Adrian Holmes: Someone, somewhere, has just invented something that will be the next Facebook

Adrian Holmes, Executive Creative Director Y&R EMEA and president of Film, Press, Outdoor and Radio Jury at Golden Drum 2010, said, regarding the fast changes advertising industry is affected by in present, that “someone, somewhere (probably in a lock-up garage in Shanghai) has just invented something that will be the next Facebook. We just don’t know what it is yet. Or what the thing is that will come after that”.

He added that advertising is changing for sure, but he doesn’t think someone has “the faintest idea” of how it’s gonna be in 10 or 20 years from now. As an example, he mentioned YouTube and Facebook, both starting their way in 2005 and related to which nobody had any idea about the effect they were to have on media landscape.

Asked why there is so little awarded creative advertising in everyday’s life, he said that the uncomfortable fact is “that 95% of what our industry produces round the world is at best mediocre hard-sell promotional stuff”.

“But there’s another uncomfortable fact about our industry – and that’s the worrying proportion of what gets entered into award shows that’s scam or «ghost» work. I’ve always fought against this practice – to me winning awards with fake work, or work for clients that don’t exist, or work that never actually appeared, is simply cheating. It’s like using performance enhancing drugs in sport. Or paying for stuff with forged dollar bills. And when clients see us congratulating ourselves for producing this «ghost» work, they really must wonder what planet we’re on. No doubt, the debate surrounding the rights and wrongs of scam work will continue at the Golden Drum this year – but I know which side I’m on”, he said.

In what concerns the judging criteria, he recommends its colleagues jurors to take in consideration four main criteria: to look for an idea with real intelligence behind it, to look for an idea never seen before – “a real piece of creative innovation that breaks into unexplored” -, to look for simple and easy to understand ideas and to look for a beautifully crafted idea, with great writing, art direction, typography, design etc.

Adrian Holmes began his career as copywriter at Grey Advertising in 1976. In 1982, he joined Lowe Howard-Spink and, four years later, he left the agency to work at Saatchi. In 1989, he returned to Lowe as Joint Creative Director of the London office, becoming the network’s Chief Creative Officer in 1999. In September 2005 he was appointed Executive Creative Director of Young & Rubicam EMEA.

The jurors part of the jury headed by Holmes are Eduard Böhler, Creative Director Wien Nord (Austria), Rasto Michalik, Creative Director &Partner MUW Saatchi & Saatchi (Slovakia), Karpat Polat, President& Creative Director DDB&Co Istanbul (Turkey), Vasily Lebedev, Creative Director at Red Keds Creative Agency (Russia), Mike Haas, Media consultant&Senior Partner The BCI Group GmbH & Co. KG (Germany), Eda Kauba, Chief Creative Officer of Euro RSCG Prague (Czech Republic), Péter Tihanyi, Creative Director ACG Advertising Agency (Hungary) and Carl Le Blond, Chief Creative Officer Ogilvy Group Russia.