Creativity stretches beyond the silo walls
That’s the Dubai Lynx over for another year. Shares in Alka-Seltzer are settling down again, creatives are muttering about how they “was robbed”, and some joiner has hit the jackpot, being asked to extend the trophy shelves in Emaar Square.
TBWA\Raad was the clear winner at the awards this year, and well done to them. They have produced some stellar work in the past year, and it was rightly rewarded with a record eight Grands Prix. They won for Camelpower, Highway Gallery, The Promoticon and many more. Turn to page 12 for a list of the Grand Prix winners. And check out campaignme.com and The Lynx’s own website to see who else won prizes.
After last year’s surprise triumph for Blue Barracuda in the Film category, this year saw another left-field winner: by Vice Arabia. It’s a feature- length documentary, rather than a traditional TVC. And hands up anyone who thought of Vice as an ad agency. But look at the other categories too: PR was won by a team of scientists; Outdoor had a strong Instagram element; and Radio was won by a line of billboards. Remember when we were all calling for silos to be broken down? Well they are gone now. And that’s great.
I had the luck, for the second year in a row, of hosting the series of Chief Creatives on the Island panels on the Networking Stage at the festival, and while we couldn’t resist having a go at clients for pitching too often ( although Beattie & Dane’s Dana Alhhanbali prompted spluttering fits galore when she revealed her agency refuses to work on retainer), we also discussed diversity of talent. Not only in terms of getting more women and more local staff into agencies – something we still need to work on – but also in accepting ideas from anywhere. Creatives don’t have a monopoly on creativity, and should be open and even nurturing to ideas coming from clients, client-servicing teams and people in the pub. Their strength and role is to refine those ideas and make them wonderful and make them work. No matter where they come from and no matter where they go – on a billboard, into a film, into a mirror in a mall.
Du’s EVP of brand & corporate communications Abdulwahed Juma, on page 26, also alludes to the danger of inflexibls structures. He warns that rigid brands hinder creative work. “From time to time, you have to stretch the boundary and let them practise their creativity,” he says.
That’s what the brands behind those Lynx winners have done. And while creative awards may end up on the shelves of the agencies, their clients can feel just as proud of those trophies. They’ve given their partners room to win.