PRIVATE VIEW: Paul Hourihane, managing partner of Go Direct! and was chairman of DM Asia 2003

The theme of this year's DM Asia show and exhibition held last month in Singapore was 'Expect Results'. One of the more pleasant results achieved was the creative awards competition. While the raw numbers tell some of the story, entries were up 80 per cent to a record 170 from last year, the number of awards presented by the international panel of judges from eight countries around Asia was down 10 per cent from 33 last year to 30. The number of new media entries also tells us the business is changing; indeed, the best of show award was won by a website/banner campaign for the first time. The awards were made in 13 categories and the criteria for each were: strategy, results, strength of the core idea and the quality of the execution.