KEY POINTS:
This morning the advertising industry's losers take to the trenches. They go out into the mud and blood to persuade clients that bad news is good news.
There are fervent prayers following, hoping it is enough to get their agency through the crisis.
The winners breeze into fine restaurants, sagely agreeing that they owe it to clients not to risk gastric trouble with anything bar the best food and drink.
It's the fallout from last night's Fair Go best and worst television commercials award night, a show which is particularly careful over wider realities.
Brave indeed is the network putting its credibility behind a guns-blazing attack on its financial lifeblood.
Sure enough it didn't. TVNZ had the safely distancing mechanism of a public vote to get the job done.
For much the same reason came soothing interviews with those whose ads were flung to the sharks. This included the memorable sight of consumer warrior Kevin Milne's jokey chat with a soft toy, clearly illustrating how difficult this is to carry off.
The hour-long show, up from the usual half hour, showed the future of advertising may be in interesting hands with the school contributions. The tradition of primary school children being gloriously tasteless continues.
Add slick computer savvy and there was your winner, Whangarei's Otaika School promoting a product whose existence no one wants to acknowledge. By the time things rolled into the secondary schools all was sophisticated film making, with a softly alluring piece of worrying science fiction from Waitakere College.
Because it is the show's 20th year, Auckland University of Technology students produced campaigns to commemorate this, some of their work outshining the professional efforts.
There was a stop at this generation's Fernleaf family - Goldstein and his boss bumbling around the country to illustrate the positive side of banking. Steve Mellor, playing Goldstein, turns out to be a working American actor, with credits in among others, Mickey Blue Eyes and The Sopranos.
Most Loathed was the Yellow Pages hands, which for this writer is a horror movie; lots of strange and unexplained objects moving quickly, being highly intelligent, and able to perform un-nervingly complex tasks. Frightening.
Most Loved bypassed the big money - Toyota's lost keys and a truly witty Vicks mother out-tantruming her child in the supermarket - for a calming piece of down home Kiwiana.
It was the Yamaha Grizzly quad bike ad, set to a familiar tune "Where would you be without your ... "
It turned out not all is what it seems. This wasn't the beloved Fred Dagg version, but Billy Connolly's one.
In an industry decrying pointy headed intellectuals this might be a place for them. A bit of education into exactly what makes an ad both effective and good storytelling would have been useful.
Instead the Fair Go team worked hard to keep it light and bright, and avoid any sharp commentary, which happens to be exactly what we want from them.
* Fair Go Ad Awards, last night, 7.30pm, TV One
