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EDITOR’S COLUMN
“I’ve been seeing a return to craft in print lately, and the entries this year reflected that,” McKay says. “Nicely written headlines, art directors and designers pouring over badass visuals—I like seeing respect for old-school craftsmanship continuing to come back.”
“As much as I love a good Snapchat filter, I’m still in awe of the perfectionism required to make great print,” juror Shanteka Sigers says. “There is no beta. There is no soft launch. There is only an insertion date.”
But Maxham says, “With some notable exceptions, craft continues to erode as speed eclipses all other values that clients and culture currently care about.”
“I know everyone loves to harp about the lack of craft in this day and age, but if it’s not print or traditional TV, we need to relax,” Kim says. “Content doesn’t last three months or three years anymore. Sometimes it doesn’t even last three days. You have to know when to push teams to bleed and when you don’t have to make them kern type for five days.”
I asked the jurors what their biggest disappointments with the entries were.
“Many brands that had tenuous claims to social good nevertheless tried to jump on the making-the-world-a-better-place bandwagon,” Maxham says. “This seemed particularly cynical and exploitative.
I fear it’s going to lead to ‘good cause fatigue’—depriving genuinely worthy causes of the attention they deserve.”
“Clearly, the climate is more conservative with clients and budgets, but it does worry me that advertising isn’t driving culture these days. It’s riding it,” says Hadlock.
“A number of ideas strong in concept fell down when it came to expressing them in case-study format,” says juror Patrick Scissons. “Trying to ‘sell’ how good your idea is to a dozen cynical, sleep-de- prived creative directors is a no-win proposition.”
I also asked how advertising is adapting to the changes in media and demographic fragmentation.
“Heavy emphasis on social, ambient and digital ideas is the simple answer, but ideas like long-form content and GEICO’s Unskippable campaign show that we have to entertain or outsmart media expectations,” says juror Keith Cartwright.
“The fact that consumers are overinformed and extremely saturated with content—and are sometimes very good content creators
8 Advertising Annual 2016
KEITH CARTWRIGHT is executive creative director at Butler, Shine, Stern & Partners in Sausalito, California. From 2011 to 2015, Cartwright ran his own agency, Union Made Creative, whose accounts included General Electric, Lego, eBay, Nike and Chipotle. Previously, he managed global campaigns for adidas, Motorola, Persol and Ray-Ban as a creative director at TBWA\Chiat\ Day; was global creative director for client Jordan Brand at Wieden+Kennedy; and was executive vice president, group creative director, responsible for Tylenol, Hanes, Nespresso, NET10 and Mentos at The Martin Agency. Cartwright’s work has been recognized by every major awards organization in the field.
CAROLYN HADLOCK is a principal and creative director
of Young & Laramore (Y&L) in Indianapolis, Indiana. Deciding early on between nursing and advertising, she chose the X-Acto blade over the hypoder- mic syringe and graduated with a BFA in visual communications from Indiana University Herron School of Art and Design. Since she joined Y&L in 1991 as an art director, her work has garnered recognition and many awards, including from the Art Directors Club, Advertising Age, Adweek, Cannes, Communication Arts, the Effies, Graphis and the One Show, and has been featured on NBC’s TODAY show and in the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times and USA Today.
JOANNE KIM is partner/chief idea officer at Marcus Thomas in Cleveland, Ohio, where she oversees the agency’s creative, production and digital production centers of practice. After studying design for two years, Kim realized she was better at copywriting and graduated with a BS in advertising from Kent State University. Kim was inducted into the American Advertising Federation of Cleveland’s Advertising Hall of Fame in 2015. She holds numerous awards, including the American Association of Advertising Agencies’ O’Toole Award, Communication Arts, the One Show, Print, the Telly Awards, the Webby Awards and the national ADDY Awards.
JOHN MAXHAM is chief creative officer of DDB Chicago. He oversees all creative on accounts such as State Farm Insurance, McDonald’s, Mars/Wrigley, Jeep, Kohler and Alfa Romeo. Last year, Maxham led DDB to five Cannes Lions, an appearance in D&AD and four selections in Communi- cation Arts. Prior to Chicago, Maxham was executive creative director/managing partner of Cole & Weber United in Seattle. Maxham has worked in New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle and Chicago—making him an authority on pizza, wheat- grass smoothies, sourdough, kale and pizza that’s even more fattening than what is served in New York.