Mark Harricks’s One Show Report

DDB Sydney creative director Mark Harricks (left) has just finished judging The One Show in Hawaii, one of only a handful of non Americans on a pretty heavy jury. Here’s his report…

OK, sorry I’ll be up front, I’m doing this totally out of guilt.

I’ve just had Part A of the the junket of a lifetime, a real dooozy! Not only did I get to travel to Hawaii all expenses paid. Get to meet some of the most interesting people in my preferred profession. I then got to look at what people all over the world in my preferred profession paid a lot of money to put forward as their best work.

Then in one fell swoop, usually in a minute or less, I got to judgethem with my little sticky sticker or my really old TV remote controlthingy. In an Instant, I, along with those interesting people, got toPASS JUDGEMENT AAAAAAH THE POWER!  mwah, ha, HA, HA ,HA, HAAAAaaaa.

I was responsible with it, I promise.

So, ah, what should we talk about here.

What did I learn?

Number one. Never try to big note yourself in front of an American. They can always pull out one better.

On the first night I joined a conversation at the end of the table where they were talking about what it’s like to work with Spike Jonze, yeah, ok so it wouldn’t have been so bad if all five other people didn’t have first hand knowledge. Strangely too, they had all worked with Burt Reynolds as well. Feeling a wee bit impotent, I sucked back the entire contents of my newly poured tropical cocktail and shuffled away in search of a refill and a new conversation.

Don’t get me wrong, they were all bloody nice people. Friendly, compassionate and hugely impressive. Everything over in the U S of Aye is just bigger and better, for real.

Another thing I noticed, that was a wee bit weird, was that people kind of gravitated towards people from countries near to them. Funny that eh? you’d think being creative and all, we’d all want to mix it up a bit, like a blind man in an orgy. Maybe it was just because all the Americans knew each other. hmmm. Interesting.

Suppose we should have a wee natter about some of the work.

Let’s start with the print, eh?

The quality was outstanding. The amount of crafting was staggering – it got me thinking, imagine if we could harness all that energy and direct it towards fixing poverty, all that kerning and typography, those hours of retouching and photography. The poor people would live in aesthetic harmony for ever more.

There was one piece there, that totally blew me away. It was for Yellow Pages. Imagine an entire city like Manhattan shot from above, possibly from a satellite. Every single building was replaced by a miniature advertisement for the people who worked in that building. Faaaaarrrrk I heard someone say when they saw it. I found out afterwards one of the judges, the lovely Thirasak Tanapatanakul of Creative Juice, Bangkok, did it. He said it took 4 months of retouching.

TV & Cinema. There’s definitely a trend at the moment in TV that is – friendly voiceover, lone piano track and “Arty” camera angles. They all started to blend together a bit for me. Some did it better than others, with better scripts, better use of piano and Artier shots, but it’s a bit difficult to award them after you’ve seen 20 others that are more or less the same.

One last thing.

I know people have been saying it for a few years now, last year the AWARD call for entries even parodied it, but people still haven’t worked out how you put their entry videos together.

We had quite a meaty discussion in our jury about how much leeway you give some of the entry videos. Of course an idea that is strong should outshine the way it is presented, but that’s assuming the jury watches the whole thing. We watched in pain while a 5 minute video waffled on and on about the “advertising problem” holding back the core of the idea so it could be revealed at the end, and when it did it was pure shit. Actually this happened quite a lot, which meant that by the end of the day we collectively voted “no” to any video that didn’t get to the point quick enough. We figured as advertisers the entrants are expected to be able to tell a compelling story, if they can’t – OUT! Entry videos are there to sell your idea, make them work as hard as they can. Simple, clear and entertaining is best. Get to the point. Don’t use cliches like “We wanted something bigger than an ad”.

It’s been lovely talking to you, It’s worth noting each judge only got to see 1/6th of the entire entries, so if you didn’t get in, please don’t hunt me down. I can give you the name of another judge who might be responsible.

Cheers, Mark.