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Two new features for AudioNET® clients - Find out more in the AudioNET® Bits below... Song Zu Clinches a Clutch of Clios Song Zu Sydney has won two silver statues at the recent Clio Awards in New York. The awards for television/cinema commercials were for music and sound design for the same commercial 'Dining Out' for Visa. The agency was BBDO/ Guerrero Ortego in Manila. In total, Song Zu was involved in five of the eight Australian winners in the Television/Cinema category. Complete
Post in Melbourne worked on Whybin TBWA's gold winning 'Mozzie' spots for
the Moonlight Cinema and
Double-G
in Perth did sound design for a bronze award winning spot for the Cancer
Foundation. The agency was Marketforce.
In
the radio entries, two
Melbourne studios made the shortlist of finalists at the Clios: Good Audio Sense, for a radio commercial for Ford
F-Series Trucks and Flint Webster for a Skinny Milk radio spot. The U.S. scooped the pools at the Clios with 105 statues overall (down from 139 in 2001,) followed by England with 24 and Germany with 23. Singapore led the Asian region with 17. In all, Clio's five juries awarded a total of 281 statues - down from last year's level of 372. DDB Worldwide was named the Agency Network of the Year, after winning a total of 1 Hall of Fame award, 2 Grand Clios, 5 Golds, 5 Silvers, and 18 Bronzes. The first runner-up was BBDO Worldwide and the second runner-up was Saatchi & Saatchi Worldwide. harvest Films, Inc., of Santa Monica, California, was named Production Company of the Year, for its work on behalf of Fox Sports and Heineken USA. harvest won 1 Gold, 1 Silver and 2 Bronzes. The first runner-up for production company honors was Complete Pandemonium of San Francisco and the second runner-up, The Mill, London. Full details of all awards can be found on the Clio website which very helpfully has a list of winners sorted by country. Other awards still open. Media Federation Awards close July 17th.
Overseas, the London International Advertising Awards close Monday June 17. and the Mobius Awards - Entries open August, deadline 1st October 2002.
Flint Webster Co-Founder and Director David Flint is an enthusiastic supporter of audio awards and says they've been entering awards since they set up their Melbourne studios a quarter of a century ago. "We really entered into that top end of the market so most of our work, at that time anyway, was fair budget work and that enabled us to do great work for our clients. Things have changed a bit now with the general restraint on budgets but we still manage to get the good creative jobs, so it was in our interest and in our clients' interests to enter them into awards." David says if an agency didn't think a spot was good enough and Flint Webster did, they'd enter anyway. "You tend to enter Australian awards because they are your local awards. We don't always enter the Melbourne Art Directors awards but we will enter the Golden Stylus and AWARD awards, which are really the two that probably matter to us. We enter Australian awards first of all. Then the Clio, London advertising awards and the New York festivals are the three we tend to enter." David says Flint Webster proudly displays their awards in full view of visitors. "When your clients come in, they think that's pretty impressive. Agencies I guess think well at least you know your stuff if you're winning all these awards. "It's also lovely to go to New York and pick up an award knowing you've done it from Australia and here you are in New York picking up an award for the best radio commercial in the world. There are morale issues and emotional issues and just practical ones I guess, in relation to our clients," David says. Ric Curtain, Sound Director at Double G post-production in Perth also values peer review of his work for practical business reasons. "I don't think people would go somewhere just because they'd won an award..but I know for instance when we go to do film and documentary work especially when there's overseas distributors, we often have to put in a bit of screed and a little CV of what we've done. If you've got some award, especially an international award that they know of then they go, oh well, they must be doing something half right down there, so in a way it certainly helps." Ric's also a big fan of Australian awards because he says as far as he's concerned the quality produced here is just as good as anything anywhere else in the world. "If you have something that gets into international awards then you always feel that it's a bit better than a local award until you see some of the overseas stuff. We often see the reels that come from around the world and I think the audio produced in Australia is as good as anywhere in the world." He doubts that Australian studios' generally high audio production standards are motivated by the prospect of winning awards, but says it can happen. "You're just busy doing the job really and you get involved in what you're doing. We definitely don't set out to do things that can be entered into awards. But I used to work in Singapore at one stage and the culture there then, was quite different. We used to literally create ads to go into awards that were shown at midnight on some obscure little island...but that doesn't happen down here." Frodi's Mill Creative Director Paul Avery takes this issue a step further. Although he's a Golden Stylus judge Paul says Frodi's decided some time ago to stop entering awards. "I guess because it's so easy to manipulate awards in terms of getting something through and be awarded for it. Clients can be initially impressed by awards, but they're far more impressed by the quality of what you do directly for them and the quality and the response they get from their advertising when you've created good commercials for them. And a lot of the time the most creative stuff isn't the most effective." As a specialist radio creative agency, Paul says Frodi's pitches to prospective clients concentrate on illustrating how successful radio can be. "We very much traded on our reputation of success in advertising and our organisation of it and the quality of service we give to clients and the response they get to the advertising when we do the commercials. And sure the awards were nice and they feel good but they really didn't contribute at all to our business." Even though Frodi's doesn't enter awards, Paul's been involved as a judge of the Golden Stylus. "I was probably a bit of a critic of the Golden Stylus awards because a lot of the stuff you hear winning awards I'd never heard on radio and I work in Sydney in the biggest market in the country. So I guess when I was asked to be a judge I happily took on that role feeling that I could at least listen for those things that are a good solid radio commercial. "And occasionally when I listen to the tracks that come through and I hear commercials that I also remember hearing on air I think that's good creativity because not only did they write a really good commercial but they also convinced the client that it should run on air, the client agreed, and it ran with a good campaign and an effective schedule. So it had every element - it wasn't just creative for the sake of creative - it was creative, the client liked it, they put it to air and it most likely worked." Paul was reluctant to comment on changes to the Golden Stylus, given that Commercial Radio is still working on the new format. While conceding that something needed to be done to revive flagging support for the Golden Stylus, David Flint is emphatic that the awards still have a role to play and deserve greater support. "The Golden Stylus awards have been around longer than we have and we've been here 25 years. They've been important to people like us and other production studios. In the past few years they've diminished in importance and it was getting to the stage where advertising agencies were not bothering too much any more with them. I think it's a great pity that they're changing it after all these years." David stressed the need for Commercial Radio to canvas opinion from different states and says there's plenty of people in the industry willing to provide suggestions to boost support for the Golden Stylus awards if they're given the opportunity. "I don't know how they're (Commercial Radio) going to run it - they haven't contacted me and I've not spoken to them. They really need support from people like us for it to work at all. "Without the Golden Stylus awards, that is radio awards, agencies will not be as interested in the medium. It's hard enough anyway, they tend to place all their efforts into television writing and not so much radio. Now there's really no awards for it people really aren't going to bother too much."
