JWT SYDNEY OLYMPUS AD WINS APRIL/MAY COULD BE A CAXTON COMPETITION
An ad for the Olympus 2GB Memory Card has been announced as the April/May winner of the Could Be a Caxton competition, established by the Caxton Committee and supported by The Newspaper Works to recognise and showcase great creativity on a bi-monthly basis.
CLIENT: Olympus
AGENCY: JWT Sydney
EXECUTIVE CREATIVE DIRECTORS: Andy DiLallo & Jay Benjamin
COPYWRITER: Allie Buckle
ART DIRECTOR: Michaela Brown
An honourable mention also went to the M&C Saatchi Wellington for their Ministry of Economic Development ad:
CLIENT: Ministry of Economic Development
AGENCY: M&C Saatchi Wellington
CREATIVE DIRECTOR: Jeremy Southern
COPYWRITERS: Jeremy Southern, Marianne Harvey
ART DIRECTOR: Mark Antsis
Emma Hill, Creative Director of Clemenger BBDO, Melbourne and the judge of the April/May competition, said about the winner: “Very cool and simple way to show your Olympus camera can store as many memories as it would take to fill an aircraft hangar. And besides, you’d never get an aircraft hangar in your pocket.”
On the NZ ad: “Lovely copy. No one writes long copy anymore. Great copy teaches the reader something, without them even knowing they’re learning. Ironically, there just aren’t many people very good at writing it and in turn teaching other writers to write it.”
The creative team from JWT Sydney wins an all expenses-paid trip to the 2008 Caxton Weekend.
The June/July competition is now open for entries. It’s free to enter and anyone can submit nominations. For more information on how to enter the Could Be a Caxton competition and the Caxtons in general, visit www.thecaxtonawards.com.au
64 Comments
Well done girls, great idea.
Ant
go the girls!
nothing compares 2 u
Brilliant! Talented team, lovely people.
Is ‘could be a Caxton’ for ads that don’t run? (this is a serious question, the link doesn’t seem to work),
those girls are hot and talented i am jealous
damn i wish i did that.
Really like those two girls. Really miss them. Want to work with them again. They will be the new big thing I think.
I am in love.
damn i wish it did that?
Nobody makes comments like that unless you are pretending to be someone commenting on something
Store everything in one place – nice idea! Simple. Looks good. Well done.
Rich.
I think that ad was dogged for gold in Canne.
JWTalented.
what a swell idea. these girls are going to be snapped up for sure. JWT watch out!
JWTits
Those girls are so cool, they’re Jesse’s girl.
L.O.V.E
? wtf
You can store that much stuff on any memory card. What makes this an ad for Olympus rather than a generic memory card?
Muthafucka – that’s MASATAKA!
Obvious.
How boring are the images on that losers memory card. Could have been so, so much better with a bit more imagination.
Hey 7:47 – You can make an ignorant slag-off about any ad. What makes this an ignorant slag-off about the Olympus ad rather than a generic ignorant slag-off?
Back to school for you 7.47. Great stuff girls.
Not a press idea. Not a press idea. Not a press idea. Not a press idea. Not a press idea. Not a press idea. Not a press idea. Not a press idea. Not a press idea. Not a press idea. Not a press idea. Not a press idea. Not a press idea. Not a press idea. Not a press idea. Not a press idea. Not a press idea. Not a press idea. Not a press idea. Not a press idea. Not a press idea. Not a press idea. Not a press idea. Not a press idea. Not a press idea. Not a press idea. Not a press idea. Not a press idea.
Magazine ad. Sorry
it’s been done-years ago for the yellow pages-a tvc I recall -a giant yellow warehouse full of stuff.
is this what your world has become? any sense of intelligence or integrity has been dissolved via this work you consider ‘postable’. It seems the desire for overt self promotion far outweighs the desire to do good work that speaks for its self.
shift. alt. delete.
interesting idea. terrible art direction. REALLY terrible.
Hey Lynchy, great job on all the Cannes coverage BTW. We could almost smell the truffles
BROWN.. BUCKLE.. BOOM!!
Well done ladies!
That’s awesome.
Yet another well-meaning award devalued. Or maybe it is just an error of judgement by the judge? What hope has the industry got here if good ideas and solid craft – always the cornerstones of press – are cast aside in celebration of this. It’s all there; the tiny logo, the luscious full colour repro, the conspicuous lack of copy. Everything that makes press what it should be is missing. Check out the previous bi-monthly winners – or even the runner-up this month, to see why stuff like this actually winning is so wrong.
