Seen and noted

BEST TV
Winner: Schweppes gets ad of the week, and not just because they're a favourite client, having worked with them in both hemispheres. It's good to see the older consumers targeted for once which will make the Ad Contrarian very happy. I also suspect that those who are aware of life before the digital revolution have the ability to understand it better than digital natives. You can't really understand any revolution without the context of what went before.

As a fan of dogs, Lou Reed, and Subaru they get runners up. I know, I know, the pun is not the best but I don't see consumers minding too much, they'll be too busy singing along.

BEST PRINT
Runner Up. Thank you to Superdream from Birmingham for drawing attention to the perils of growing old alone with Alone 'Loneliness Kills'. I look forward to them coming to visit me in my dotage.

I slightly reluctantly choose the Paper Plus ad as best. I like the way that they expose the inanity of modern communications but at the same time suspect that they're being rather lazy in just selling books rather than Paper Plus itself.

BEST OUTDOOR
The Heineken ad is very watchable, but they don't get beyond Runner Up as they have big budgets and Champions League Sponsorship which gives them a head start.

The winner is San Juan beer. Any campaign which encourages both looking after these beautiful creatures, and beer drinking deserves our support and changing the label is cheap and fast way of communicating.

BEST INTERACTIVE
If the Maxis SOS network was the brainchild of the agency then they deserve to win for coming up with a fantastically practical and helpful solution. If they just made a film about someone else's idea then they don't really deserve much at all.

Therefore either the runner up (or the winner) goes to the IKEA kitchens. It looks like a great way of test-driving IKEA products and hopefully if I vote for it they’ll get around to opening a store in New Zealand. I miss my blissful Sunday mornings at Purley Way, Croyden.




Paul is managing partner and ECD of Barnes, Catmur & Friends Dentsu. The agency started in 2008 with Dentsu taking a controlling stake in February 2016.

Barnes, Catmur & Friends prided itself on the effectiveness of its work and as well as being the leading Independent Effie winner in Asia Pacific it has been consistently ranked in the top five worldwide.

Paul remains slightly mystified as to why agencies put so much effort into winning creative awards while effectiveness is generally seen as a coincidental byproduct. Even so, he has missed his old chums on the creative awards circuit and now he is back with a network may have to start entering some.