This refers to the article "Rot in the ad world" (Weekend, April 20). It exposes tellingly how advertising agencies use their much-acclaimed creative thinking in an unethical manner to exploit a poorly conceived evaluation system (to adjudge the best to hog excellence awards) so as to get more business from gullible clients. What is astonishing is that the clients depend on this patently questionable yardstick to put their money on advertising. Should they not discard the vicious nexus between non-disclosure of revenue of the agency and promotion of an evaluation system judged by the agencies themselves? By depending too much on award winners, are they not missing on highly creative agencies unable to cope with the networking, but gifted with high potential, and waiting for an opportunity to explode? It also raises the doubt in the minds of the end-users (or the buyers) of advertisements whether all that is claimed in the advertisement to create their attention, interest, desire and action to buy the item is a scam advertisement or a true reflection of the attributes of the item.
As for corrective measures, initiative and insistence to do so should emanate from the clients. The procedure for evaluation for awards should be re-engineered with focus on measures of eligibility for the awards and composition of judges. The suggestion to raise the entry fee may eliminate second-rung but equally creative agencies from the competition. And the suggestion to convert "award budget" to reward the agency employees presupposes that no such schemes exist in the ad agency business. Is it so? Lastly, it is well to remember what American advertising creative director William Bernbach said, "The most powerful element in advertising is the truth".
Y G Chouksey Pune
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