Best of the Week: What makes us such a rude industry?; The banned ad; How journalism finally put one over the spin doctors

[View web version]( BEST OF THE WEEK And another thing... Welcome to Best of The Week, where I bounced between Sydney and Brisbane as awards season hit full tilt, dressed more smartly than usual, and was still the scruffiest person in the room. Awkwardness at the Opera House It’s not every week you get to put on a suit and stand awkwardly on an empty stage at the Sydney Opera House. Mind you, in my case it’s not every week I put on a suit at all. Meanwhile, it is my sad duty to report that it is now December. We’re almost done already. We’re at that time of the year, where there are almost as many awards ceremonies as there are weekdays. And indeed, there are more end-of-year drinks invitations than there are weekdays. So Tuesday took me to the Australian Multicultural Marketing Awards at the Sydney Opera House. Wednesday was Australian journalism’s biggest night of the year, The Walkley Awards in Brisbane. And on Thursday night it was the turn of our own BEfest branded entertainment awards back in Sydney again. Yes, we’re an industry that’s well served for awards. Rationally, adland’s case for entering and winning awards is that they can provide some fine third-party endorsement that can win clients and help with recruitment. And for those who aren’t completely on the awards conveyor belt to the point where it becomes mundane, a chance to reward the team with a big night out. In terms of professional event organisers (and these days, that’s at least part of Mumbrella’s business model) the attraction of awards is around the seductive triple revenue stream of entry fees, ticket sales and sponsorship. For agencies on a roll, it becomes a production line of entering awards and picking up trophies. Any fun to be had becomes incidental to the business purpose behind entering. It stops being about the big night out. As anyone in the industry who regularly attends such events will also tell you, it can make one somewhat jaded about the experience. The awkward negotiations about whether you want to swap your fish with the person who got the alternate serve of meat next to you. The disappearance of waiting staff when the drinks run out. The interminable length of some ceremonies. Sadly these days, too many of the awards nights I attend are full of slightly bored agency execs who are there because they should be, not because their heart is in their mouth as they wait to hear how they’ve done. By contrast, one of the pleasures of being involved in [the Australian Multicultural Marketing Awards](, was being in a room full of people who cared. Thanks to the presence of lots of shortlisted nominees from community groups who don’t enter many awards, the energy in the Playhouse auditorium was completely different to the usual. For a second year I was invited to be a juror, and Mumbrella also came on board as a sponsor. Organised by Multicultural NSW, which is part of the NSW Government, the AMMAs is an event where many of the winners actually care about winning. I found myself sitting close to a team where I heard somebody gasp in excitement when she found out she’d won. I suspect for that winning team, their evening at the Sydney Opera House would have been one of their most memorable nights of the year. Which brings me onto the only downer of the night - the couple of categories open to agencies. The sports category was won by a cracking campaign by Adelaide agency KWP on behalf of Surf Life Saving Australia. It was the same campaign that won SBS’s Diversity Works Awards back in May. But when one of my fellow jurors took to the stage and opened the envelope, nobody was there to receive the prize. So after a few awkward moments, she headed backstage with the trophy still in hand. Next came my turn on stage. I had the privilege of presenting one of the big categories of the night, the Communication Award. As a jury, we had selected Meat & Livestock Australia’s terrific campaign focused on the debate around the date of Australia Day. Created by The Monkeys, Celebrate Australia was a terrific piece of work. It had a sense of humour, it took a point of view on an important public issue, and it sold some lamb. It was one of my favourite ads of 2017. Unusually for more risk-averse brands, it also led rather than followed. More evidence came this week with [Triple J’s (in my view correct) decision to switch The Hottest 100 away from Australia Day]( and the divisive January 26 anniversary of the British arrival on these shores. It was a potentially controversial choice, and problematic one, for Multicultural NSW. Not because of that ad itself, but the one that followed it from the Monkeys and MLA in September. As you may recall, the next ad got the tone wrong. Featuring a backyard barbecue with various deities, those of Hindu faith were upset and offended by the portrayal of Lord Ganesha eating meat. It caused widespread offence in the Hindu community. For me, it was the first time in a long time that MLA had hit the wrong tone. Initially, the Ad Standards Board disagreed, rushing to an investigation