Yellow Pencil fever mounts

15 May 2008

Tonight, Thursday, 15 May 2008, is the night: creative minds everywhere are now spinning in anticipation of clutching that Black or Yellow Pencil in their sweaty palms and glowing with pride in front of the 1800 guests expected at the upcoming D&AD awards ceremony. Bizcommunity.com will be there in London, courtesy of our latest guest blogger, designer Mark Forrester, who will be blogging live from Royal Festival Hall. Meanwhile, Damon Stapleton, executive creative director of TBWA\Hunt\Lascaris Johannesburg who is just back from judging the Digital and Direct categories, has a few words of advice on what it takes to win a coveted Pencil.

Row upon row of entries fill the auditorium where the 2008 D&AD judging took place

South Africa has two nominations: BBDO Cape Town for ‘Drums' in Radio Advertising and King James for ‘Hijax' in Broadcast Innovations. Nine other SA entries went In-Book.

Stapleton is in awe of the sheer scale of the awards. Since the first week of April, when the humungous task of judging the fruits of immense creative labour began - 26 000 entries from around the world - Yellow Pencil fever has been running high.

He also has fresh insight regarding the meticulous judging process. He was one of 270 eminent creative practitioners, selected for their expertise, who were handpicked to seek out the “great” from the plethora of “good” - with the criteria being: creative results that were well-executed and appropriate to the chosen medium.

For South African agencies who'd like to sharpen their entry approach and make their presence felt at the awards, Stapleton advices, “Don't expect to win a pencil for your clever choice of channel i.e. the funky Christmas card you designed for your agency to send to its clients - and then hope to make an impact with this.”

Stapleton continues, “With more entries submitted than artworks on display in the Tate Modern, across 30 different categories, the take out is that you need to have a D&AD entry strategy - to define clearly what will make your agency's entries stand out and to understand from the start, how the judging process works.” In three action-packed days, 270 judges trawl the halls, where row after row of boards display the entries.

Fewer than a handful

In his category, Stapleton judged 1000 pieces; out of those, only around 10 were for selected to be featured “in-book” and fewer than a handful of these nominated for a pencil . This amounts to a one-in-a -thousand chance of winning a pencil. Proof again that you shouldn't submit a Christmas Card and expect to win.

In other words, in all likelihood, you won't necessarily be recognised for choosing a clever channel. Instead, only creativity that really stands out, implemented completely originally, will get you noticed.

Stapleton explains, “Think of it this way - eventually, after seeing thousands upon thousands of adverts; the judges begin to really feel like the consumer out there does: bombarded by thousands of adverts a day all competing for your attention. It is then that the truly original campaign with spot-on messaging stands out to you from the rest. This is what eventually allowed us to distinguish those entries that should be shortlisted and the final winner, from the rest.”

Check out www.dandad.org to get the latest news about the D&AD build up; the new venue, live music, interactive installations, and whopper of an auditorium in which hundreds “worship the best creative work in the world and the people who worked on it.”