READ IN FULL | Financial Mail AdFocus 2017

Most of you know the old rule: if you want a new AdFocus award, ditch an old one. Down the years, a number have quietly disappeared after it became clear they no longer had relevance. Unlike some events, we don’t believe that adding more categories every year makes you more important. Sometimes trying to be all things to all people results in being irrelevant to everyone.

But sometimes we have to add. A couple of years ago we turned our single advertising agency award into three, by creating categories for small, medium and large. That was in response to agencies arguing that you can’t judge a tiny, young agency against a multinational behemoth.

We’ve had a similar issue this year. Media agencies, which have their own AdFocus jury, have been arguing for years that a small, independent shop has little in common with a global network subsidiary. So we now have two awards, one for independents and another for network agencies.

That should have been it but we had decided already that the editorial theme for this year’s AdFocus would be the industry’s painfully slow pace of transformation and the need to meet new empowerment targets. It’s not an issue that will go away so a bright spark asked: why not create an award to celebrate those agencies that have already gone above and beyond the call of duty? Unanimous, noisy jury support meant that that’s what we’ve done. The breadth and depth of empowerment work that agencies have accomplished, most of it under the radar, has, frankly, astonished us.

Then there’s our African award. It used to measure the scale and scope of networks but now we are asking entries to demonstrate the effectiveness of activities to the north. It may be in one country or in many. It’s no longer about spread but about impact.

In April 2017 we all lost Tony Koenderman, who founded AdFocus nearly 30 years ago. To describe him simply as this publication’s founder would be a disservice. Tony “invented” serious reporting of the brand communications industry in SA and wrote about it for more than 35 years. He was passionate but also unafraid to ask difficult questions and highlight failings.

After leaving AdFocus, he set up a rival publication, AdReview, which he edited until stopped by illness. It was a measure of the person that, even as a competitor, he always remained a friend to both of us. We were as thrilled as anyone when, in 2015, our jury awarded Tony the AdFocus LifetimeAchievement Award. The same year, he was inducted into the Loeries Hall of Fame. Not bad for a journo.

David Furlonger and Jeremy Maggs

Click below to page through the full edition of AdFocus 2017 (zoom in or switch to full screen for ease of reading):