Yes, I know I’ve written about this a lot before – hell, I wrote something just 2 weeks ago – but I have to vent.
HAVE. TO. VENT.
As many of you now know, GREY Singapore claimed to have developed an app that could help stop refugees escaping their troubled homeland via the high seas, from dying.
It won a bronze Cannes Lion.
It was a total and utter fake.
Rightfully, this was picked up by the media and forced GREY to reluctantly [and I mean, reluctantly] hand the award back, but I have a question …
Why are people shocked at the scandalous behavior of Grey and Cannes?
This has been happening for years and nothing ever happens. Nothing.
Of course, exploiting refugees to win a bronze Cannes Lion is utterly sick but, let’s remember, LYING ABOUT ANYTHING IN A BID TO WIN AN AWARD IS SHIT … whether it’s an iodine bindy, a wifi enabled clothes peg or an app that alleges to help stop needless deaths of refugees taking to the high seas to escape their troubled homeland, despite the fact it is all fake and doesn’t work.
And what did GREY say in response to this finding?
They claim they had been clear it was only in its ‘testing phase’.
Which begs the question, why the hell did they think it was OK to enter an award supposedly based on real work.
I’d love to see the submission and see if their write-up highlighted this fact … which then means Cannes should have kicked it out before it even got to the judging phase.
A total fuckfest managed by imposters and charlatans.
But here’s the thing …
I don’t think the creatives at Grey Singapore are purely to blame for this.
They’ll probably get made the scapegoats, but it goes far beyond them.
There’s the local management who demanded their creative department win awards.
And the global management … despite their claim they never do this sort of thing.
And let’s not forget the holding company that pushes their companies for more and more [fake] results.
And then there’s Cannes … who openly and actively celebrate agencies that do this sort of thing in a bid to keep the money rolling in.
The one slight positive – apart from the work that is genuinely worthy of applause and a true celebration of what we do when we all want to do it right – is that the only reason this scam situation happens over and over again is because, outside of our bubble, few seem to give a shit about who we are and what we do.
In fact, it is only because The Guardian newspaper decided to do a story on the Grey Singapore app [I’m assuming because “refugees” are news worthy – so they’re being exploited again] that the murmurs of a few become the scream of a lot because without that story, I’m pretty sure it would be business as usual.
I hope someone hears it. It’s killing our industry and we need to do a u-turn very quick indeed.
GREY FOR GOOD … the supposed philanthropic arm of GREY is, in my opinion, nothing more than a front for this sort of thing.
If they were being honest they would name it GREY FOR OUR OWN GOOD, but as we have discovered from this years award entries [which, let’s not forget, is just one agency of many agencies pulling this scam] GREY and TRUTH are never comfortable bed fellows.