Perspective - Effectiveness Awards mirror integration'sprogress

is a sober reminder of the fact that nice, creative-jury-tickling work
does not necessarily an effective campaign make.

The shortlist is also a sober reminder to commentators (like me) that
agencies that might seem to have lost some of their edge (like DDB) are
actually still producing some of the most effective work around - doing
exactly what clients are paying them to do. DDB has a mighty eight
campaigns on the shortlist and can justifiably stick two fingers up at
anyone who questions where their mojo's gone.

So, while I scramble to revise my view of DDB, what else does the
shortlist tell us? First, that there are huge swathes of the advertising
community who either don't have the IPA Effectiveness Awards on their
radar or they haven't yet got the hang of compiling a compelling entry.
As Dominic Mills wrote in Campaign last week, media agencies are still
quite a rarity on the Effectiveness shortlists: MediaCom appears twice,
and Media Planning Group, ZenithOptimedia and Manning Gottlieb OMD are
also there - all as part of joint submissions. Only Michaelides &
Bednash has gone it alone (for Jamie's School Dinners).

It's the same for direct marketing, with a solitary shortlisted entry
from a DM agency (Proximity London for TV Licensing), though Archibald
Ingall Stretton makes an appearance on a joint submission. As for
digital agencies, only Tribal DDB is there (twice). Yet, arguably, it's
these areas where the case for effectiveness is easier to make.

But it's the entries where co-operation is acknowledged by a
cross-disciplinary group of agencies that make for the most interesting
reading - and the most succinct. Because there is only one shortlisted
entry where more than two companies are claiming credit for the work:
O2's campaign "the best way to win new customers?" was submitted jointly
by VCCP, ZenithOptimedia, AIS and Lambie-Nairn.

Previous O2 entries haven't been so quick to acknowledge such
collaboration. But it's the mark of a mature working group that not only
did they manage to work together successfully on the campaign, they also
managed to work together successfully on entering the Effectiveness
Awards (and I'm not entirely sure that managing to work together on the
entry wasn't the harder of the two to pull off).

Agencies bandy about words such as "integration" and "collaboration",
but it's still rare to hear about smooth working relationships where
there is mutual respect for each discipline and a real sharing of ideas,
effort and recognition. For all the talk about a return to a
full-service approach, few advertisers manage to find a group of
best-in-class companies that can work together without prejudice for
their own specialism.

Funnily enough, O2 is one of those accounts where I've been privy to
grumbles about one party or another not getting the recognition they
deserve for their role in its success. This year's Effectiveness entry
suggests that, by hook or crook, such resentments have been buried. Now
we must wait until 30 October to find out whether this sort of
collaboration is also the most effective among its peers.

I guarantee that you will soon be unable to get "Chips, glorious chips"
out of your head. The new McCain commercial by Beattie McGuinness Bungay
marks a return to tradition in many ways. Not only for the wonderful
MGM-musical style, but also the irritating little advertising ditty that
you can't stop humming. Fast-food ad ban? Phooey.