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The UK’s leading creative directors are prepared to break away

from the advertising establishment in their attempt to expose the

practice of bulk discounts in commercials production.

Tim Delaney, the chairman of the Creative Directors Forum and the

driving force behind a challenge to justify the high costs of filming

ads, has distanced the forum from the Institute of Practitioners in

Advertising - its parent body - and vowed: ’We will not go away.’

Speaking as a representative of the forum at a meeting of the

Advertising Film and Videotape Producers Association at the Groucho

Club on Tuesday, Delaney laid into production companies over their

inability to act unilaterally.

’It seems as though they are not prepared to acknowledge that bulk

discounts exist,’ he said.

In a move that dismayed the audience, Delaney went on effectively to

disown the report, ’Producing Advertising Commercials’, which was

published in December 1996 after two years of consultation between the

AFVPA, the Institute of Practitioners in Advertising and the

Incorporated Society of British Advertisers.

Delaney said: ’As far as I’m concerned, what has been arrived at by the

IPA doesn’t cover the issues that are concerning the forum. We will

proceed with a requirement for greater transparency and analysis of the

effect of bulk discounts and other cost components on budgets.’

Delaney, who was joined by a fellow forum member, Andrew Cracknell,

took a barrage of questions from the audience, some very hostile. One

production company head said: ’It was a verbal punch-up.’

Production companies have reacted to the meeting with anger and

bewilderment.

Most have invested many thousands of pounds in budgeting software to

handle the new production procedures and they are alarmed that the

forum wants to address costing issues that the IPA appears not to

recognise.

Cecilia Garnett, the chairman of the AFVPA, confirmed that about a

hundred people attended the meeting, but would not disclose details of

the discussion.

She said: ’We now have a better understanding of what the forum is

seeking to do - the purpose was to open a dialogue.’

John Raad, the deputy director general at the IPA, was not available

for comment.