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Letter from the Chair There are three things to talk about this time. The IPA awards, The APG Awards and the MRS debate. Firstly to tie up some loose ends on the IPA Awards. In February we held our debate on advertising effectiveness with the IPA and Planning Directors - the big question of the day was "has anything been achieved"? The objectives of the awards were to "demonstrate to advertisers that advertising can be successful" and "to encourage agencies to think about the effectiveness of what they do". Many people in the audience and many who contacted me seemed to think that the battle had largely been won and that advertisers did now agree that advertising is worthwhile. So why did the clients we had in the audience still agree that if they needed to cut anything in a crisis the advertising budget would still go? Why are clients and agencies less obsessed with keeping good data? I remain to be convinced that agencies have an effectiveness culture, and as for the Awards?- I think we have a "lets try and win an award" culture. There were many suggestions that will improve things for entrants and there may be major changes yet but I don't think we touched the heart of the issue - should we concentrate so much of our efforts on it when the outcome seems to benefit so few? A personal view I hasten to add. I think the IPA would do well to spend some time and effort thinking about how to foster a culture of effectiveness and learning as an integral part of what we do every day. Perhaps the Joint Industry Committee formed to look into new ways of promoting advertising effectiveness will succeed in pushing the boundaries further. We plan to publish a report on our discussion in the near future that everyone can access. Thanks to everyone that participated - it was a successful event even though some unanswered questions remain. And what of our own little awards - the APG Creative Planning Awards. Well they're about to be launched again soon, with entries due in the summer - so watch out. We have made some changes to the categories, but not to the fundamentals. We still believe that the experience and the body of learning that comes out of the APG awards is genuinely instructive for planners. It's the best place to pick up ideas, tips and insight into the most important part of a planners job - coming up with a unique strategy or insight that gives the creative brief and the team something really meaty to work with. This is at the heart of why good planning leads to good solutions. We've just returned from the MRS conference where we hosted a debate entitled "researchers hide behind objectivity and fail to take responsibility for their results". We were narrowly defeated, however I think scored a moral victory as almost every researcher in the room, in the face of two brilliant speeches in favour of the motion from Miranda Forestier-Walker and Peter Dann, disputed that research was objective! So the next time you are in a debrief and a researcher claims "I'm sorry, those are the facts" you can now categorically state that all research is subjective. A fuller report in our next issue. (c) Account Planning Group 1995-2002
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