The D&AD was set up in 1960s by the advertising and design industry to celebrative creative communication, reward its practitioners, and raise standards.

The D&AD seeks to protect intellectual property in pitches through fair payment for work. It has also created a series of effectiveness awards that test objectives, strategy, tactics and measureable outcomes. The awards are a meaningful benchmark for campaigns in the design industry against which an agency and its creative work can be judged.

Could this be a model that the PR industry could adapt via the CIPR or the PRCA to enforce pay-to-pitch and create standardised benchmarks?