On March 12th, Marc D’Avignon, a former VCU BrandCenter student and current W&K employee, interviewed Mercury Chief Judge Rick Boyko on W+K Radio, making brash statements like "radio doesn't have to be bad, it can be good .... everybody says it's a joke, radio advertising sucks" and they made it sound like their goal was to change radio, in a very superior and condescending tone.Well, the winners have now been announced and it looks like the judges liked their own creative a lot and hated what radio submitted, which makes tomorrow's awards ceremony in New York - there were no winners from radio's submissions - the joke.
Hey, RAB: they sure taught us a lesson, didn't they? I hope you all enjoy the self-congratulation among the Med Ave geniuses who will gather to pat one another on the back tomorrow, but don't be surprised if there are no entries at all from radio in your competition next year! Dissing it is no way to motivate and promote a medium.
2 comments:
To say there is no local advertising good enough to receive an award raises two giant problems:
1) If you hold the Olympics, the best athlete wins. Period. There is nothing in the rules that says that athlete has to beat the record of previous winners. If an award was promoted and people entered, the award should be presented. Even though the official rules say the judges are free to decide not to present an award in any category, that is not how anyone understands a competition like this or how they expect it to work when they pay their -- non-refundable -- entry fee.
2) If the RAB is designed to promote radio, who in their right mind would EVER make a public statement that there were no local radio spots good enough to win an award? Translation: Don't count on local radio to produce good spots. This is a PR nightmare for radio. I can see this plastered all over Advertising Age: "Radio Industry Can't Find a Good Spot at Any Local Radio Station."
Don't know how many of your readers submitted ads to this year's Mercury awards, but those who did were undoubtedly as disappointed as I was to learn than none of the spots submitted by stations were deemed good enough to make the finals.
I've created a forum for entrants to upload the spots they entered. Mine are already there. Wouldn't it be great if at least the radio community got to hear the work that their stations thought highly enough of to plunk down the $125/spot entry fee, in the same week the Mercury awards are handed out?
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