If their work wins an award that might earn them a bonus of anything up to pounds 10,000. And the offices in which they work are frequently extravagant advertisements for the creative career.And that's not all. What adland staff can also expect are those little extras that make office life worth living. Ditto those members of the advertising fraternity who make their way to any of that industry's numerous glittering awards evenings.

Both sit through speeches and a marathon of musical entertainment: both catch up with their peers; both do a little glad-handing The similarity stops there. The former tend not to round off their evening by presenting the best film Oscar to a couple of producers just filling in at the studio for experience and pounds 50 a week expenses. But that, by contrast, is just what happened at one of last year's most prestigious advertising awards, the Campaign Poster Awards. The winning poster, by common consent a champion out of the very top drawer, was devised by copywriter Pete Cain and art directed by his partner Louis Bogue, both of whom were volunteers, working at the time on expenses-only placement at ad agency M&C Saatchi. It's a powerful indication of one of the attractions of advertising as a career. It bears all the hallmarks of being written and bought by committees. And, as David Ogilvy once said: "Never in the world has anybody built a statue to a committee.".

When the great and good of the film world make their annual pilgrimage to the Oscars ceremony in Los Angeles, they do so with fond hope and earnest expectations. The only message coming across clearly is that BP stations are good for kids. Great! I think it's fundamentally cynical to take children and use them in messages about how we're getting the future right today. It's just a cliche, and I don't believe it any longer.I guess it's the product of a number of people going about their business professionally, but with a total lack of flair and focus. But it's diffuse, vague - it all adds up to a huge waste of money: I'd say the production costs were in the region of pounds 350,000, and then there's the airtime - it's a 40 second ad. And there are any number of commercials doing exactly the same thing: spending huge amounts of money without delivering a message robustly or memorably.I don't really know what they're on about here.

He says, in voice-over: "What if you had special trucks that could turn into petrol stations?" and with that, the car drives up a ramp into the moving truck, which turns into a petrol station complete with shop. The boy goes on: "Then we could buy what we need and get to where we're going a lot faster", before an adult voice, representing BP, replies to him with a speech about "keeping people moving" and "value for money".It's been shot relatively nicely, and there's lots of green in it, so you know that people are using the word "branding" in all their meetings. The businessman's speech - of how if one employer backed the New Deal, he would be seen as mad, and if two supported it, they would be seen as misguided, and if more joined, it would gradually develop into a cult, then a movement, then a revolution - recalls Alice's Restaurant, the anti- Vietnam protest by Arlo Guthrie.bpDoner Cardwell HawkinsThis ad has a small boy in a car with his parents, watching as they drive alongside a big BP truck. You don't see the skill that's gone into it - and that's the skill. It's very realistic: at the start you see this guy put his paper down, and gulp a bit, because he's doing this speech cold and people will think he's a nutter.The other thing I quite like about it is that it reminds me of my youth. From this, I really do believe that there is a New Deal, and that there are people out there who really want to make it possible for young people to find work and create futures for them.

(In a further execution, you see how this businessman was himself given a break as a young man.) To be able to communicate that clearly takes some doing, but this seems effortless. It's never going to win any prizes, but I do think it's a really skilful bit of communication. Genuinely creative, without using any kind of gimmickry or device, and for that it's to be applauded. There's a ringing sincerity to it, too.The New Deal message is a very important one, and the agency has managed to get it across very directly, in an uncluttered, unsentimental, totally plausible way. In which a leading advertising expert picks some of the best and worst around. This week Patrick Collister, executive creative director of Ogilvy and Mather, sees too much green whitewash from BP, while applauding the Government's brave New Deal message Interview by Scott Hughes new dealSt. Luke's, HawkinsThis ad has a businessman, travelling on the train, getting up and starting to talk to the other passengers about why the Government's New Deal for the young unemployed is so important.