May the best campaign win

All the judges gathered at Hackelbrook conference centre in Craighall, Johannesburg, yesterday, Monday 30 June 2008, for a seminar which marked the beginning of the judging week and then proceeded to Vega Brand Communications School where the judging is currently taking place.

This year's Loerie Awards festival, themed ‘make your mother proud', starts off in Margate on Friday 25 July until the party ends on Monday 28 July in Margate. The aim of the weekend is to celebrate and honour the year's best work of creative excellence across all areas of brand communication. It also includes disciplines such as experiential field marketing, ambient media, architecture and interior design.

Speaking at the judge's seminar which marked the beginning of the judging week, Fran Luckin, one of the creative directors at Ogilvy told the audience gathered at Hacklebrook about the story of El Bulli. El Bulli is a special restaurant in Barcelona, which only opens six months a year. The restaurant gets a million reservations requests a year and only 8000 can be honoured.

According to Luckin, the restaurant is famous for serving some of the world's most curious food. The chef is a man named Ferran Adria who just been declared the World's Best Chef by the New York Times. Adria's inspired more than 2500 articles in magazines around the world.

Don't copy

“The moment that changed his life came in 1987; Adria was attending a cooking demonstration by a legendary chef called Jacques Maximin. Someone in the audience asked, ‘What is creativity?' and Maximin replied, ‘Don't copy.' It was the beginning of a complete change in his approach to cooking. The end of what he called ‘recreation' which was conjuring up the same dish time and time again according to a formula… And the beginning of a firm decision to get involved in creativity. He started throwing away the recipe books and experimenting,” says Luckin.

“One time, he bought a truckload of ripe tomatoes. He and his brother, Albert, took the tomatoes back to their workshop, where Ferran dumped them on the floor and impulsively grabbed a bicycle pump. He stuck it into a tomato and began vigorously pumping. Eventually the tomato blew up. It created a kind of delicious tomato foam. A tomato taste without the tomato. Soon they were making curry foam and beetroot foam, apple and strawberry foam. Within months, the foam idea was being copied by nearly every innovative young chef in Paris and Milan and New York.”

“When you sit down at a table in El Bulli, there's no cutlery. No menu. No-one asks you what you want, or if you want anything. The chef completely decides what you're going to eat and drink. You get between 30 and 50 tiny dishes. None of it looks anything like recognisable food. The progression of the dishes is carefully planned into variations of temperature and texture. You get a new dish every five minutes, which has been finished not more than 10 seconds before. The food is delivered with instructions from the waiter: ‘This is a childhood memory. Take in one bite.' Or, ‘This is trout-egg tempura. Two bites, quickly.'

Moving away from the norms

Luckin continues her narrative: “People generally feedback category norms. This is what an ad looks like. This ad looks different, therefore I don't like it. People don't know what they like, but they like what they know. Research will never tell you where to go. It'll only tell you where you've been. And so, that's the story of a man who's turned the gastronomic world on its head by following a philosophy of two words: Don't copy.”

In conclusion Luckin said: “I think ‘don't copy' is probably the simplest, truest and best agency mission statement you'll ever find. Ferran Adria has not only proven that it's possible. He's shown that it's profitable too.”

From 2006, there has been a 63% increase in people spending more time in Margate during the weekend festival. Last year, the awards attracted international guests from the US and Europe.

Major sponsors of the Loeries are SABC, Media 24, Zulu Kingdom and South Coast Tourism. Additional sponsors are Brandhouse, Aon-Shield, Lithotech, 24.com, Online Publishers Association, Design Indaba, Lightworks and Gauteng Film Commission.

Official suppliers are Sappi, Mango Airlines, Hetzner, Net#work BBDO, Six Million Dollar Media, Orchestra Blue, Sonovision Studios, Gallo Images, gloo design agency, Paygate, Ornico Group, Hibiscus Coast Municipality, Rocketseed, David Prior Photography, Newsclip, Lifesense Financial Services, Tempest Car Rental and Velocity Films. Event production partners are Gearhouse, H-Factor Event Agency, Wozani Africa, Leg Studios, Havaseat, LED Vision, juju, Wicked Pixels and Be PhatMotel.