New York – Hell hath no fury like an award show stung. After taking back the certificate of merit from DDB Brazil for its “Tsunami 9/11” ad for WWF, The One Club for Art & Copy is taking a hard-line stance against scam ads.
For implementation beginning with its 2010 competition, its new policy targets “fake ads”, which it defines as:
“ads created for nonexistent clients or made and run without a client’s approval, or ads created expressly for award shows that are run once to meet the requirements of a tear sheet.” 

It threatens to ban all creatives and agencies that enter ads made without client’s approval from entering The One Show for five years. Likewise, creatives and agencies that enter an ad “run once, on late night TV, or has only run because the agency produced a single ad and paid to run it themselves” are to be banned from competition for three years.
Considering that many famous award-winners, including the legendary Apple “1984” ran only once, The One Club added that it “reserves the right to review ‘late-night, ran-once’ and launch versions…If it is determined that the ad was created expressly for award show entry, the penalty will hold.”
It also called on other award shows to join them in putting their metals where their mouths are, by enforcing similarly stringent rules and penalties. However, given the shrinking entry-fee budgets of most agency networks, we’re curious to see who will follow suit.
The DDB Brasil “Tsunami 9/11” scandal erupted only last week, as the blog AdFreak unearthed the ad, just in time for the eight anniversary of 9/11. Created for WWF, the print ad boldly compares the death toll of the New York terrorist attack and that of the 2004 tsunami disaster in Asia. The copy states that, if not respected and protected, Mother Nature was capable of far worse. The exposure resulted in a blogostorm of tsunami-like proportions.
A series of denials from both DDB Brasil and WWF ensued, only for both client and agency to backpedal and issue painful apologies. For awarding the ad a certificate of merit, The One Show sustained collateral damage. The ad’s companion TV ad was also entered in Cannes Lions, but fortunately for that annual’s organizers, it wasn’t judged worthy of a metal.
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