Checking In With Neil French And The World Press Awards
April 8, 2008
Ad Age: “So you didn’t use the word “crap,” then, in reference to women?”
Neil French: “Oh, of course, I did, yes. But I didn’t say all female creative directors are crap. If you can’t commit yourself to any job then, by definition, you’re crap at it. If you can’t commit 100% to your job, don’t pretend you can. Nobody deserves a job unless they can commit to it.”
Who can forget Neil French, the one timeworldwide creative director of WPP?. He was a legendary creative and his flame out at a public event in Toronto is even more infamous.
So what is Neil up to now? In case you forgot, last year he found the ‘World Press Awards’, which has made it’s way to year two. Two thousand and eight winners included Saatchi and Saatchi New York for their Tide Ultra newspaper ad and for some reason, no gold was given for magazines, but silver winners included Grey Barcelona and DDB London.
The judges for 2008 (pictured above) included: Graham Warsop (who sits next to Neil French) -The Jupiter Drawing Room; Thirasak Tanapatanakul – Executive Creative Director, Creative Juice, Bangkok; Mark Tutssel – Worldwide Creative Director, Leo Burnett; Jeremy Craigen – Executive Creative Director, DDB London; Tham Khai Meng – Regional Creative Director, Ogilvy & Mather Worldwide Board; Marcello Serpa – Executive Creative Director, Almap BBDO (Brazil).
April 8, 2008 at 9:42 pm
so all the judges are men? old dogs can’t learn new tricks.
April 8, 2008 at 10:22 pm
They could ask Nancy Vonk to be a judge. Oh, wait. Bad idea.
April 8, 2008 at 10:26 pm
Committed to fakery?
There are perhaps 3 winning ads in that entire show that were actually real. That’s being generous. A double page spread for a water resistant pen from Grey Barcelona? Hahahaha.
Quite a farce.
April 8, 2008 at 11:27 pm
Is that Neil French or Tom Wolfe? (Notice no women care to be around him.)
April 8, 2008 at 11:49 pm
Jesus H. Christ! Is there one fucking awards show that Tutssel won’t judge? Hey Mark, Chicago has lost some 40 million in income over the last few years, maybe, just maybe, you’re interested in improving that situation.
April 9, 2008 at 12:39 am
>Notice no women care to be around him.
there are those who say he doesn’t care being around women either. or people of age for that matter.
who knows if it’s true but it would explain why he lived in asia for so long.
April 9, 2008 at 1:05 am
All hail King Tutsel.
Sipping wine with the fallen french as his kingdom crumbles.
VOR
April 9, 2008 at 2:46 am
well tutssel likes women, especially those he works with.
April 9, 2008 at 5:59 am
Dinosaurs patting themselves on the back and awarding medals for ads that probably never even ran. Meanwhile, we all toil on real work.
My, how the times will change without them. We will all drink their milkshakes.
April 9, 2008 at 6:30 am
What the fuck does committing to a job have to do with being female?
April 9, 2008 at 3:26 pm
Sally,
The quote about committing to a job referred to woman CDs who take time off for family or have kids and spend time with them.
The basis of his argument was that women can be fine CDs and sometimes they are. But, they often don’t become good CDs because many leave to raise families or don’t commit to the job as much as men because of raising children. Definitely not an enlightened viewpoint or a particularly compelling argument, but not quite as degradingly sexist as the random quotes make it seem (sexist, to be sure, but he’s not saying women are incapable of being good creatives, so I guess that’s something to take the edge off it).
There’s absolutely no shortage of talk online about his blunder and non-apology. It’s interesting reading.
While I won’t defend him and disagree with most of what he said, a lot of it wasn’t as bad as most articles made it seem. You can probably still find the entire transcript of his very public messup online somewhere.
April 9, 2008 at 4:16 pm
I’ve worked with ALOT of women who took their 6 weeks of maternity, came back to work briefly and decided home was where they wanted to be. Nothing wrong with it, but it’s probably why a misogynistic male manager prefers male employees. But it sounds like his assumption is that if you were to consider pregnancy 15 years in the future, then you can never be truly dedicated to what you do NOW. I wonder what he thinks of blacks and hispanics in the workplace.
April 9, 2008 at 5:09 pm
Spy…
As with last years event, the judges managed to award themselves and their agencies most of the awards. And as someone else pointed out, several of these ads never ran… Oh… And why are Brazillian ads in award shows always in English? I thought they spoke Portuguese there. Actually, ALL the ads in this “Show” are in English. What a complete wank. As I posted on AdScam last year, Neil should call it the “Golden Phalus” awards.
Cheers/George
April 9, 2008 at 8:01 pm
If you counted the hours a male creative spent away from work getting drunk at bars, coming in late with a hangover, playing video games and screwing around on his wife, I’ll bet it would be equal to the amount of hours a female creative spends away from work with her kids.
You know what kills me? That guys like Neil French promote, even believe in the idea of creative work being so ‘blood-sweat and tears’ driven, when it’s actually breezy work. No one will admit it. Because if clients realized how quickly creatives can come up with good ideas, perhaps we wouldn’t be paid as much.
Face it, creatives have it VERY EASY. Dealing with clients and selling work are hard, and that’s usually done during office hours. But I came up with an award-winning ad idea (that actually ran) while breastfeeding my newborn at 3AM. It ain’t rocket science
April 9, 2008 at 8:25 pm
anne,
you are so right. the only thing that makes it hard are cd’s who can’t decide what they like and make everyone churn work. coming up with good ideas is not difficult at all. what sickening about the picture is that it features such fucking misanthropes as tutssel and french. the ad world needs less of the wine-swilling philandering type and more of the decent, respectful type.
April 9, 2008 at 11:36 pm
Back in an very unenlightened year of 1983 at the late, departed, lamented Ally & Gargano, I took eight weeks paternity leave.
My wife who worked at Levine Huntley took only four.
Ally hadn’t yet gone public. Perhaps following that, they wouldn’t have been so understanding.
Economists have been making the leaving-the-work-force temporarily argument for quite a while to explain disparities in pay and position.
At the agency I founded, maternity leave actually was unlimited for the first five years we were in business; we figured the women we hired would come back and work even harder. In 2 out of 3 cases, that proved true. The other one just took advantage.
Then the agency got big and we had to write down all the rules for vacation and maternity leave and stuff. Now it’s fairer, but who is to say that it is better?
April 10, 2008 at 1:09 am
I think an amended quote from “Animal House” is germane to this discussion: “Fat, drunk and stupid is no way to get through advertising.” Listening, Tutsel? Or are you buns up on a soused Burnett recruiter? On second thought, maybe it IS the way to get through advertising. Sure seems to be working for these clowns!
VOR
April 10, 2008 at 1:15 am
Hey, leave Tutssel alone. He was kind enough to take time out of his busy schedule to come to my kid’s grade school to judge a pumpkin carving contest.
April 10, 2008 at 2:02 am
tut, tut, tutsel. the reason he’s always on the road is so he doesn’t have to deal with the very real problems in Chicago and London. somebody needs to smack him across the head and then fire his ass. the only sad person will be that recruiter. of course she’ll still have condon.
April 10, 2008 at 11:02 pm
tutsel is of course a dork. but there’s also something so sad about him. if you talk to folks at burnett, they’ll tell you how he has nothing in his life but advertising. so he just endlessly travels the globe judging shows. and when he is in the shop, all he talks about are awards, awards, awards. a very typical ad story–he blew apart his family life with all his bullshit and now all he has left is that bullshit.
kind of pathetic.