Cyber jury member Ashadi Hopper has blamed a conservative local market for the lack of Aussie Cyber Lions, while saying even the acclaimed ‘Share A Coke’ campaign wasn’t good enough to be nominated.
Two Grand Prix gongs were awarded in the Cyber category, the Nike+ ‘Nike+ Fuelband’ initiative by R/GA New York, and the Swedish Institute/VisitSweden push by Volontaire Stockholm, called ‘Curators of Sweden’.
The jury members said both pieces were more about behaviour rather than messaging.
Jury president and Google Creative Lab executive creative director Iain Tait said: “These are two radically different pieces of work, but they were both about the behaviour of brands. They were not about big noisy messages, but about brands behaving or doing.”
Jury member and JWT national creative director on digital and direct Ashadi Hopper said Australian digital work is still stuck in a “traditional” space of “storytelling”.
He told AdNews: “Australia is limited by the notion that everything is about storytelling, and that is the noose for us, we need to take a step forward and look at what are we doing to shift behaviours. We need to lok at how a brand behaves, interacts, and shifts behaviours. Look at the winners list and all the work points to that.”
Hopper said the lack of Australian entries nominated for Cyber Lions points to a local market which needs to develop.
“There is more of an advertising focus in Australia,” he said. “There’s a lot of work that’s very traditional ad work, using social media and Facebook and Twitter. It’s not necessarily on the bleeding edge. We were looking for something more.
“It is also important to make the distinction between brands as users of technology, and brands as developers. Australia sits at brands as users. We’re heavily involved in doing campaign style work, doing work that has a limited life span.”
Meanwhile, Hopper criticised the local market for being unable to retain god talent. “There’s also an agency talent drain, with lots of talent leaving and going abroad. The Australian market needs to look at why people are leaving. Yes, we can do great work, but are the structures right. Do people feel limited by the growth potential in terms of career opportunities. Lots of guys have left the country and gone on to win big.
“We need to look at why people are going abroad to find success, be it agency structures, leadership, even clients.”
Hopper spoke of a “fear of the big idea” in Australia. “There is a conservatism in the Australian market.”
Hopper also mentioned the critically acclaimed ‘Share A Coke’ campaign by Ogilvy. “‘Share A Coke’ will be the one everyone will be asking about, saying ‘why did it miss out’, but there’s a lot of good work. ‘Share A Coke’ was very successful in Australia, but on a global level there’s a bunch other work doing interesting stuff just like that. We were looking for something more.”
Meanwhile, a New Zealand push for Frucor Berverages by Colenso BBDO Auckland, called 'Skate Pinball' won a Silver.
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