To those of you who say this is not a press ad, I think you’ll find it ran as a DPS in the weekend magazine supplements (I saw it in Good Weekend), a major category of the Caxtons that has existed for a couple of decades. Its appearance in GW also answers other concerns of the ad being a scam.
3.12pm.
Thanks for the clarification. If you look at the terms and conditions of entry it quite clearly states:
“Please note only newspaper ads are eligible for the Could Be a Caxton. Ads that have only appeared in inserted magazines are NOT eligible.”
Scam by name, scam by nature….
what a bunch of fuck ups! who gives a shit? it’s an ad that could be an ad that wins a minor Australian award. it’s nice. it’s fun. maybe not super groundbreaking. but most advertising isn’t. does it really deserve a million twats disrespecting it? No.
“Who gives a shit?” – wake up. This is symptomatic of what is wrong with Australian advertising. Work in the US or the UK and you will see that the creative community is largely self-censoring and the scam is picked up very early in the judging process. Here it has become endemic. Every wants to be like Singapore. So creatives stop trying to do good work for real clients and focus all their efforts into slipping scam into awards.
It’s quite nice. That’s it. Well done, we’ve all got a million of them in our ‘coulldabeen’ books.
Why does everyone presume this is a scam ad? It’s for Olympus, which is a real advertiser, not a corner shop. I’ve seen heaps of Olympus ads in all media over the last few years so imagine the newspaper boys would make sure this execution actually ran.
Haven’t we become a bitchy load of moaners. Hard to win anything in Aus without the usual griping. A newspaper mag is an integral part of the whole.
As for scams.its also now an integral part ot the award world. Maybe it shouldn’t be. But that’s how it is
This ad and the runner up got the number one and two slots. Good work being recognised and applauded. Well done to the winners!
If its true what 5.21 says about eligibility, the award should go to a real press ad, not a magazine insert. Simple as that
I like the M&C work, you can see the craft that went into it, I’ve seen a couple of good long copy ads recently, maybe some copywriters are actually beginning to think beyond the witty headline and tag to follow type school of writing.
For F**** sake! We’re talking about an ad for a major brand, Olympus. Not for the local hairdresser or dog training school.
campaign brief should have an online awards thing where all us anonymous guys get to vote on the ads submitted and we’ll see who wins. and of course we’ll all be too proud to vote for scam, so we’ll look at the list of winners and say to ourselves, “whoops, our real ads are pretty shit without all the scam maybe we should have voted for the scam”
it’s not our fault that so little real work gets through. it’s the rubbish english suits banished to work in australia that can’t sell shit to shit collectors.
but seriously, i’m excited for AWARD this year. if there’s any sort of scam backlash (which there won’t be, because the guys voting are the scammers), it’ll be interesting to see what ends up winning. unfortunately burst isn’t eligible for print.
8.38
Interesting view about the suits. To be honest, by the time they are asked to sell it is too late. Work has already been split up into the hard-working shit and the rarified scam by CDs who are forced to appraise half-cocked briefs. The problem lies with the planners (or lack of them). With a few notable exceptions they are all rubbish here in Australia – more interested in chatting up the clients than challenging them. Until planning receives the respect – and the talent – it deserves we will continue to produce work based on one of two insights; that clients want to sell stuff or that creatives want to win awards.
Montyyyyyyyyyyy . Good , bad or what ???
The deal is:
Australian advertising agencies are lazy.
People come in at 9am and go home at 6pm. They are in the pub on Friday by 1pm. They never work weekends. They do boozy lunches regularly. And spend half their day on facebook or emailing mates.
So scam work comes naturally. It’s easy and it reaps good rewards.
The briefs for real clients and real work go into the too hard basket. No one ever bothers to fight tooth and nail for them (and that includes the creatives). They’d rather be down the pub or trying on a new pair of skinny jeans.
But then again, that’s why I love working in Australia.
English Suit
WTF? This is a first thought and terribly art directed…so dated. Looks like stock shots. It’s YAWN boring. It’s like it’s trying to be like the Virgin music print ad but unlike this one, it went viral and people all over the world were sending it to people because it WAS INTERESTING!!! This is way too studenty. Wouldn’t it have been better to have a nice simple truth behind the idea? like…”It can hold a lot of memory, but that’s not always a good thing.” or something that at least makes you smile. It’s a B- NOT an A and NO NOT A Caxton! Let’s have some standards people please!!!!!!!!!!
“it’s not our fault that so little real work gets through. it’s the rubbish english suits banished to work in australia that can’t sell shit to shit collectors”
Nice.
Suits really are scum. They knife you in the back, take it in the bum from the client all to easily and have the most ridiculous insights. They think they can write copy and believe being dressed smartly and averaging around 2.4 four syllable words in every 5 sentences makes them clever.
