Adrian Miller’s D&AD Press judging diary – Day 1

Saatchi & Saatchi Malaysia ECD Adrian Miller is in London for the D&AD judging and is daily writing a diary of his experiences on the Press Jury.

At 9:06am I found myself standing in front of 1267 print ads. Our jury coordinator then proceeded to tell us that last year there were 1800 entries and 45 made it into the book.

One of the British judges shook his head in dismay and muttered something about the jury being overly generous last year.

Another British judge saw this as a chance to admonish any ads made for Scrabble. I looked up and in my line of sight were three campaigns for Scrabble. I silently said my goodbyes.

Then the conversation turned to scams. Apparently they are okay as long as they are brilliant and not for board games.  

Also, the ads must have run and been signed off by the client. FP7 aside, I’m sure this is standard practice across the world. Perhaps no one sent the guys in Doha the memo regarding this rather touchy subject.

I made a mental note of the expectations and walked off into a sea of print ads. Ad number 1 was for a torchlight. Out. Next, an ad for a humanitarian organization that looked like an ad for a torchlight. Out.

I wandered past one of the British judges and he asked me why the Cluedo (board game) client would run a full colour double page spread ad. Not knowing the Cluedo client personally I had no answer for him. Out.

The next four hours looked something like this. Knife ad, out. Highlighter ad, out. Travel agency ad, out. Harvey Nichols ad, in. Pen ad, out. Pen ad 2, out. Pen ad 3, out. WWF ads 1-29, out. Scrabble ad, in (I was feeling rebellious).

Lunch was a solemn affair. It consisted of fish cakes, salad, a couple of boiled potatoes and a discussion about the decline in quality of print advertising. One of the judges remarked that we should immediately throw out any ads for torches. Another said he didn’t like boiled potatoes. I couldn’t decide whom to agree with.

After lunch we continued to slaughter and maim print ads. As I marked the last ad on my list (out of course) I felt that maybe, just maybe we had been unreasonably harsh.

For a fleeting moment I wanted to return to the beginning, to that very first torchlight ad and vote it in. Then I remembered this is D&AD.

Unreasonably harsh isn’t harsh enough.