Commercial Radio CEO Joan Warner says higher profile for radio at the AWARDS and the re-launch of the Golden Stylus Awards as monthly awards are part of a deliberate push to grab a larger slice of the advertising spend. Joan says the three new radio categories created as part of its Gold sponsorship of the AWARDS should be a very good mechanism for raising the profile of radio within the advertising industry. The new categories include Production in Radio (direction, performance, casting and sound); Best Corporate or Brand Commercial or Campaign and Best Retail Commercial or Campaign. This means a total of eight categories for radio will be available in AWARD 2002 with radio station and agency creatives eligible to enter all categories. "This is part of our ultimate aim to grow radio's share of the advertising dollar. We've had around the high 8 or 9% in the last 10 years or so and while it's great to hold that share we believe with 95% of Australians listening to radio every week, that we should be strongly marketing the reach and frequency of radio and the resulting personal relationships with our listeners radio offers to advertising agencies and their clients," Joan says. There's no detail yet on the revamped Golden Stylus awards, but Joan says Commercial Radio is working with a team of radio creatives to develop a proposal that will then be taken to the advertising industry. Ads produced in-house may also possibly be eligible for both the new Golden Stylus awards as well as the Commercial Radio Awards (formerly RAWARDS) both presented by Commercial Radio. Diary Options Compulsory for Radio Ratings Tender Twelve global companies have been invited to tender for the Commercial Radio radio ratings contract - with all expected to include an overview and estimates for conducting ratings under the current diary system, as well as ideas for new methodologies and technology. CEO Joan Warner says Commercial Radio is keen for the tenderers to employ lateral thinking in their submissions, but says "we don't intend to move to a new system that might not be as reliable as the system we have currently got." Joan stresses that a key part of any submission for the new Survey contract will be a clear outline of how the tenderer would help the industry to trial the various electronic devices available. "Currently there are only two electronic devices being trialled overseas - the watch and the people meter - we are not convinced that there is any definitive research that makes one or the other a clear stand-out," she says. "One of the biggest concerns in Australia with the portable electronic devices is compliance - would people carry their personal people meter or wear their watch, and then reliably download the information each day? These are issues that need to be addressed before we move from what has been a relatively reliable system. "We think that the diary system is the most accurate system currently available to us and if a tenderer came back to us with an electronic system as an instant replacement for the current system - rather than a trialling/phased in option - we wouldn't be interested in that at this stage." Commercial Radio expects to make a decision on the ratings contract early next year. Meanwhile, the recently released Newcastle radio ratings saw KOFM's 0.6% increase push it into the number 1 spot with 19.6% of the available audience. Second and third spots went to NXFM, (down a whopping 1.3% to 18.6%) and 2HD (down 0.2% to 18.5%.) There was marginal movement in the rest of the stations. Detailed results are available on the amt site. Metro Number 4 radio ratings are due to be released next Tuesday 18th June. The results should be posted on the ACNielsen and amt websites by mid-afternoon.
In response to feedback from production studios and radio stations, we have two new features now available for AudioNET® users. Ø Multiple Uploads. If you're sending up to 5 tracks to the same receiver/s they can be batched and sent together. When you log-in and go to 'send tracks' there is a drop-down box asking you to select the number of tracks. Once you choose how many tracks you want to send the next page automatically provides the right number of spaces for you to browse for the individual tracks and punch in the key numbers. You
only have to punch in common details (ie agency, product, client) ONCE. If
you only want to send one track, the drop-down box defaults to one track,
so you don't have any extra keystrokes. For receivers, you'll only receive one e-mail telling you which agency, client and product, how many tracks and what their key numbers are. Each track will still appear as an individual spot in your inbox, so you can still search for and download individual key numbers as required. Ø Re-Send facility. If agencies or clients change their minds (and don't they usually!) and want to send spots to extra stations, just go to the House Keeping page, click Resend Track find the correct track and click 'resend'. A pop-up window will ask for the new receiver/s and let you confirm or alter the track information. As the track is already on the AudioNET® server this delivery is instant. *Normal delivery charges will apply. Thanks to the following people who helped beta-test these functions:
The latest comments from production studios and radio stations have included requests for a progress bar for uploading and a spot for the on air date in the track details. We'll let you know via e-mail when these are available. If you have any other suggestions about improvements to AudioNET, we would like to hear from you at feedback@dbmsystems.com.au or call Dave or Verity on 03 9687 9055.
"Some days you are the bug; some days you are the windshield" - anonymous. To unsubscribe e-mail unsubscribe@dbmsystems.com.au If you'd like to contribute a
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Killer Bits: June 2002| ©2003-2008 DBM Systems Pty Ltd | Site Map |