Opinion: Perspective - Big Awards show celebrating creativity is crucial

Television work, when it's good, is still really bloody good. All things
digital are still a repository for innovation and exciting creative
advances. And the media in between trundle on without being able to
offer inspiring new creative possibilities or surprising us with
amazingly fresh new thinking. But the best agencies and the best clients
are mixing and matching from an ever-expanding communications palette;
siloed thinking is well and truly on its knees.

So it's brilliant to see a nicely traditional TV campaign - VCCP's work
for comparethemarket.com - seamlessly integrating a digital element
(both real and spoof) and taking the top TV prize.

And it's testament to the TV jury that a truly popular, populist
creative idea such as Aleksandr the meerkat should triumph above more
artsy work.

Aleksandr is exciting because he has made the ultimate transition from
advertising into the real world: advertising as popular culture. That
doesn't happen very often any more, mostly because it's harder than ever
to find a large enough media community that will collectively engage
with your work. It's proof of the residual power of television when
harnessed to the opportunities of the web and the kooky brilliance of
the meerkat idea that Aleksandr has achieved that.

But even though I must admit that classy work such as DDB's Wallace and
Gromit ads for Harvey Nichols or its Marmite campaign don't thrill me in
the same way as AKQA's eco:Drive for Fiat, it's tremendously reassuring
to see great work still being produced in all media, not just the
bookends of TV and digital. In fact, it's not just reassuring, it's
absolutely vital to recognise and celebrate the fact that creative
standards are as high as ever across the board, despite all the serious
financial pressures at play.

Of course, there are plenty of people quick to dismiss advertising
awards as ego-boosting froth that has little to do with the job of
selling products and services. Tosh. Although effectiveness is only a
bit-player in our Big Awards, all of the winners have made a positive
contribution to the health of the brands they serve and these sort of
creative awards set a bar for the whole industry (clients and agencies)
to try to better.

Better creative work is good for the advertising industry (still the
first place clients come for transformational, creatively led big ideas)
and good for ad-cynical, media-overloaded consumers who demand to be
"entertained" if they're to give brands some attention. Celebrating and
rewarding creative excellence has, in truth, never been more
important.

I was on holiday when Bartle Bogle Hegarty announced that it was having
to make 40 redundancies. At the time (from my sun lounger) I was
conflicted over my belief that the agency is one of the best-run and
best all-round agencies in town and my feeling that the agency had made
a major mistake, having asked staff to take unpaid leave to avert job
losses only to announce several months later that job losses were
inevitable.

To be honest, I felt let down by an agency I've always held in the
highest possible regard. And I don't even work there.

Now over the past few weeks, I've seen a steady flow of good people
leaving BBH (Mick Mahoney being the latest, defecting to Euro RSCG this
week).

If you need an example of the high cost the recession is extracting from
the advertising industry, look at BBH. But please don't bet against the
agency turning it around and reasserting its usual stature.