after a large number of complaints, and clearing it within a fortnight of it first going to air. However, late last week, the ASB had a change of heart, with [an independent reviewer ruling in favour of the 200+ complaints, and banning the ad](. It’s the first time I can recall an ASB ruling being overturned, with the reason being not enough weight had been given to the level of upset that had been caused to those of Hindu faith. So you can see why our choice as a jury, of the Monkeys and MLA as a winner, was a potentially controversial one - even if the work we were judging on this occasion was the previous Australia Day campaign. They’d blotted their copybook with the multicultural community. After we made the selection, three or four weeks back Multicultural NSW convened an extra conference call, which I dialled into for from Singapore. They asked us as jurors to consider carefully the context of the offence that MLA had caused to the Hindu community with the next ad, and whether we were still comfortable with our winner. The planned 10 minutes stretched to half an hour or so as we talked it through. I argued that we should judge the work that had been put in front of us as the jury, which in this case was the fantastic Australia Day Campaign, not the offending Spring campaign that followed. The organisers, uncomfortable as they were, respected the views of the jury and went ahead. Which takes me to Tuesday night. Sod’s law said the category I’d be asked to hand over the trophy for would indeed be that one. The shortlist was read out just before I went on stage. A slight murmur went round the room when MLA got a mention. I exchanged a look with the juror next to me. I began to feel a bit nervous about how it was going to go down with the audience. And then I took to the stage, opened the envelope and announced The Monkeys as the winner. Nobody from the agency had shown up, despite, I’m told, them confirming their attendance several times. After standing awkwardly on the stage while everyone scanned the room for a sign of a Monkey, I eventually slunk backstage, trophy still in hand. As one of the few people from adland in the room, I was embarrassed on the industry’s behalf that neither winning agency had shown up in the adland categories. To those present it must have been appeared that agencies were being casual about what was to cultural diversity campaigners one of the big nights of the year. The snub seemed like something of a poor strategy on the part of the MLA and The Monkeys. Having built controversial campaigns around diversity and inclusivity for a number of years now, they had a lot of people worth influencing in the room, not least the Minister for Multiculturalism Ray Williams who was sitting in the front row. Of course, I’m sure in reality, it wasn’t a snub at all. It was some sort of cock up. These things almost always are. The Monkeys enter, and win, a lot of awards. Indeed, the next night, Thursday, they were up for awards at our BEfest Awards. This time I wasn’t a juror (I don’t usually judge our own awards.) But I was slated to announce a couple of winners in the best branded entertainment (fiction) category, which was the first one of the night. So my heart sank slightly when I opened up the first envelope and found myself announcing that [our first winner of the night was the Monkeys for that Spring Lamb MLA ad.]( Of course. But as the AMMAs demonstrated, you have to respect the views of your jury, even if you don’t agree with it. And at least this time, they turned up to collect their bronze trophy. Indeed, when I opened the next envelope, they came back a second time when the Australia Day work won the silver, which felt like a good result to me. Adland’s courtesy deficit Indeed, my point here isn’t that The Monkeys are a rude agency - they’re not. My point is that the demands of the industry can create rudeness, while the indulgences of this industry can end up condoning it. Agencies allow their own clients to get away with seriously discourteous behavior. One agency boss told me about the time he managed to get Malcolm Gladwell to speak at a dinner in the private room at Tetsuya’s restaurant. One of the 12 chairs sat empty because a client who accepted the invitation didn’t show up. Imagine how many people would have killed to see him. (Indeed, I’m really looking forward to being one of the hundreds who see Gladwell speak at the Convention Centre in Sydney this coming Wednesday). She never apologised and, because she was a client, they couldn’t say a word about it afterwards. Speaking of clients, and the MLA, there was much discussion among the Mumbrella team the morning after the Australian Effie Awards, back in September. They’d observed less-than-gracious behavior from MLA’s since departed marketing director Andrew Howie after failing to do as well as he’d hoped in the hunt for Australia’s most effective ads. But then again, wouldn’t you rather have people who care about winning being bad losers, than people not even caring when they do win? And there's a certain media brand whose team had a reputation with our event managers for trashing the (expensive) table centre pieces