I Remember The D&AD Exec Committee When…
Here’s the list of candidates for the D&AD Exec Committee:
Tim Ashton, Mark Denton, Gary Hoff, Billy Mawhinney, Tham Khai Meng.
Good to see Mark there. Presumably his remit will be to apply the same keen eye for improvement that he brought to the Creative Circle. Don’t forget to vote for him.
And I guess Gary is a slightly different kettle of ball games, being a digital chap, but I’m not 100% sure of the others.
I’m not saying that the committee needs to be a hotbed of the most thrusting young things in Adland, but it does surprise me somewhat that I couldn’t tell you anything about what the other three have been doing for the last ten years.
Of course, Tim and Billy are elder statesmen-types (Billy was on this committee in 1996) and there’s certainly a place for that, but it seems that no one who is currently producing great work decided that their vision for improving D&AD was worth standing for, if indeed they had such a vision.
On one side we could blame a kind of disaffected, disenfranchised, self-interested laziness amongst the top creatives of our day. On the other hand, we could blame D&AD, and what this once-illustrious organisation has belly-flopped into. (Also, on a practical note, I had no idea these elections were going on).
Let’s face it, the pencil now is blunt. D&AD is just another Cannes, commanding a modicum of extra affection because of how good it used to be and the fact that it’s our home tournament (apologies to my foreign readers).
I sincerely hope the current people in charge can stop the seemingly never-ending, please-everyone-at-once grasp for cash and get it back to the level of prestige it used to have.
That should be the one single aim of D&AD for the foreseeable future.
(Obviously, the only person with a proven track record in this department is Mark. Vote for Mark.)