SHARKS GET BITTEN AS KINSALE CRITICS HARBOUR GRUDGES

Stray Thoughts consciously and carefully kept its counsel while the Great Shark Wars of Kinsale raged around adland. The sight of communal and mostly anonymous knee-jerking was not a pretty one, regardless of the merits or otherwise of the case and did not serve the creative cause well. At this remove, your truly is still none the wiser.

But it is improper that Publicis QMP, the agency at the heart of the storm, should be pilloried and accused of malpractice and manipulation, predominantly on the grounds of supposed jury access and using their power to indulge in what might be seen as a form of insider trading. Publicis QMP mantelpieces have long hosted creative gongs.

Suspicion is not tantamount to evidence and the hyper-levels of accusation that have appeared on the web do not even amount to justifiable suspicion, but appear more as a form of paranoia and envy, almost as if to confess “well, that's what I would lower myself to if only I had the chance”. The thing is you do and did have had the chance. But perhaps you were never interested enough to bother to serve on the organising committees of industry award festivals, whether they be Sharks or ICAD. Been there, done that and it's bloody hard work, believe me. ST is convinced the vast majority of those who serve in such a role are motivated by appropriate and not devious reasons. And if you were self-centred enough to bend the minds of other independent jurors to your way of liking and get them to vote for your work above that of other entrants you'd have a hard job of it, even if you were thick enough to try. The greatest influence any single juror can have on award wins happens to be a negative one. You could vote down another entrant's work or damn it openly with faint praise because in so doing you might hope to elevate the chances of your own work succeeding – but it's about as effective as nobbling a single runner in a 20-horse field – hardly worth the bother and potentially damaging to your reputation.

But the case being made about the Sharks is that one agency claimed virtual ownership of the festival to further its own egotistical ends and had worked in a calculated manner to manipulate the outcomes. Could that be so? No, is the answer, however unpalatable that may seem to some out there in adland.

One is conscious of not wanting to sound like a Lord Widgery in proclaiming such a possibility as a “vista too horrible to contemplate” but to make such claim based only on suspicion is not tenable. Agencies can and do manage to produce a great run of work and it can happen that juries get into a mode of liking a particular tonality that may carry over from one entry into another and sometimes your luck can be in. Judging advertising awards is not and never can be a perfect science, at best, it is like the industry itself, a bit of a ‘bastard art' and it should grow to live with and love the uncertainty of what it does. ST doesn't mind sticking its head above the parapet.

The integrity of Sharks 2008 is every bit as credible as the integrity of the Kinsale festival when this writer served as a committee member. It's not naivety or rose-tinted glassed that leads to this conclusion, it is inevitability. If creative advertising expects others to have a belief in its power to persuade, it must first of all believe in itself and in its creative peers. Otherwise, there is nothing.

Of course, things could have been organised better and more openly. Indeed, the Sharks committee has admitted as much in its post-festival contacts with agencies. Of course it would have been better if the agency at the centre of the furore did not have a judge on the jury; that was plain asking for it.

The fact that two of their leading creatives are Shark committee members is now a legal fact but if the industry cannot accept the honest credentials of committee members then the future of award festivals is all but lost. The reasons behind the change of ownership of the festival might also have been better communicated, but the change in itself is not the crucial issue; belief in the capability of our industry to organise itself in a proper manner is what matters.

Chemistry took the option of not participating in this year's festival as is their right, but it is not one they should over-exercise for fear of causing more collateral damage than they ever would intend. Having made their point, hopefully they will reconsider their position next year. The Sharks is an international festival, but the Irish dimension is a vital one and can ill afford the absence of creative industry leaders.

ST hopes that the fuss may soon die down and not, as some of those in Chemistry have observed, damage the efforts of ICAD in organising its upcoming awards in its jubilee year – that would be a damming verdict on us all. Above all, let us beware of the temptations and dangers of not putting our names alongside our mouths.

In the cause of openness, transparency and in an attempt to avoid becoming the possible target of back-biters, this writer acknowledges he has worked with one of the present creative team at Publicis; that he knows a few others, and that CDP, the agency for which he once acted as creative director, was for a short period of that directorship a sister agency of Publicis QMP. Make of that what you like.

And no, I don't much fancy the Meteor man either.

HARD FACTS
The Miami Herald tells us that Cialis, which is the locally-developed rival drug to Viagra, has become the “fastest-growing” erectile dysfunction product in the US. Clearly, Cialis, marketed by Lilly ICOS, must do what it says on the tin.

Researchers in Texas have discovered that citrulline, a phytonutrient – a compound that triggers a healthy response in the body – found in abundance in watermelons may produce the same effect as Viagra, the famous blue pills produced by Pfizer.

