A new AD-dition to a market adrift on becalmed seas

Finance Week have joined forces with ex-Ad Focus man Tony Koenderman and released Ad Review. Koenderman has been producing publications of this nature for more than twenty years and in fact ran one at Finance Week between 1988 and 1990 before joining FM and starting Ad Focus.

Ad Review does not break much from a tried and proven formula which according to Koenderman has worked and succeeded for years.

There are the usual suspects among the award winners including Pinnacle award winner TBWA Hunt Lascaris and a lifetime achievement award for Mike Schalit, Executive Creative Director at Net#work BBDO.

Another lifetime award went to Matthew Bull who moves to London as CEO OF Lowe & Partners joining a group of local talent that has been exported overseas.

As a reference for journalists, marketers and prospective clients it has much information ready to hand. This includes agency size, biggest spending ad clients as well as the new Creative League of agencies.

There is coverage of newspapers with a look at audacious newcomers like the Daily Sun and This Day that have turned some of the print daily preconceptions upside down.

The sub title on the front cover is Rewarding Big Ideas and the big idea award went to TBWA Hunt Lascaris for their Sea Harvest Penguins campaign. Few would begrudge them this accolade and yet other than the cover sub-title and this award there are no big ideas here.

The annual ad reference success formula according to Koenderman is repeat delivery and it has delivered annually for more than two decades.

One would obviously be stupid to tamper with such a combination and what readers will get in Ad Review is pretty much what readers have been getting in Ad Focus for many years.

The rider here is that a publication of this sort depends for its existence on adspend from the very industry it covers and critiques - an industry that has tightened belts and has a moratorium on new appointments across many agencies.

This factor begs the question of whether the market is really big enough for two ad annuals. Finance Week continued their publication for three years, after Koenderman left to start AdFocus, before folding.

According to Koenderman, his move to Finance Week was due solely to the lack of interest by Financial Mail in his proposal to gain more equity in the Ad Focus brand. Understandably he saw Ad Focus as very much his brainchild and wanted more share in the brand itself.

Financial Mail will be launching their annual later this month with many minds anxious to see their particular take on the industry for 2003.

Competition in any industry is always desirable. If this entry into the market by Finance Week results in a shakeup it would go some way towards rebranding an industry as once more on the cutting edge of innovation and creativity.

However, too many awards can dull the ardour of even the most narcissistic agency and there was even mention at the launch last week that this was just another awards ceremony.

With debate about the rise of PR at the expense of advertising, as well as the integration of many marketing disciplines within the old ad agency elite corridors, the days of panache and creative overdrive seem to be distant memories.

Watching the ad industry conform to mainstream business parameters is contrary to the very nature of its fragmented and off-the-wall existence. Advertising has become somewhat diluted and needs a paradigm shift.

There are exceptions with some agencies that still produce pure ad ideas and others with work-in-progress solutions to the challenge of integrated marketing. There are however, also people that are nostalgic for the glory days in advertising and continue existing by treading water.

The demarcation lines within the communications industry have blurred to such an extent that prospective clients now have to do some serious research into what exactly the advertising agencies of the 21st century actually offer.

There is very little proof that a reassessment and maybe reinvention of the industry is actually taking place. A redefining of the parameters and the entire raison d'etre of this threatened species is desperately needed.