Waters promises to focus on quality as Aerial Awards chair

Dave Waters, creative partner of Duckworth Finn Grubb Waters, has

been picked to chair the judges for this year’s Aerial Awards.

Waters, who admitted that the ’quality of radio advertising could do

with going up’, said he would like to see entries with great ideas and

good production values.

Explaining why he felt there were so many poor quality radio

commercials, he told Campaign: ’Whenever we talk to a media company,

they say radio makes a good deal of sense as a medium because you can’t

really walk away from it - but people use that as an excuse to shout at

listeners, which they shouldn’t.

’Radio often comes at the bottom of people’s plans and creatives want to

work on TV. It is also often seen as a cheaper way of doing TV and

people end up cramming far too much into radio ads.’

Waters said the awards encouraged young writers to produce better

material and that they were the only ’serious’ dedicated radio awards in

the industry.

Waters is in the process of picking the 12 nomination judges, who

together will compile the shortlist of entries. A wider jury of 200

invited creatives will vote on the winners at the ceremony, to be held

at Bafta on 19 October, but the nomination judges will select the winner

of the Best Campaign category themselves.

The call for entries goes out in early June and the deadline for

submissions is 30 June.

This article was first published on Campaign