In the UK award scheme where clients rate how agencies perform, The Gate scooped the ‘Best in Advertising’ award.

(Our guess is that our outrageously successful campaign for renewable energy firm Airtricity had something to do with it.)

Naturally, awards are not everything.

But since winning is better than losing, we’ll take recognition wherever we can.

Even though people keep telling us advertising is dead.

Yes, the ‘king’ of communications has been feeling somewhat poorly lately, though it’s demise might be somewhat exaggerated.

Especially since the customer doesn’t really recognise the distinctions between ‘above-the-line’ and other forms of ‘selling’.

I remember when I was a young adman my dear old Mum talking about an ad she’d seen.

Master of my new-found profession, I put her right: “No, that’s not an ad, Mum” I told her. “That’s a door drop.”

She seemed baffled by the distinction, as if I were a trainspotter trying to explain the difference between the wheel configuration of the Big Boy and the Bull Moose steam locomotives.

And anyway, she’d been attracted by the offer,  not the ‘ad’.

So, if you wish to ‘advertise’ – in other words, use any form of communication to explain your product or service and persuade people to buy more of it – we know that business inside out. Just ask our Mums.