Are regional creative directors corrupt, dribbling idiots?

So Cannes is over for another year (barring major scandals post-awards, please no), and the region has done... ok. At the very least.

No golds, but a PR Lion up against some very stiff competition, and a couple of silvers and a few bronzes makes it, as far as we can see, a pretty good haul for the Middle East – and a good year for Beirut, which saw its first Lion for Khede Kasra, and the only regional shortlist in the Film category (both for Leo Burnett).

What was almost incidental, as it turned out, was the absence of Fortune Promoseven Doha’s awards machine – hey, guess what, it turns out we can win without it. (Of course, the agency would almost have certainly boosted the trophy count... but at what cost?)

So why aren’t we all happy?

Don’t believe us? Think we’re all beaming with delight? Here’s two bits of evidence.

First, this reader comment from the Campaign Middle East blog , following the Print Lions results:

“FP7 Doha had many Gold in Cannes I believe and everyone is whispering about it now.

If anything we all know now that all the work of the other agencies in the region did not rise to Cannes Gold level and neither to FP7 Doha ‘Fadi Yaish’ level and standard of ideas and art direction.

Those who has been in Cannes or Lynx knows that if you don’t walk the stage it is like you did nothing. Basically the region failed to get any golds. And this should be the motivation.”

Second, this anonymous comment we received before the Cannes results, attributed to (apologies for the swear) “Marcus Evans Isafattwat”:

“OK, if you go through the Cannes website right now you can see what agencies have entered into the print category. And what astounds me is that you have a lot of agencies in Dubai that have submitted work that didn't perform well at the Lynx.

To some in the industry this is a well known tactic, throw enough at the wall and something will stick. However I would offer that CDs are out of touch and can't see the trees for the forest. If the work that your department sent to Lynx did not perform well it is because an international judging panel deemed it not good enough. So why would you enter it into Cannes where competition is even tougher.

As examples I offer the Burger King work from Tonic, Land Rover Work from Y&R and their Harvey Nichols stuff. None of this is good enough, why waste money entering it. There is also below-par work from pretty much every other Agency in Dubai entered in the print category.

Wake up guys, and even if you say the Lynx was a mess this year so you can't gage[sic]  anything from it, you all did the same last year, entering below standard work that didn't perform well at the Lynx.

Wake up and look at the standard, is it as good as the Jeep work from Malaysia Saatchi? Or the Marmite stuff from DDB London? Then save your money.”

Harsh, no?

Especially because, as it turned out, the Land Rover and Harvey Nicks stuff WAS good enough, maybe not for Gold, but deserving of some metal.

So, in short, the picture we are left with is that the only agency talented enough to win is the one that set out to cheat its way on stage, and that creatives here are idiots for not recognising their own miserable failings and insisting on subjecting themselves to humiliation in the South of France.

And even when we win, it's not enough.

Hmmmm.

Well here at AdNation, we’ve come up with our own interpretation of what’s wrong with the Middle East’s advertising industry.

We’re insecure.

Deeply, paralysingly, cringingly insecure. Insecure to the point of self-loathing. Desperately in search of approval from a non-existent parent figure, who we just need to tell us we’re really good enough, please please please.

Really – we’re being serious. We think we, as an industry, have a problem.

What was the most successful regional effort from the region this year? Khede Kasra, a campaign that only makes sense in Arabic (although it can be easily explained to a non-Arabic speaker). Granted, the other winners were more “generic” – in the sense of being very international in tone.

But this is the thing – our path to awards greatness is to chase the tail of the big Western players, ape their style and methods, and even occasionally lift the entire concept (mentioning no names – we have people to do that for us).

Even the undeniably talented Fadi Yaish has relied on producing beautiful work that could run anywhere in the world (except possibly the Middle East). His approach was simply the refinement of the current system, the pinnacle of producing glossy but generic adverts.

And it doesn’t work.

Sure, it nets the region some metal, but at a terrible cost. And we’re not talking financial, although this is significant, as much of the work will not have been paid for by clients (although, now, it probably has been approved by them at least).

No, the cost we have in mind is self-respect. By going down this international route, the region dooms itself to playing catch-up, never being able to look at its work and really think “yes, this is truly original”.

Sod that. We say, it’s not worth it.

It’s a game we’ll never win. The realpolitik of the Middle East means that it will never attract the absolute best and brightest, never have that free-flowing river of ideas – at least as adjudged by the west. And this is because the greats of the west won’t come here – or at least, not for very long.

So let’s opt out. Let’s build our own little river.

One of those annoyingly-repeated aphorisms about successful entrepreneurs or start-ups or whatever is that they never succeeded by watching the competition: they succeeded by having a (sorry) vision, and sticking to it.

And of course the lesson from this is that they sometimes do better than the competition – not by matching them, but by outflanking them. Maybe this is a bit ambitious for the region, but we’d bet that really, really good region-focused advertising would (eventually) get noticed.

So let’s do this instead. Let’s throw away the wedge that agencies are driving between their clients and their creatives’ desires to win international awards, and leave behind the insecurity that comes from knowing – KNOWING – we’re doomed to be not even second-best, compared to the Big Boys.

Yeah, right.

We know this isn’t a new call – and we know it’s completely naive and unrealistic. But this self-loathing is really starting to get to us now.

There’s good advertising here, and bad advertising here – and the same is true for everywhere else in the world. The UK is NOT an oasis of coolly-ironic work, where TV viewers sit rapt for the three minutes of adverts in the middle of East Enders.

And we’re not even going to go into the rest of the world.

Anyway, it’s all over for another year now, and the region’s creatives can go back to feeling bitter about their lack of success, sniping about their rivals, and plotting a glorious campaign of campaigns for next year’s awards season.

And in the meantime, we’ll quietly daydream about a day when no-one gives a toss about a Cannes gold.