With Caples 34 deadline only two weeks away Caples NZ chairman Tony Clewett answers the question: “Is it direct enough?”

With only two weeks until the Caples 34 deadline, Tony Clewett, Caples NZ chairman, sheds some light on a common question: Just how ‘Direct’ does your work have to be, to be Direct?

Says Clewett: “The whole game has changed so much over recent years, and so has the entry criteria for Direct shows. A few years ago, if it didn’t have a bold 22pt phone number, or campaign specific URL, it was out.

Well, that’s no longer the case. There’s still a blurry greyish line between Direct and Brand work, but here’s my simple definition. Did people engage with your work? Great. Then it’s Direct. And by ‘engage’ I mean talk, tweet, touch, share, click, snap, spit, Like, or even more bizarrely – buy.

Take Channel Four’s 40-foot high Big Rubber Ducky that nestled in Auckland’s viaduct harbour earlier this year. No giant phone number. No oversized URL. But plenty of talk, buzz and social media sharing (I first heard about it by way of an excited colleague waving her cellphone pic of it around the office).

Then there’s Mountain Dew’s Pinball Skate Park. Getting your audience to go skateboarding over your brand (and probably upside down on it) is a great way to them interacting with your brand. So it seems pretty Direct to me. Nice work guys.The bottom line is this: if you can put a figure or two in the Results section on the entry form, then you could be well on your way to a Gold. And to NYC to collect it (I’m sure your CD would agree to that…).

So good luck (and hurry up please).”