Then there’s their bullshit – suits love toxic politics like yanks love fast food.
Attention to all suits: I don’t care if you’re English or Australian, just stick to kissing the clients ass and shut the fuck up.
12:54, Monty thinks it’s an interesting-looking ad that must have taken many hours to put together, but ultimately it’s a generic claim that one would have thought would be more appropriately made by a memory-card manufacturer than a camera maker.
You know its a scam when you have 2 use agency staff in your ads. I can count about 5 in here and they have been repeated as well.
Bullshit, 5:12PM
Whether your claim that agency staff are in the ad is true or not, that in no way talks to whether it’s scam.
We have all been in situations where the budget didn’t allow proper talent and we had to pinch, beg, borrow and steal talent and other favours to make it happen.
That should be applauded as commitment and tenacity rather than put forward as evidence of a crime against advertising.
Besides, don’t you have better things to do than play ‘Where’s Wall’ at your desk?
And, no, I don’t work for JWT or think these ads are particularly brilliant.
Monty is on the money.Good ad for memory card.
Come on! Wake up! This ad is just okay. Not bad for your book if your a junior, but still not great.
Lacks an interesting strategy.
lacks an insight.
Lacks craft
Lacks a thought beyond an obvious one.
Looks a bit scammy too.
Scam… Shit.
If this was my ad and everybody was bagging it for being a scam, I’d write in and give the name of every publication that it appeared in and an idea of the media spend for the ad. That is the only way to silence those who dare claim the ad to be a scam.
Good point 7:25
If you’re gonna do a scam, the whole idea is to make it look like a real ad.
This examle looks nothing like a real ad.
Why? Because it’s too basic, banal and purile be have come from a brief that would have been carefully considered by the agency and client.
It really looks like a student solution for a student brief.
Sorry, it’s just not that good.
Guy – do you think you could in some more ads!?!
Perhaps JWT should have a standard policy of releasing media plans with every ad they release to quench the “SCAM!” cries!
English suit:
Where do you work? I work 18 hours a day, usually for ’emergency last minute’ stuff you guys forgot to put through to traffic.
It’s then bashed around by an English ‘Creative Director’ who’s more like a very indecisive, bad art director – but only if I can find which pub he’s staring at tits at to get it across him.
I then give it back to the campaign managers, only to have it bashed around by a team that couldn’t get the marks at uni to go client side so slept with a few mid life SUV owners and got a job in advertising.
If I’m really passionate or the Creative Directors being a prick I make one or two suits cry for telling them to fuck off, this is what the Creative Director wants.
Then the ‘Group Head’ comes in at the last minute, from the pub or a ‘Group Head Session’, and bashes it around again – turning it into another 18 hour day and ’emergency last minute’ job. And at the end of the year when I look at my book, every ad’s been written by a suit who couldn’t get the marks in marketing to earn the real bucks.
Then we get blasted for doing scam.
I want to work at a place where I get to go home at a reasonable hour because then I might find some inspiration outside the orifice. Would you agree, English Suit, as a creative, it’s my prerogative to do that? Would you agree that it’s any human beings right to get home at a reasonable hour and attempt a social life because the English Suits are actually organised? Unfortunately, we are very poorly managed in Australia, and some shit aint worth fighting for, especially the ads English Suits write.
Please tell me where you work, long lunches sounds like a place where creatives get shit done.
I find most English people ponsy and weak.
Come on then 9.19, we’ll fuckin’ ‘ave you.
12:27 – If your job is so shit, why don’t you leave? I’ve worked at a few agencies and I have never met anyone that consistently works 18 hours a day, so it must be pretty hard for you.
Or do you stay because it’s easier to bitch about shit briefs/planners/CDs/suits/clients/Monty than face up to the fact that maybe you aren’t as good as what you think you are?
12.27, on the money bro … agencies are the worst place to be creative … 2 many layers of tossers with degrees and suits.
I got so fucked off I once I went into a meeting with a press ad headlined,
“Your headline goes here.”
Pissed ’em off, but kept ’em away for a week or two!!!
Try it.
12:27 – do you work at whybins by any chance!!?
How can an ad art directed to actively discourage readership win a mention at the Caxtons? Fuck me!
3:35 – Another martyr for the cause. I assume that you do work in an agency by the fact you are posting on an advertising blog. Why do you do so if agencies are the worst place to be creative?
There are so many whining bitches like you on this blog. Get used to that fact unless your name is above the door, you are always going to be playing by someone else’s rules. If you hate it, leave and start your own shop. We’ll see how long your “Your headline goes here.” attitude lasts.