While Viagra is organ-specific, relaxing blood vessels around the groin and allowing the blood to pump in, citrulline gets to work on the whole body, lowering the risk of heart disease and potentially stimulating libido at the same time.

CELEBRITY ENDORSEMENT Newstalk presenter George Hook highlighted the problem of erectile dysfunction in older men in his autobiography, Time Added On. Researchers in Texas report that citrulline, which is found in watermelons, can also stimulate libido.

PINK PARADE
Things are a bit better now but Dublin's own dear and often un-delightful Temple Bar has often suffered at the vocal and vomiting loudmouths of British stag parties as they gather looking for Irish craic and crack. It's fine and profitable for the owners of big bars and overpriced eateries, but hell for anyone who must live or work there.

Gradually, the invading armies moved on and the beautiful city of Krakow in Poland became the new focus for British lads-on-the-loose to lift their kilts and show off their union jocks. Barmaid Karissa Krol who works at a place called Nic Nowego (check it out) told the Observer that visitors like to come in wearing suspenders and hassle waitresses about sex. They drop ash, drink out of their shoes which they think is really funny, vomit, and head off in search of the local brothels.

Understandably, the medieval city's tourist office decided to look elsewhere for business and planned to target the gay community. The campaign began with a new website and tourist map for genteel tourists with bulging pink purses who prefer an evening at the State Opera to a night on the beer-soaked tiles of ancient ale-houses. Talk about stepping from frying pans into fires. Krakow is a conservative Catholic city and Piotr Kucharski of the Christian Culture Association was suitably shocked. “I don't know which is worse”, Mr K protested, “drunken Brits may get their genitals out, but we don't want gays performing public obscenities either”.

Chastened but undaunted, the Krakow Festival Office said that research shows gays and lesbians spend significantly more on holidays and entertainment. Thomas Naughton, Irish owner of the afore-mentioned Nic Nowego, is hugely enthusiastic in an Irish Catholic kind-of-way: “Jesus yes”, he exclaims, “gay tourists behave a lot better – and they have a lot more money”. So that's okay then.

Show us the money, not your dangly bits.

DYING BRAND VALUES
When a brand is on the way out with no place to go and no market share to speak of, how do you preserve its brand values? Why would you want to? Such a problem seems to be of concern to Ciaran Cannon, leader of the Progressive Democrats. Cannon said staying in politics would only weaken the PD brand further, a marketing equation that sounded bizarre until Frank McNally cleared things up in the IT Irishman's Diary. What Cannon meant was that he wished for the PeeDees to exit the political stage left while their reputation was still top of the right wing tree.

While it's unfair to kick a Galwegian when he's on the way down, Cannon must now qualify for the Guinness Book of Records as the least-known, shortest-lived political party leader of all time. Fact is, Cannon ended up firing blanks.

If only former party leader, Michael McDowell, had shown the same degree of restraint (pole glancing with John Gormley on the hustings in Ranelagh cost dearly), the party might still have a future to look forward to, instead of a past to protect.

Can one man mortally damage what was once a unique and highly regarded brand?

Just ask Mick Mac – he knows how.

MYTHS ABOUT MORGAN
Writing in his Atticus column in the Sunday Times, John Burns dispelled what he sees as some myths about RTE and Dermot Morgan. Burns accused Dermot Morgan's son, Don, of joining in a whinge-fest about RTE's meanness to his father.

Morgan, a secondary teacher in CBC Monkstown, said not only did RTE disappoint his father by scrapping his shows, they only started showing Father Ted because they were losing ratings to Channel 4. Burns saw things quite differently.

“There are three myths about RTE and Morgan,” Burns wrote. “First, that the station turned down Father Ted. Fact: RTE was never offered it, Graham Linehan and Arthur Mathews went straight to Channel 4.” Then there was Scrap Saturday…

The word was that RTE dropped the satirical radio series due to political pressure in much the same way as Hall's Pictorial Weekly was axed from RTE television. But that too was binned by Burns and his paper was told as much by Gerry Stembridge.

Stembridge, who co-wrote Scrap Saturday with Morgan, said their standoffish attitude to keeping the show going was the reason for its demise. As regards RTE not giving Morgan his own show, Getting Morganised was so bad it had to be cut to an hour-long special. “And that wasn't funny either,” Burns added.

HOLY UNTRUE Dermot Morgan (right) and Ardal O'Hanlon in Father Ted. Sunday Times columnist John Burns challenged the stories suggesting Morgan was treated shabbily by RTE and that Scrap Saturday was dumped due to pressure from Fianna Fail.

Breandan O Brion (breandanobroin@companyofwords.com)