A bit late with this. Sorry.
Once again SA advertising's annual wankfest, the Loerie Awards, fails to impress. I'm not going ramble on about the whiners, winners or losers. By now you probably know as much as anyone else about these things.
I believe it's a mistake to hold the event in Cape Town. My reason for this is simple. Cape Town is just too big a place, and too spread out to make it an attractive option. What's more, about half the people who attend are right there on home soil. When the ceremonies are over they head off to their own venues and mix with the same people they always do.
But when the event is held "out of town" (Sun City and Margate being the other two venues to date), everyone is out of town. Mixing and meeting is much easier and the there's a much more festive atmosphere to the whole gig. I've attended Loeries in all three locations and Margate really stands out as the best of the lot. Let's hope the Loerie committee comes to it's senses once the Cape Town contract expires and returns to this fun seaside venue.
As to the event itself, well, what can one say about that? Appalling is what one can say. This year, Saturday night was far, far better than Sunday's proceedings. An absolute highlight was Pitch Black Afro. What a pity he wasn't asked to do a few more numbers. He was far more entertaining and enjoyable than Arno Carstens and Springbok Nude Girls who assailed our eardrums for what seemed like far too long. Earlier, their first song, which opened the show, was much better...but then, that was a cover of a Brenda Fassie song.
The food at the reception was, sad to say, abysmal. About the same standard as last year. You must know that if I turn down food from the trays being carried around among the people, then it's really bad. You would think, after the 2009 fiasco, that steps would have been taken to rectify matters. Whoever approved the food ought be force fed a diet of it for 11 months and then sent out to find a better caterer. It shouldn't be difficult.
Saturday's MC was David Kau who was quite good, but not brilliant. On Sunday we had Nkwenke Nkomo, who ain't no comedian. But my heart went out to him as he was forced to share the stage with a prancing queen in hot pants who had absolutely nothing funny to say. I cannot for the life of me remember his name but he is, apparently the same guy who did the "Ayoba"ads for MTN. He was not very ayoba on the night.
The awards themselves were pretty predictable with the gongs going mostly to the usual people. One thing that always amuses me at these awards shows is the grave announcement, in a suitably stentorian tone, that "This year no golds were awarded in this category."
Puurleeease...what bunch of wankers decides these things, anyway? I guess the poor dears feel that if they don't award a gold in any particular category they are helping to "improve standards". Bollocks. I've been attending awards shows for about three decades, so I can reliably inform you that in all that time the standard has remained exactly the same. The winning work today is no better or worse than it was 20 or 30 years ago, or than it is every year, year in and year out.
If a piece of work get's more votes than all the others in the category, give the luvvies who slaved their guts out to produce it their little gold gongs. What harm can it do? Because, when all is said and done, deciding to give gold or not is surely nothing more than a matter of opinion, and everyone's opinion is just as valid as everyone else's. To deprive someone of gold for producing the best work of the bunch seems somewhat churlish and a little too opinionated from where I sit.
Not to mention the fact that these are only creative awards, anyway. It's not like the work being awarded makes a damn jot or tittle of difference in the world, especially to a client's bottom line.
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