Should advertising awards be scrapped?

Controversy has often dogged advertising award shows but this year's Creative Abby Awards has broken all records in terms of the number of entries deemed fake - either because they didn't have client approval and a legitimate release or because they were plain copies of international work. Worse, the offenders include a handful of Top 10 agencies. As the advertising fraternity debates the merits of this year's awards, it is instructive to recall that it's not always creative merit that decides these things. In that case, what purpose do awards serve?

This is a bit like asking: Should exams be eliminated altogether? The answer may be found by applying the same set of questions to each issue.

What purpose does an award (or an exam) serve?

If award shows are a forum to celebrate advertising capability, then they serve a purpose - the purpose of setting a standard of excellence that inspires others to follow and surpass. However, this purpose is compromised if the ad displaying the purported excellence is not authentic work. And the purpose has to be advertising that is released in the real world. Else, it would be like a student being given a prize for an essay he didn't write in class.

What should the metrics be then?

This is the area where the greatest confusion prevails. It is a case of deliberate obfuscation when words like 'proactive work' are used. Any work may be created pro-actively by an advertising agency. However, it will be 'advertising' only if it is accepted by the advertiser and released to reach its target audience. Advertising is not 'fine art'; it is 'commercial, applied craft'. Any piece of work that is not commissioned by an advertiser to serve a specific commercial purpose, is not, by definition, advertising.

The third fault lies in the process of applying these metrics. The current process needs both the agency and the advertiser to vouch for the fact that the work has actually been created for legitimate commercial benefit of the advertiser. However, we have seen advertisers this year writing post facto to the awards body expressing caveats about their entries. The advertisers who signed the forms originally are no babes in the wood as to be naively unaware of what was happening. And that leads to the disturbing inference that they are complicit.

Who should 'give' these awards?

The first principle of giving an award has to be that the ones who decide on the quality (we will define quality in a moment) of the actual advertising should be the ones to decide which work is to be termed a winner. The two key evaluators of advertising are the advertisers for whom advertising is created - indeed without them paying for it, there cannot be any advertising - and the customers who the advertising is intended to motivate and excite. Fellow creators are, in this sense, the equivalent of a bunch of students marking each other's essays.

Let me weave all the threads together. One, the purpose of advertising awards should be to inspire better work in the real world. Two, words like 'proactive advertising' are smokescreens to obscure the truth that a work is not genuine advertising. Three, the current process seems flawless in principle, but seems to be falling short in practice.

The value of an award lies in its authenticity. The current perception is that there is clearly something rotten in the state of Denmark. If this continues, awards won't have to be scrapped; they will die a natural death. Death by irrelevance.

Anand Halve
co-founder, chlorophyll Brand and Communications Consultancy

 
The creative awards scene is getting murkier every year. A few rotten eggs are raising a stink. So should we throw the baby out with the bath water?

Most creative industries, like music and the movies, have creative awards that have stood the test of time. Adver-tising creative awards, too, have been around for a long time. At the global level, some of the most coveted awards have been around for more than 50 years. The Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity, established in 1954, is among the oldest. The Effie Awards, one of the most respected advertising effectiveness awards, is now in its 45th year. So, awards shouldn't be wished away. Most successful awards are also money-spinners for their owner-sponsors, who will fight tooth and nail to ensure their continuity.

What makes such ad awards resilient, despite the many controversies, allegations and mismanagement? It is the ad agencies that are keeping them alive. After all, ad agencies hanker for creative awards for several reasons. Being on the top of the awards league table enhances their chances of winning new business, attracts better creative talent and instils a spirit of competition. At least, that is the theory.

There is nothing wrong with creative awards per se. If awards help agencies to become more creative, their clients should benefit as well. But clients don't always win. We have seen how the judging criteria often do not include either the strategy that went behind the creativity or the results, in terms of sales or market share gain. To that extent, the constituting of 'effectiveness awards' seems to be a more robust step and better aligned to promote clients' objectives.

The structure or the mode of judging and administering awards will not change overnight. But the industry needs to start somewhere. A good place would be to increase entry fees dramatically. High fees will ensure that the selection of ads to be entered is handled at the senior-most level, not just at the agency but also at the clients' end. The number of entries would decline and each entry would have a better chance of a serious evaluation by the jury.

Secondly, the rubber- stamped sign-offs from the clients should me made mandatory. That would ensure greater senior management involvement in the entries send by their agencies.

Let us not forget the role of the jury. Why should they comprise only creative professionals from the industry? Why can we not invite experienced clients, media planners, and even business leaders to the panel? The entries will then get judged from different angles rather than a purely subjective creativity-led evaluation process.

May be it is time to create an entirely new category to allow agencies to enter ads that are today classified as scam. For this section, the agency-client relationship wouldn't be mandatory. Any agency would be free to work on any brand - whether they handle it or not, under this category. This will give creatives complete, guiltless freedom to indulge.

Pranesh Misra
chairman & managing director, Brandscapes Worldwide

Awards are important. They are a great tool to influence behaviour. Awards help to energise and focus teams, be they in advertising or other industries. They also foster a sense of achievement and team spirit. Creative awards tend to infuse a rallying spirit in teams and even as clients we can feel and share our agencies' enthusiasm.

Awards work from the an industry's point of view as well. They set standards, underlining what is important and what is not. Advertising is a critical indicator of the economic development of a nation. It boosts consumption and creates value for all the stakeholders. Ad awards are a fantastic way of setting standards and developing the direction in which you want to develop the industry. These awards could be construed as simple tools that can define the behaviour of an entire industry.

But increasingly, we feel there is a need to recalibrate the criteria for awards in advertising today. But it cannot be done by the advertising fraternity alone. The key to such a change lies with responsible clients and agencies who talk to each other and set down standards that should mean something to both. So, these awards should not just be recognising the merit of ads and their creatives in a fair and transparent manner, but they should also be seen as fair and transparent. We keep on talking about self-censorship, but why not start with being a little tough at the beginning -exclude smaller, one-time-only campaigns altogether.

In advertising, we cannot overlook the interests of the brand. It is the brand, rather than the creative's urge to express, that should hold if they are at loggerheads at any point of time. Ideally, they should not. Brands are the raison de etre of the ad industry's existence. The brand can afford the advertising if it grows and thrives; so it is in the interest of all to grow the brand. Of course, advertising is a key input in the same.

Clients should be the ones getting pro-active. Clients who are advertising savvy should crack the whip and ensure that only regular work is entered for awards. They could encourage agencies to do great creative work on regular brands to begin with - that would be win-win for all.

Though Marico doesn't stress on awards when picking agencies - long-term relationships and the scope for one are what sway us - an award that equally involves all stakeholders and has the respect of all the industries, would create more learning and debate. It would set standards for young creative minds and tell them what is good and what is not. Awards need to stop being the means for the fraternity to pats on its own back.

The need for creativity is more pronounced today; there is a growing need to engage the consumers with compelling advertising. I would want our agency partners to create more compelling advertising which helps grow equity and preference. If they win awards in the process, they are the cherries on the cake.

Sameer Satpathy

EVP & Business Head, Marico