Awards season has officially opened! - 26 Mar 2012

Actually, I think there are very few months of the year in which there aren't any awards events. And since Bizcommunity.com covers so many different but related industries, there's always a different circle of professionals 'robustly debating' the worth and value of awards. So congrats to the latest rounds of winners for the Diageo Marketing Brilliance Awards (last Wednesday night in the UK), Creative Circle Ad of the Year Awards (last Thursday night), the MK Awards (Friday night), the National Press Club Newsmakers of the Year Awards (my Twitter stream got particularly snippy on Friday night), and the PRISMs last night (and to Meropa's Peter Mann for stimulating some intelligent debate on Biz for a change).

By the way, if you were at the PRISMs last night or following tweets, remember that erratum about Gullan & Gullan and Ogilvy PR Cape Town in connection with one of the Carling Black Label campaigns? That insertion was an error: Ogilvy PR did indeed enter "Be the Coach" in Digital Media Relations (page 25) and Gullan & Gullan the same campaign in Integration of Traditional & New Media (page 31).

In other news, expect more radio lineups to be announced this week; there's been more restructuring at Media24 Magazines; Boardmans and Red Square have gone to Ireland/Davenport and Edcon Group Cellular to Promise; the South African division of Irish publishing group Independent News & Media is reporting further losses in revenue; Graham Pfuhl has resurfaced, this time at Adtherapy; and another new ad agency has made its appearance, Old Friends Young Talent, aiming to help transform the ad industry from the bottom up.

In terms of Biz contributors, the intrepid trigger/isobar bloggers Karin Botta and Uno de Waal have written about the top five things learned at SxSW and should one go in 2013; Anthony Duke aka Duke Nukem, I've decided, hasn't minced his words in declaring that radio is losing its intelligence (part I and part II) ahead of his third stint of judging the MTN Radio Awards (yes, the a-word once again); and Mongezi Mtati has written further about two trends he identified earlier this year: going beyond a social media presence and the rise of influencer engagement.

And for those of you who may have lost the plot on the long-running saga of the Protection of (State) Information Bill and the NCOP public hearings, the beef's in Gill Moodie's latest column.

Hou vas!
Simone Puterman (@SimoneBiz)
Managing editor

PS The latest Ornico Ad Showcase features TV ads for Red Bull, Capitec, Castle Lite, Bokomo Weet-Bix and Vodacom, and radio ads for Hunter's Dry, Audi A4, Revite, Eskom and Hansa Pilsner.

PPS Welcome to 123RF which has just opened a press office on Bizcommunity Marketing & Media South Africa!