when they attend our awards that we stopped putting one on their table. Perhaps just as bad an impression must be created about the industry when an adland crowd gets bored and talks throughout an awards ceremony. I wonder how that looks to the non-regulars. Yet I can’t claim that I’ve never said a word to the person sitting next to me when a particular ceremony is dragging on either. And I’m sure there are plenty of people who think I’m rude in all sorts of other ways too. I currently have 194,451 unread emails. That’s potentially 194,451 people who I’ve failed to reply to. Not to mention my very poor memory for faces, combined with the number of events I attend, means I must accidentally blank people on a regular basis. Thoughtless behaviour seems quite widespread. My heart sinks when I arrive at a sit down dinner and I see I’ve got any sort of media agency boss’ name on the table next to me. I know it’s 50/50 on whether they’ll show up. Yet I fear there are times I’ve failed to turn up at industry lunches, or been super late when a story has broken, leaving some poor soul with nobody to talk to at the table, while I tell myself it's just one of those things. And I fear even more that somebody will now email me to tell me about the time my name badge sat in front of an empty seat next to them. When we run free events, we even have a formula for rudeness for working out how many to cater for. With Melbourne events, we can usually safely bet that at least 90% of those who RSVP’d will turn up. With Sydney, we drop that number down to 70% because it’s a city where flaking is seen as more acceptable. I suspect it’s why the rare charming executive ends up so venerated in the industry. I’m thinking of people like Joe Talcott, former chairman of the Australian Association of National Advertisers and as far as I know, universally beloved for his Minnesotan charm. It is actually possible to be both important and nice. The journalists who still matter Meanwhile, I was surprised this week by just how respectful the crowd at The Walkley Awards was. It’s now 11 years since News Corp’s Glenn Milne shoved Crikey founder Stephen Mayne off the stage, and things have calmed down. There was genuine respect for [the Walkley winners](in a night that was, it felt to me, dominated by female talent in the key categories. Intrepid Fairfax photographer Kate Geraghty picked up three trophies. Liz Jackson won a spontaneous standing ovation for her Four Corners documentary on her experiences living with Parkinson’s Disease. Investigative reporter Louise Milligan’s angry, and nuanced, speech after being recognised for her investigations into the activities of Cardinal Pell was another moment where it felt like I was in the room at an awards that really mattered. It was wonderful too to see more recognition for the Newcastle Herald’s Joanne McCarthy. The ABC’s Peter Ryan also deserved his trophy for breaking one of the big banking scandal stories of the decade - Commonwealth Bank’s money laundering breaches. It was just one of many revelations this year that finally brought about the Royal Commission into the banking industry, despite the best efforts of hundreds of lobbyists. For once, the journalists put one over the spinners, who these days outnumber them. Given the level of advertising and lobbying resources that have been invested by the finance industry in trying to avoid this week’s developments, I’m still surprised it finally happened. Given that news came through just as we boarded the plane to Brisbane that [the plug had indeed been pulled on the Huffington Post](, the Walkleys were a perfect night to be reminded of the greatness - and I mean greatness - that still exists within Australia’s journalism community. Media's potential future was put into perspective for me as I chatted to somebody at drinks after our BEfest Awards the next night. The former music industry executive told me how he got out of that industry because of the digital disruption being caused by file sharing. Yet now, the music industry is profitable, and growing again, thanks in part to streaming. It’s survived. News media is going through the same process right now, he argued. And will come out the other side as the music industry has. I hope so. And I think so. Right. We’re off to buy a rescue cat. Because that’s a good thing to be doing on a Saturday morning. Feel free to drop me my 194,452nd unread email via tim@mumbrella.com.au. And our editor Vivienne is working this weekend if you have a yarn. She can be reached at vivienne@mumbrella.com.au And should breakfast television be your thing, then Monday morning will find me reviewing the newspapers on ABC News Breakfast at about 6.45am. And on Tuesday I’ll be in Melbourne for a free event we’re involved in, on demystifying programmatic advertising. Storms permitting, I’ll be expecting a 90%+ turnout... Meanwhile, I foresee a weekend involving litter trays and scratching posts. Have a splendid weekend yourself. Toodlepip, Tim Burrowes Content director - Mumbrella Mumbrella | 46-48 Balfour Street Chippendale NSW 2008 Australia [Unsubscribe](| [Manage Subscriptions]( [Facebook]( [LinkedIn]( [Twitter](