What is so wrong with our award winners? With the exception of very few, they’re all scams. And not only are they scams, the seem to be scams from all the international agency.
At local award shows, not only do most of the scams that win seem to be scams that has a DSB (what is now Bates) skew/flavour of ‘creative’ to it, which has little semblance and affinity to international award winners – but the fact that today, of all the scams that are submitted, scams from multinational agencies (coincidentally – of CD’s and ECD’s who were once DSB creatives) get the pick to receive awards. One would consider an affair such a farce, considering that if it is scam work anyway, then why would a multinational scam be awarded more over a local agency scam – considering that they’re both scam anyway. Again, here’s proof that our ad industry and its international reputation is nothing but a sham. Malaysian advertising, for all it’s improvement on the international scene is nothing more than just farce to the real people of Malaysia. Do we really connect with our people? Questionable. Do our award winning work connect with people? Only when they’re real work, but for the most part –no. Does our scams awe them – no – because they never get to see them anyway.

Look at the last Kancil award books – how many of those winning ads have you actually seen in the real world? I personally can only count with less that one hand. And how many of those are scams from local agencies, and how many are scams from international agencies? The truth is, creatives travel back and forth between local agencies and international agencies – however, their chances at wining local awards are better if they’ve got an international agency credentials on the entry form.

Who are we trying to kidd here? What is the purpose of our so called existence if the reason for our profession is nothing more than to just make a living on one hand with a bag full of lame work that we propagate to our consumers (because the client twisted our hands into doing it), and on the other hand, putting our name to great ads that real consumers have never seen?

Hence, the level of irrelevance our creative work becomes to real clients. Real clients who will eventually need breakthrough brand building work – to face off international competition when once our economy opens up to the world. Because of the industry’s lack of backbone and even more so, lack of expertise, we have allowed our local brands to be second class to their international rivals. Call it what you may, but the fact is – we have no local brands that we wont discard for an international brand given the same value extraction.

So there you go. Our industry and our awards – are nothing more than self glorification in an industry so shamefully inadequate and incompetent to malaysia’s real world marketing environment.

Yet another badly written rant on scam ads. Dull. Laborious. And grammatically incorrect.

You know what they say. Those who can't do, rant, occasionally rave. And sometimes teach.

To hell with Kancil and MC2.

None of the winners win for real work.

The industry is cheating itself.

The judges have no integrity.

4As is a joke to let this happen.

The government should be notified about this industry-wide scam.

It's a disgrace that real work can't win anymore.

The Malaysian public should be notified by investigative journalists.

Let's call Edisi Siasat, Malaysia Kini, Ministry of Information, and the Home Ministry.

This truly is a scandal of national proportion.

Only people who can't win awards go on and on and on and on about so called scam ads.

This one won gold already at the international shows and still gripes about awards in general. Does she have a point?

Aiyoh, perempuan...treat the award shows like a game lah.
They're not going to cure cancer, just here to make life more bearable for those creatively inclined.

Kalau tak, creatives will go bonkers doing THOSE kind of ads.

Aiyah, who are we trying to fool? The whole industry knows
(we have media and post production partners what).

Rule of thumb? Check their media weight.

Question is: why bother? It's not like we can't tell just by looking at the concept and the client, ha ha ha...

I remember running to tell my mother at the market that I won an award.

She looked stunned.

I reiterated again, this time stressing "it's for real work".

Like she can tell real or scam, ha ha ha...

She doesn't even understand the concept.

They lose their value so easily...after a few years.
The point is you have fun doing the ad.

Anyway, an ad doesn't have to win to work in the market place. Or to be appreciated. Or to be talked about. Or to touch people.

And ads that don't win doesn't mean they're not creative.
And some ads that won, weren't even respected.

To be honest, I am not bothered by scams.
I pit my real work against scams because
the latter tend to be braver and more creative.

If I cannot reach for the stars, I won’t end up
with mud either.

I am in advertising because I think communications
can shape the future. I want my work to influence
the way people think, say or do.

Who would have thought that a bottle of sugar water
can become the Coke we know today – and shape
our attitude. Or a box of transistors can become
Apple and redefine the way we work, live and play.
If these products can do that, imagine what pro-bono
ads can do.

Of course, to reach my objective, I’ve to do real work
and expose my advertising to the public at large.

Scams would defeat my purpose if they were viewed
only by judges.

But having said that, I still think scams have got a role
to play in our industry.

The rule that they have to be exposed to the media at
least once to be valid would give rise to an opportunity
for them to work, albeit minimally because their media presence is usually…weak.

They can also set a high standard for real ads to follow.

They can cure cancer. Huh? Oyy…stress is a major
cause for cancer and our creatives are at risk for
taking clients’s shit day in day out.

They need some relief. Let them wank a little with scams la...

Oyy grammatical error!

Make sure you shoot and not spray ah!

When your real work defeats the best of scams. And celebrated all over the world with a gold in the international shows.

That's achievement. And you have everyone's respect.