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Poor return for South Africa

FOR THE FIRST TIME in 11 years South Africa has won a Gold Lion in the “film” (TV) category at the Cannes advertising festival. The torchbearer was SA’s largest agency, Ogilvy Johannesburg – which, ironically, produced the last film winner as well. In doing so it restored a semblance of respectability to the national performance at Cannes this year: but it was a poor return for the R2,9m spent by the ad industry on its record 793 entries.

The film award leapfrogged the agency from sixth in the creative league table to second.

Its winning spot – for the Topsy Foundation – received rapturous applause from the hard-to-please Palais des Festivals audience. It shows an Aids patient’s deterioration over 90 days until she’s near skeletal. Then comes the reveal: it was actually a demonstration of the success of proper treatment, shown in reverse.

The film category is considered (probably anachronistically) as the apex of advertising and it traditionally brings Cannes week to a conclusion on the Saturday night. It’s still called “film” – although most of the entries are TV commercials, because Cannes started its life as an event for advertising in French cinemas. Today its scope has been broadened to take in all screen advertising, from cellphones via laptops and TV sets to digital billboards and cinema.

SA has never done well in this category, but this year’s haul of a Gold, two Bronzes and 18 shortlists was much better than usual.

Overall, though, South African agencies brought back 30% less “metalware” than last year. The disparity was particularly evident at the upper end of the scale, where three Golds this year looked miserly by comparison with the 2009 haul of two Grands Prix and five Golds.

The key differentiator was the “Trillion Dollar Billboard” campaign by TBWA Hunt Lascaris for The Zimbabwean newspaper, which has now become the most-awarded campaign in world advertising history. Without it, last year would also have been pretty mediocre for South African advertising.

But even without it, Hunt Lascaris is also the most successful SA agency at Cannes this year – a resounding answer to the cynics who dismissed its creative revival as a one-hit wonder.

The big surprise among other results was the emergence of Y&R South Africa as a creative force. After years in the creative wilderness it captured third spot, ahead of such creative leaders as Net#work BBDO and FoxP2. Globally, Y&R was also third best network at Cannes.

For the ad industry as a whole the results appear to be part of a worrying trend. Since it peaked at Cannes in 2008 there’s been a precipitous decline in awards. This year the point count was 42% lower than in 2008. In the two years leading up to the peak, the point count also rose by 42%. And this year we won roughly the same number of trophies as in 2005.

The pattern coincides neatly with the global swing towards digital media, which has taken a firm hold on the characteristics of advertising since 2008. Digital, or online, is now an automatic inclusion in every advertising campaign in the advanced nations. SA’s marketplace is only now beginning to embrace the new medium with the same enthusiasm. 
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