and BMW light sculpture aren’t design or art direction either. One is crap and the other is art rather than design.)

I’m just not sure that claiming everything that’s good (and entered) does D&AD any favours. It seems to make the organisation look like it is basking in the reflected glow of the work, which in turn reduces the significance of the award scheme.

Of course, it would take a brave D&AD to turn down such brilliance, but if it carries on like this, they might as well not bother with press, posters and TV ads.

They simply won’t be able to compete.

When I worked at Y&R back in 1996 I was once sitting at my desk reading Lolita in the middle of the afternoon.

After about five minutes, one of the senior copywriters walked by and said, ‘Never books.’

I asked him what he meant and he explained that you could get away with reading anything at your desk except a novel.

Magazines were OK, newspapers were OK, art books were especially OK. But not novels.

I understood what he meant: it looks very lazy and indulgent because it appears to have nothing to do with work.

Of course, I could have been reading it to get into the rhythms of Nabokov’s language, or been thinking about a paedophilia-based script for HP sauce, but on the surface it simply looked like I was just loafing off for an hour (which is what I was doing. Maybe that’s why I got sacked from there. Although in mitigation there was never any work to do and my AD wasn’t even in the building).

But as a copywriter, immersing yourself in the very best of the English language ought to be a great idea. After all, the visual/AD equivalent of flicking through art/photography books is not just permitted, it’s positively encouraged. ‘Go to Zwemmers (RIP) or Magma,’ that’s what some CDs advise. But ‘read some Kafka’? Not bloody likely.

I think that it’s all part of the visual bias that advertising is currently taking.

There is no justifiable reason why copywriters shouldn’t attempt to hone their craft by experiencing the best writing has to offer, just as there’s no justifiable reason why a copywriter shouldn’t be able to call on the services of a great jokesmith or speech writer if their script requires it. After all, what’s an art director doing when he uses a designer/illustrator/photographer?

I guess it’s just the way things have been set up.

But I’ll tell you what: it fucking stinks.

As you can see in the post below, I had an odd D&AD because I had a list of the winners before it began.

I was told to blog it, but Jesus Christ, I have better things to do (of course I don’t).

I’m not sure I’ve mentioned this before, but Daryl and I (and several of our co-creatives, including the primary originators and main designers of the work, Mark Denton and Dave Dye; our old Lunar team who now work at DHM, Chris and Fran; typography and design guru Andy Dymock; copywriter extraordinaire Sean Doyle; some lovely creatives from Saatchis and, I think, Paul Silburn) were nominated tonight, and, having discovered that we didn’t win, I sat through some quite dull awards then relieved my babysitting mum.

Richard E. Grant died on his arse as compere, but you want to know the winners, don’t you?

Well…

I can’t be arsed to type them all out, but here’s a few:

Integrated pencils to Droga 5 for Millions and Lowe Bull for Wally’s Heart.

The Orange cinema ads got a writing pencil (yawn), as did this work of fucking genius:

(By the way, that’s why D&AD is A GOOD THING. It shows you how to take a generic brief and make a great ad out of it.)

Press: Wallace and Gromit campaign and Alka Seltzer.

Art direction: Alka Seltzer and Jeep campaign.

BBH got a pencil for the Break The Cycle website (nice one all involved, especially the gals at Sonny London and Jeff Labbe).

Posters: Wallace and Gromit campaign and Nova Radio Le Grand Mix.

TV: Skittles Pinata.

I love this:

Viral Writing: The Big Schlep:

TV Crafts: It’s Mine (Special Effects)

That’s it. If I didn’t put yours up, I didn’t care enough about your category.

No radio or ambient Pencils.

Goodnight.

UPDATE: two Golds for Droga 5 for The Great Schlep and Millions (congrats to my old AD, Cam, who got at least one of those.) Another two Golds for other things that I’m not sure about, one of which was some coins that make up a coat of arms, or something, and another, which was a BMW thing with some lights , or something. Congrats to them.

An acquaintance of mine found a list of the winners at the beginning of the evening.

Tp Prove this, I can now, at 10.25, having walked home, tell you that the only TV craft winner was Coca-Cola ‘It’s Mine’ for Special Effects.

I’ll post that now.

And here’s the making of:

I like it because they seem to have squeezed a lot out of a tiny budget.

Hats off.

I was on David Reviews the other day and he was suggesting that the Heinz ad that’s on there is one of the best of the year.

Which got me thinking…

There was a lot of speculation at the end of last year about whether the recession would produce work that was worse or better than before.

I’d say it’s exactly the same.

There’s a few very good ads:

(Although the similarity between this and the Geico campaign does reduce its brilliance somewhat)

And a bunch of other stuff that doesn’t seem to spring to mind just at the moment. Oh, hang on the J2O stuff is good, as was the Thinkbox ad. Cadbury’s Eyebrows seems to have been launched last year…The HSBC Rugby idents…

Anything else?

Actually, maybe it’s better than last year (so far). Not that such an achievement would be anything to write home about.

To me, the visuals are like some Hunter S. Thompson peyote-induced nightmare and the sound is from another ad entirely.

Batshit fucking crazy.

Batshit fucking crazy.

A few years ago I started to write the agency blog at Lunar BBDO.

Not sure why. It just seemed like a good idea at the time.

I didn’t read or even know about any other blogs written by creatives, but a friend told me about Scamp, which turned out to be written by a bloke I’d met a few times over the previous years.

I got in touch with him and he couldn’t have been friendlier or more helpful.

Anyway, in the following years his blog seemed to go through the roof (you might find it interesting to check out his posts from the earlier days and the responses they received. Something definitely happened to make it reach a tipping point), eventually resembling a giant medieval church hall where people threw mead over each other’s heads as they rowed over the origins of some Fallon blockbuster, or called for supposed YouTube thieves to be drowned on the ducking stool.

Axes were ground, people pretended to be other people as they complimented their own work, there was swearing, bitching and personal attacks by the bucket load.

In short it was a lot of fun and made the sometimes lumbering industry we work in take on a sprightlier step, providing instant reaction to the good and bad ads that were significant enough to spark a conversation.

Then there was a bit of trouble. Expecting advertising creatives to behave with maturity or police themselves is an exercise in futility, but even after Simon had to switch to comment moderation it was still essential reading.

I just wanted to say thanks for making me up my game. The races we had to be first to the new Guinness or Sony ad made a few slack mornings go by a little faster (although there was no real point in hurrying; 90% of the chat would happen on his blog whether I won or not). And knowing there was (before the days of Dave Trott’s brilliant blog) another person barking up a very similar tree made the experience easier and more enjoyable.

Ta very much, Simon.

Now I can relax.

I watched that excrement and thought, ‘Bloody hell, I’ve gone back to 1976 and someone’s replaced one of the world’s most respected creative organisations with the sixth form of a school for the educationally subnormal and lobotomised.’

Alas, I was wrong.

Shame its topicality is now somewhat questionable.

Also a shame they’ve had to pull it over sensitivity issues.

They’re still brilliant illustrations, though.