Travel Advertising Awards 2001.(award winning marketing campaigns of travel industry)(Brief Article)

`As always, the true victors were the ads engaging enough to rent space in our brains for longer than it took to view them.' Will Awdry, chairman of the judges

A journey of a thousand paces, the Chinese sage said, starts with a single step. The test for the jury in the swirly carpeted glory of The Hilton was to see whether it might start with an advertisement.

This jury worked hard. The air conditioning bust after an hour or so. By the end we were deliberating in conditions approximating Panama. Going in, I'd thought we might be wowed by notions of escape, exploration, excitement, the exotic -- the sort of positive values you might associate with travel.

It's fair to say that (with honourable and extremely welcome exceptions) we weren't. There seemed to be many reasons for this. By their nature, the Awards consider a spectrum of ads from the reactive, tactical end to those selling the Big Dream. It wasn't just the destinations but the approaches that were poles apart. Finding common ground on which to judge one against another wasn't always easy.

All too often, we faced entries that had put everything into one ad: heart, soul, kitchen sink, beach, mum, dad and rental car. The work suffered from overload. The schizophrenia in the travel sector, where advertisers can't decide on whether to focus on the dream destination, or the men, women and logistics involved in getting you there, defeats the sale. Confusion reigns.

Throughout, I believe we were fair, favouring recognition as much as competition.

The winners employed imagination and simplicity in the service of the client company. Those same big companies who win year after year appear here because they continue to employ single-minded messages in clearly branded communication. There are some refreshing newcomers too.