Judges, referees and people who are supposed to decide things have done a fairly shoddy job recently.
First there was the Napoleonic halfwit referee who sent off Bismarck Du Plessis in the big game at Eden Park. Then, the very next day, we had the judge in the Alvarez – Mayweather fight that scored it even, despite Floyd ‘Money’ Mayweather giving the Mexican a 12-round lesson in snotklap.
The expensively assembled Loeries judges better have their shit together this week, so as not to follow suit. I must admit it’s not looking good. One of the Jury chairs is a Belgian, which is a bit too close to French for my liking. Then there’s an Aussie in the mix. Last year the Australian judge went drinking at a dodgy pub halfway through judging. Whether that was prompted by the quality of the work I do not know. Better lock up the liquor, Mr Human, and bolt the doors. Of course there will be a handsome, all-knowing, witty, acerbic and, as far as possible, sober contingent of local judges present. So we can only hope.
It has become fairly customary to gather some industry folk together on the eve of the Loeries and get them to do a few predictions. Well, that’s happening elsewhere on the lame side of the interweb. Right now, I am going to take a few flyers and make some predictions of my own. Of course I’m a judge too, so I am about as compromised as a good idea in a Milward Brown focus group. Nevertheless, here goes.
1. The weather will be as unpredictable as an Aussie Loeries judge after the pubs open. It’s been raining at a 65 degree angle for about three weeks in Cape Town, even the fish are pissed off. Bring your trunks, but leave the suntan lotion at home.
2. A few people, probably junior copywriters, will attempt to go directly from the Velocity Party to the Saturday awards ceremony. This is imprudent to say the least. They will be easy to spot; red eyed, wearing trunks and smelling strongly of caramel vodka and Steers Chips (which they would have eaten on the way to the ceremony in a vain attempt to “sober up”).
3. Your ECD will stay in a better hotel than you. This will be thinly disguised as an unpleasantness and remarks like “I have to stay with the clients” will be made as they lie back in their Olympic sized tubs draining their minibars.
4. A jumped up blogger pretending to be a journalist will fail to get an invitation to a cocktail party. He will proceed to squawk loudly about press freedom. Having made such a huge fuss about not being invited, he will spend the better part of the next year writing about how awards “aren’t important”.
5. The women will dress up and the men, largely, will dress down. Thus the strange and wondrous sight of beautifully turned out, attractive ladies in little black dresses accompanied by men wearing G-Star denim who look like they have just got out of bed
6. The after party at the Shimmy Beach Club will be brilliant. This will be a change from last year where 5000 people wandered around the vast venue asking each other where the “actual” party was. No-one found it.
7. There will be the traditional ‘march of the monologues’ in the Radio Category. Jenny Glover and Brent Singers will win. The people that tried to pretend to be Jenny Glover and Brent Singers will not.
8. The words, “Fuck, Cape Town is expensive” will be said about 15 027 times.
9. The Outsurance ad, the one where thousands of people go running through the city with banners celebrating their refunds and lower premiums, will not win.
10. A few Loerie winners, emboldened by hip flasks of Jameson’s, will attempt to grab the mike and make short acceptance speeches. They will suffer the indignity of getting halfway through a garbled message of thanks to their buddy Vernon – who actually did the ad but is now in Dubai – while being pulled sideways by security people.
11. Reiner Behrens will wear a bowtie. Pepe Marais will wear a waistcoat. Rob McLennan will wear black. A few senior clients and Graham Warsop will actually observe the dress code and wear black tie. People will regard this as “weird”. Keith Rose won’t be there but will win anyway.
12. People from Jo’burg will remark how “well run” Cape Town is. They may also mention how much “safer” they feel. This is despite the fact that the city is full of firearm-bearing tik-smoking gangsters driving Honda Civics powered by Cessna engines. Cape Town beyond the Mountain is basically one long Die Antwoord video.
13. If you win on the night you will be subject to a frenzy of side-hugging, high-fiving, fist-bumping. After that you will be about as popular as a diary entry marked ‘Research feedback session’.
14. The CEO of an agency that doesn’t win anything will make a statement about how awards aren’t important to them (despite the extended celebrations when they won previously).
15. An Afrikaans student designer with a slightly weird name like Nicodemus Le Roux will win a Student Gold for a calendar which will be the singularly most beautiful thing any of us see all weekend.
16. All of us will go home happy, inspired and determined to do better next year. When we get back to our respective studios we will be confronted by the fourth revert on the “Christmas Radio” Job Bag (which will request a “stronger call to action”). This will not depress us, because we get to do what we do, which is make lovely films and compose music and write stories and tell jokes and work with clever, funny people and laugh at goat videos. And that, we should all agree, is probably the best way you could possibly ever make a living.
Chris Gotz (@MrChristiffa ) is ECD of Ogilvy Cape Town. This blog was republished with his kind permission.