Two 2008 winners pull out of Kancils

What say you on the issue below?

BBDO/Proximity and Saatchi & Saatchi question jury selection process

PETALING JAYA: With the submissions deadline for the 2009 Kancil Awards just a day away, the two biggest winners from last year have dropped a bombshell – they will not enter this year’s competition.

Both BBDO/Proximity and Saatchi & Saatchi have expressed dissatisfaction with how the country’s biggest advertising awards show is being run, pointing to the current jury selection process.

BBDO/Proximity chief creative officer Ronald Ng, who was jury chairman last year, told StarBiz that the agency “is not comfortable with the direction of the Kancil Awards this year in terms of the change from the previous merit-based system of jury selection to the current system.”

In the past few years, Kancil judges were chosen from the best performing agencies at prestigious regional and international creative award shows, namely AdFest, Spikes Asian Advertising Awards, Cannes Lions, Clio, One Show and D&AD.

This year, Ng said, he was not even sure what the system was.

“To be selected as a juror, a person must be from a top performing agency of the year, not just selected from names being thrown out,” he said.

BBDO/Proximity won the coveted Golden Kancil and a whopping 12 gold awards last year, a feat not witnessed in at least a decade.

Saatchi & Saatchi, meanwhile, was named Agency of the Year for the second year in a row based on its huge wins at the aforementioned overseas award shows.

Neither BBDO/Proximity nor Saatchi & Saatchi has a representative on the Kancil Awards jury this year, having declined the Association of Accredited Advertising Agents’ (4As) invitation due to the difference in opinions on how the show should operate.

Asked whether BBDO/Proximity, which had been among the top five Kancil winners for three consecutive years, had made a final decision not to participate with the entry deadline tomorrow, Ng said: “Regretfully, yes. Hopefully, we will enter again next year if the system reverts to a merit-based system.”

He also said BBDO/Proximity had other reasons for not participating but declined to reveal them.

Meanwhile, Saatchi & Saatchi Malaysia executive creative director Adrian Miller said the agency, which is currently Campaign Brief Malaysia Agency of the Year, would not enter the competition this year due to “a difference of opinions with the 4As about how the Kancils should be conducted and run.”

“That doesn’t make us right. It doesn’t make us wrong. It’s merely our opinion,” Miller said. “Hopefully by next year, we can resolve our differences and we can all move forward.”

4As president Datuk Vincent Lee defended the jury selection this year, saying that even if their agencies were not ranked among the top creative houses by Campaign Brief in recent times, they were “real agency creative directors and their agencies have done tremendously well in increasing their clients’ business.”

“Creativity without relevance is not creativity. Real creativity increases sales and market share,” he added.

There have been complaints in the past that some Kancil entries were scam ads – ads that were created just to enter creative competitions.

Kancil Awards jury chairman S.P. Lee said the Kancils needed wider representation in the jury (there is a larger main jury panel this year) because the 4As’ membership had grown to over 100 agencies.

“All the top 15 agencies on Campaign Brief’s Hottest Malaysian Agencies list were invited,” he said. (The Campaign Brief rankings are based on wins at the six regional and international award shows mentioned earlier.)

S.P. also said the Campaign Brief ranking should be used as a guide rather than a stringent requirement.

Besides the recent top-ranked creatives, this year’s Kancil Awards jury also includes those who had won in the past but nothing in recent years.

“I also invited some very senior creatives whose credentials are superb, but have since the last century been too engaged with managing an agency to have time to think of awards,” said S.P.

According to him, he consulted the last three jury chairmen – Ng from BBDO/ Proximity, Huang Ean Hwa from McCann Worldgroup and Ted Lim from Naga DDB. Also present at these meetings were the executive creative directors of a dozen or so agencies.

“We talked about process and started the jury selection with over 100 names suggested,” S.P. said. He pointed out that there had never been a jury panel that made everyone happy.