Donald Gunn, Author & Founder, The Gunn Report

Awards are important for the advertising industry and Donald Gunn knows more than most about awards. Gunn spent three decades at Leo Burnett, where he founded two institutions -- the Great Commercials Library in 1986, and the Global Product Committee. International media once quoted him as 'the man with the best job in advertising' -- and Gunn is still enjoying his job with The Gunn Report, probably the most-read measure of excellence for an industry obsessed by rankings. Gunn combines the winner lists from almost 60 national, regional and global awards in this report and then ranks agencies in different countries. Of these awards, 36 awards are for television and 22 for print.

He has never revealed which awards are in the list but this is the first time, Gunn is in India. exchange4media's Noor Fathima Warsia caught up to know more about which Indian award would make it to the Gunn Report and what are Donald's Gunn future plans and India impressions. Excerpts:

Q. You really get to see the best work of the most important markets and that too winning work. How much original work really comes every year?

An advertising work can really be cut it into two parts -- one is the message itself that can be the same for various products and must've been done year-on-year now and you can do a demo or narrate as a story or just have someone talking about the product -- this part is really same in many products and perhaps that is the way to do it. The differentiating bit that can be the test for creativity and hence originality, really comes in the second part constituting the specifics of these demos or story telling. Here, if there is copying, today people really know about that and they point it out. So I think people would rather avoid copying. There are magazines like 'Campaign Brief' which have a monthly page on copy ads and it must be very humiliating to be featured there. Because the awareness levels have gone up with everyone having access to global ads, creative directors know they won't get away and they really wouldn't want to copy. Awards see a very good portion of original work and many original pieces are winning.

I was working with Leo Burnett and I was there for 35 years. For the last 15 years there, what I was doing was setting the seeds for The Gunn Report. I was the Director of Creative Resources Worldwide and the job entailed being involved with all our offices in markets like Sydney, Mumbai, London, Buenos Aires and so on, and gauge the quality of the creative work. I had a group that looked at the creative work of different countries and gave feedback. My job also meant that I had to have a good idea of who are the other agencies in various markets that were doing good work. So if our creative director in Australia claimed that we were the best agency, I could question 'what about Saatchi and Ogilvy then'!

Part of having this overall picture was to also know more about the award shows in each country, so I used to keep a track of what is happening. Part of the job was to put together a collection of the best work from the other agencies that weren't Leo Burnett -- every six months. And that was the time back in 1984 when magazines like 'Shots' that enabled creative agencies to look at good work from other countries were not there. So we really were the World TV updates and the job was a big help to our agencies. In effect, I was doing jobs like Gunn Report for 15 years and being paid by Leo Burnett to do it.

Then in 1998, I retired. I did serve a couple of festivals on part-time basis but after 1999, I thought, wouldn't it be really interesting to combine the results of all the shows and wouldn't that lead to a fantastic reel, because that would be the consensus of all the juries across the world on the best work!

Perhaps because I was already known for doing something like this or perhaps the industry just needed an international ranking -- I don't know what it was -- but the market response was phenomenal from the word go and that encouraged us to go on.

I think it is originality and brilliance and the latter is more important because that means that the jury looked at your work and said a 'Wow' and really that means they were jealous because they wish they had done that work. It has got to be a fantastic message, like Guinness came up with 'Good things come to those who wait'. There has to be the big creative idea and the execution hugely imaginative. For any creative person, in his or her professional opinion the idea and the work have to be about brilliance because their job is to look at these ideas, and give it to their clients through the years. So there is brilliance that is broken down into a good message that is translated in a perfect and engaging way and, hopefully, you have a winning ad.

I am not sure if this happens any more. As far as scam ads are concerned, they really should be condemned because they have stolen an ad that just may have gone to a more deserving entry. Now about these two kinds of ads in the marketplace --- if an ad expresses the message in a boring way, that is not going to work very well at all. It must've worked well when there was very little television advertising. Now you have to do something that rewards the viewer for the time that he spends with your message. He has to remember your product and more importantly, feel positive about the product rather than be bored or irritated by it.

A distinction in that sense between ads that work and ads that win at award shows is not good. I know that the jury in various award shows are briefed today that there should not be any scam ads on the winners' reel. The jury presidents and festival heads tell them, 'Look at the ads from your country and be honest about it' and I know that scam ads are becoming fewer with initiatives like this. In cases where the jury member is even slightly suspicious of an entry, the festival organisers email clients and get to know whether or not the ad is authentic. Cannes does it and I really think that other festivals should take this up also.

Our profession is doing an important job for the economy and we are here for a good commercial reason. Our service allows marketers to grow and add to the growth of the economy and this is what really connects every industry, even government to the consumer. We are doing a very respectable job in that sense and if we are here to choose scam ads, we would be very sorry indeed.

It is a very modest model. We have a sponsor in P&G, which is a big advertiser. We sell advertising pages in the book, JWT, Getty Images and Campaign Brief. That really is the business model. We are a very small team -- myself, my wife's sister and her husband. Right now, in fact, we are working on a second product called the Gunn Report Library. This is an online library of the world's best-ever TV commercials going back to 1962. We started building this three years ago, and we are ready to launch it now. In fact, we are not even completed and we already have some clients!

Yes, we do have national awards. To explain, we give value to global shows because that is where the world competes and we give value to regional shows and we also give value to national shows in the important markets and there are 15 such markets. That is also important because sometimes the perspective of the global jury, the regional jury and the local jury are different on the same ad and each is important. Some things win in Thailand, will win at AdFest and at Cannes or may not win in any of them but that doesn't make the work done any less important.

In all, we have 36 award shows for television, 22 awards shows for print. So the number of awards that come from that are 900 for TV and 600 for print. To answer your question, we never reveal which awards are a part of The Gunn Report but the fact that I am in India and this is my first time here, and that GoaFest just happened and I was there, should give a clue.

I don't know if that is the way to look at it right now. In pure competitive terms, yes, but you must not forget that India is a very new market also. Most of the developments here have been in the last five years and Indian advertising has visibly picked up in this period, so that should tell you something. In comparison some of the other markets are three decades old or more. So India is growing and the competition is with some of the most advanced and super mature markets. The important thing is that India is strongly competing with these markets and these markets realise that, which is one reason why everyone wants to be here right now.