The Loeries and the media: not such happy fellows anymore

There's a lot that Andrew Human, CEO of the Loerie Awards, needs to be credited for, more especially reinventing the Loerie Awards and taking what was essentially a once-a-year "party until you fall over" event and transforming it into a year-long programme with multiple elements aimed at promoting creativity, brand communication and the broader advertising community... [But] where Human appears to have failed is in building strong and professional relationships with industry journalists.

To be more exact, the Loeries have had a fractured relationship with journalists and members of the media over many years, culminating this year in the alleged blacklisting of Bizcommunity's Manson. (Disclosure: Mandy de Waal and Herman Manson have a long-standing working relationship through the MarkLives and MandyLives blogs. De Waal also contributed to the now defunct Brand Magazine of which Manson was a founder.)

"Over the past 20 years the Loeries organisation has constantly caused trouble with the trade media that covers the media and marketing industry," says Chris Moerdyk, non-executive chairman of trade portal Bizcommunity. "It all stems from one thing and that is that somehow successive Loerie committees have believed the trade media should see themselves as publicists for the advertising industry, which of course they are not. That's absolutely at the root of the problem. It is not just the recent Loeries - it has been like that since Noah won a gold."

Read the full story at www.thedailymaverick.co.za.