Financial Debacle Zaps Ad Awards Ceremony

The Clio Awards, regarded as the Oscars of advertising, was forced to suddenly cancel its annual ceremony for the nation’s top TV commercials Monday when promoters in New York couldn’t pay their bills.

The cancellation is a serious embarrassment for an industry that makes its living shaping images. The ad industry has already taken some tough hits during the past year, with ad spending flat and the quality of much recession-weary advertising also in a rut.

“This is a real black eye for the industry,” said Carl Spielvogel, chairman of the New York-based Backer Spielvogel Bates agency, which was scheduled to win the competition’s highest national honor this year for two public service TV spots.

Although the ceremony itself was canceled, Clio officials Monday declined to comment on whether the awards would be distributed. Many advertising agencies rely upon these awards to land new business, and executives often count on them as steppingstones to promotions.

Some industry executives said the Clio Awards--the ad competition most familiar to the general public--might be finished for good. Others said they expect Bill Evans, owner of New York-based Clios Inc., to resign as chairman or sell the company.

Evans did not return repeated phone calls to his office. His home phone number in Manhattan has been disconnected.

The ceremony was canceled when executives who run the 32-year-old competition failed to pay Lincoln Center $60,000 due before noon Monday, said William Mealey, an executive secretary at Lincoln Center.

Lincoln Center officials say they will never again schedule the event under current Clio management. “It was a mess,” Mealey said. “They just didn’t respond to anything.”

Don Catterson, a spokesman for the Clio Awards, blamed the cancellation on the economy. “We are in a recession,” he said. “Money isn’t easy.”

Still, the Clios received a near-record number of entries this year, with combined entry fees of nearly $2 million, according to a former official who left the company this month.

Things began to come unglued last Thursday, when the Clio Awards for print advertising were handed out in New York in a ceremony marred with controversy. After only a partial list of winners was made available, some in attendance stormed the stage and walked off with the remaining unengraved trophies.

But former Clio Award officials, who asked not to be named, said things have been going downhill at the financially ailing firm for several years. They blame Evans, 56, a former ad man who purchased Clio Inc. from its then seriously ill founder in 1974 for an undisclosed sum.

In an interview last year with Newsday, Evans said a former male prostitute and resident of New York’s controversial Covenant House shelter for young runaways had briefly lived at his townhouse in 1988. Sean Russell, the former prostitute, became the subject of headlines in New York after he was murdered and Covenant House came under investigation.

Former Clio officials said that Evans had begun to spend less time at the office in recent months and that some weeks he failed to come to work at all. During this time, former staffers said, he ignored urgent phone calls and letters about the upcoming Clio ceremony.

“We couldn’t get him to respond to anything,” said a former official.

Former workers said Evans failed to pay them for weeks. About 10 of them quit two weeks ago, leaving the awards ceremony in jeopardy. Meanwhile, the public relations firm that had helped the Clios get publicity for the past four years quit early this month after receiving no payment since February.

“We kept hoping something would happen,” said Steven Clark, president of Ft. Lee, N.J.-based Andover Communications, who said Evans owes him $11,000. “There were plenty of opportunities for him to take loans or to sell the company.”

In fact, industry sources say, Evans recently turned down $2 million for the company.

Meanwhile, the advertising community suddenly finds itself without its biggest annual bash. And what was supposed to be the year’s high point for the industry has become its low point.

Had the awards been presented, Venice-based commercial director Joe Pytka would have been this year’s big West Coast winner--with four of the famous Clios.

“Maybe something will come out of the ashes,” Pytka said in a telephone interview from Paris. “The winners are still the winners. Maybe someone else will pick up the show.”

Cliff Freeman, chairman of the New York ad agency Cliff Freeman & Partners, was less optimistic. “This is a particularly bad blow for our agency,” said Freeman, whose firm creates ads for Little Caesar Enterprises and Phillips Lighting Co. “Winning awards has always been important for a little agency like ours.”

Indeed, over the past seven years Freeman has collected 25 Clios.

“There are bigger issues here than my own small agency,” Freeman said. “But what keeps creative people at many agencies striving for greatness is the recognition that can only come from an award.”