"We were a bit hasty" admits D&AD CEO Tim Lindsay as awards considers resurrecting dropped music video category
Following an outcry from several production companies, D&AD is likely to reintroduce its music video category next year having chosen to scrap it for 2013.
Tim Lindsay, CEO of D&AD
Tim Lindsay, chief executive of the creative awards scheme, admitted that the organisation had been "a bit hasty" in deciding to banish the category this year following a lack of entries.
Explaining the decision to drop it, Lindsay told The Drum: "We have to look at the categories from two different perspectives. One is that we want to encourage excellence across a broad range of commercial communications and we also have to make money out of it because we're an education charity."
Music videos are relevant to the advertising business as they the place commercial directors such as Roger Lyons, who went on to shoot the iconic Levis laundrette commercial, cut their teeth back in the 1980s.
Lindsay said: "We took a hasty decision to be honest. There are much fewer music videos made than their were back in the heyday of MTV, but the quality is still quite good and there is still come interesting work. We can't say the quality of the work has declined, but certainly the number of entries has quite considerably.
"What we should have done is to have consulted with the people whose job it is to make their videos. Instead of doing that we knocked it on the head prematurely and caused a social media storm in the process. However we engaged with those people, including a couple of producers and actually they've offered to help us increase both the standard and number of entries by acting as the eyes and ears in that industry and we have a consultation within the music video industry in the coming weeks."
This year's D&AD awards are currently being judged over four days this week at the Olympia in London.