Optus invites students to bring Shakespeare to life with Make A Scene competition

High school students all over the country are being challenged to show the Shakespeare in their everyday lives by entering the 2010 Make A Scene competition, presented by Optus and Bell Shakespeare, with big prizes up for grabs.

The main issue seems to be SMAM's alleged lack of delivery in terms of sealing firm sponsorship contracts, despite having agreed an extremely generous deal with the CGOC. Other reports also suggest that Swiss-based Event Knowledge Services (EKS) is under investigation.

SMAM's MD, Mike Bushell, is quoted elsewhere as contradicting reports of a termination, saying that the company has no knowledge of such a move. His company has had a long-term relationship with the Australian Olympic Committee. In the President's Review secton of the AOC's Annual Report 2005, John Coates, President, says: "Mike Bushell and his team at SMAM are to be congratulated for their on going efforts on our behalf".

The Games themselves - due to take place between October 3rd and 14th in Delhi - have for many months been mired in rumours of construction delay and funding under-achievement and accusations of corruption, along with both suspensions and resignations amongst key officials.

Principle 2 of the Code states that "Liquor marketing and promotion shall observe a high standard of social responsibility".

Guideline 3 rules that "Producers, distributors or retailers should not engage in sponsorship (as defined in Annex 1) where those under 18 years of age are likely to comprise more than 25% of the participants, audiences or spectators".

The complainant suggested that the nature of the event meant that it was very attractive to younger people, particularly young teenagers. Referring to audience research data, the complainant further suggested that the event was promoted through a range of media which had audience profiles which were skewed towards the younger end of the age spectrum. The complainant concluded that these two factors would tend to encourage under 18s to attend the festival.

The complainant also suggested that the nature of the music, being 'new music', would make the festival more attractive to younger people; and also that photographs taken at the event indicated that under 18s would probably constitute more than 25% of the audience.

In response, the festival organisers denied that the music featured in the festival was biassed towards new music, but rather that it inclouded a 'diverse range of contemporary music'; they said that, although it was true that smaller stages at the festival featured acts which appealed primarily to younger audiences, acts featured on larger stages tended to appeal to older audiences - they produced in evidence "a number of photos from all areas of the festival showing younger, older and mixed audiences".

The organisers also quoted more up-to-date audience research data than that used by the complainat, which strove to indicate that their use of radio station The Edge - "by far the most popular radio channel with the under 18s", according to the complainant - was in fact socially responsible. They produced similar data to rebuff the complainant's criticism of their use of the TV channel C4TV.

The organisers also denied at length acting irresponsibly in the promotion of the Jim Beam product, pointing out that "Jim Beam do not receive product enhancement, descriptive review of the product or any advertising that specifically encourages purchase of their product".

They also produced statistics from their attendee database (sourced from their website) suggesting that the proportion of the audience who were under 18 was in fact less than 12%. In addition, they adduced data from at-event ticketing and wristband usage statistics, which they suggested "allows us to accurately determine the % of patrons attending the festival that are under 18 years of age".

The Liquor Promotion Complaints Board, whilst noting that there was a lack of 'third party auditing' in the collection of data from the festival's website, decided that the method used by the organisers for determining the proportion of under 18s attending the festival, based on the collection of different colour wristbands ditributed to different age groups, was acceptable.

They also accepted the arguments of the organisers in respect of the audience profiles of media used to promote the event.

The ASA's Full Decision in ths case can be read at length here: