Why there are scam ads
We all know that this year's Cannes festival was plagued by scam ads.
However the real question to be posed is why on earth do creative souls resort to such deceptive tactics? We know the symptoms. Let’s get down to the cause of this disease.
It’s easy to dismiss these tricks as shameless attempts at glory, but let’s begin by asking is there any shame in left in advertising?
Honour? Dignity? Integrity?
As a profession we are just above used-car salesmen in terms of respect.
The brilliant American writer F. Scott Fitzgerald said, “Advertising is a racket, like the movies and the brokerage business. You cannot be honest without admitting that its constructive contribution to humanity is exactly minus zero.”
Account executives and media planners can get away with ‘”I handled megabuck brands”.
Art directors and copywriters everywhere are judged on their portfolios, awards won, and these days, the number of times they have employed the services of cricketers and Bollywood stars to endorse their clients’ brands.
On the other hand, all through the year they are asked to churn out drivel that would insult the intelligence of a two-year old.
They are commanded by their leaders to come up with cookie-cutter ideas that are in line with a client’s global brand guidelines.
The very same leaders who encourage the creation of ghost ads (and will shout from the rooftops if one of them wins the Norwegian Toe Nail Clippers Association Award for best ad for a pedicurist).
I can hear them say, “Hey, it’s December! Time for those tantrum-throwing creative types to let off some steam. Let’s get them to do some ghost ads. Keep the troops’ morale up.”
“There are real clients out there who need real solutions” is a platitude.
If a brilliant idea was to be handed on a platter to the client servicing team, would they be able to sell it?
Good ideas are scary and ads these days hardly leave me wetting my pants.
This brings us to the cause of the disease: a system that has failed to produce account executives who can sell good ideas.
Rather than just slam scam ads, we should focus on creating an environment that encourages account executives to sell ideas, as opposed to merely going back and forth like glorified peons.
What are your views?
However the real question to be posed is why on earth do creative souls resort to such deceptive tactics? We know the symptoms. Let’s get down to the cause of this disease.
It’s easy to dismiss these tricks as shameless attempts at glory, but let’s begin by asking is there any shame in left in advertising?
Honour? Dignity? Integrity?
As a profession we are just above used-car salesmen in terms of respect.
The brilliant American writer F. Scott Fitzgerald said, “Advertising is a racket, like the movies and the brokerage business. You cannot be honest without admitting that its constructive contribution to humanity is exactly minus zero.”
Account executives and media planners can get away with ‘”I handled megabuck brands”.
Art directors and copywriters everywhere are judged on their portfolios, awards won, and these days, the number of times they have employed the services of cricketers and Bollywood stars to endorse their clients’ brands.
On the other hand, all through the year they are asked to churn out drivel that would insult the intelligence of a two-year old.
They are commanded by their leaders to come up with cookie-cutter ideas that are in line with a client’s global brand guidelines.
The very same leaders who encourage the creation of ghost ads (and will shout from the rooftops if one of them wins the Norwegian Toe Nail Clippers Association Award for best ad for a pedicurist).
I can hear them say, “Hey, it’s December! Time for those tantrum-throwing creative types to let off some steam. Let’s get them to do some ghost ads. Keep the troops’ morale up.”
“There are real clients out there who need real solutions” is a platitude.
If a brilliant idea was to be handed on a platter to the client servicing team, would they be able to sell it?
Good ideas are scary and ads these days hardly leave me wetting my pants.
This brings us to the cause of the disease: a system that has failed to produce account executives who can sell good ideas.
Rather than just slam scam ads, we should focus on creating an environment that encourages account executives to sell ideas, as opposed to merely going back and forth like glorified peons.
What are your views?
Tags: advertising, cannes, fake, scam
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Mary Baum on -
Well, of course you're exactly right. The question is, how do we create that environment? Or is more fundamental -- does it start with how we build an account-service department to start with?
I think we have to take a good long look at whom we hire as account execs. In my mother's time, writers got promoted to AE, and in small agencies, there was a position known as copy-contact that was sometimes a holdover into my early years in the business.
For reference, she was an early user of television -- actually did live commercials on the first years of the Today Show where then-famous actress Gloria Swanson did fashion modeling.
When I was a young art director, agencies I worked for seemed to hire young marketing graduates as receptionists, who then became account coordinators, who then became AEs. Thanks to the agency org chart, they still thought they could dictate creative. They just didn't know what decent work looked like anymore. Because their entire exposure to the process was what they overheard in meetings as they got coffee -- and three projects they did in a one-semester ad class their sophomore year: the radio project, the print project and the television project.
So with no experience in what worked, plus an account-supervision hierarchy pressuring them to sell anything and everything, and clients who want exactly the same creative as their competition, no wonder we get glorified peons.
I think that to change that environment, we need to start by either hiring putting more senior people in the account-service roles (which unfortunately means paying them) or training junior account-service people in the rudiments of their role (which unfortunately means paying to educate them) and getting them to understand why creative works the way it does.
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Permalink Reply by Steve McNamara on -
Hi Sunil -
Can you provide three or four examples to support your statement, "... this year's Cannes festival was plagued by scam ads"?
I'd like to see what you are talking about.
Cordially,
Steve
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Permalink Reply by Sunil Shibad on
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Dear Steve,
You can Google it but here are a few links:
http://commercial-archive.com/node/144315
http://commercial-archive.com/node/276
Dean commented on June 24, 2008 5:02 PM:
Let's call a spade a spade.
For every Tide Interview (great spot, pun not intended) Saatchi and the Granger crew put up about 20 scams.
From the Tide print being BOOED at the One Show to this fakery. How Granger is still employed boggles the mind. How he's moving UP, makes me want to quit advertising.
Everyone knew their "hot CD's" (you know who, they went on to start their own shop) were the fake-ad awards-winners.
I thought that kind of thing only happens in India.
http://www.adpulp.com/archives/2008/06/fake_cannes_ad.php
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Permalink Reply by Dilip Pathak on -
before coming to your question, let me ask you something. sunil you're a CD yourself. how do you judge a fresher's compatibility and potential? if not at other things, more so, by looking at his simulated campaigns, right? i believe fakeness is something we are brought up with in this industry. when i began 3 years ago i was rejected (even after faring brilliantly at the copy test) by a so-called famous CD because i DIDN'T have fake campaigns in my portfolio. i learnt my lesson. i went ahead and did a series of simulated campaigns ('award winning types') with an art guy and we both got a gig at the same agency. now this the state-of-affairs! who do you blame?
i believe we have to change the way we look at creativity and creatives before we wage our war against scam work. because both are hugely misunderstood words in this industry. creativity is more of superficiality than agility, whereas a creative who doesn't look or act like a creative is suspected of his ability to produce great ideas (if not by the CD, then at least by the suits). under these conditions one is sure to go overboard, not as a result of enthusiasm, but frustration to produce something that is not meant to work for the client but for himself. and bingo! he has a metal in his hand. result: now he is applauded and gets idolised and is encouraged to do more stuff for himself! what's more, he wins more metals and soon he becomes the f*****g NCD of the agency.
so that's how it is. until and unless we change this pattern we cannot but have more scam work entering the award shows.
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What you did was spec work and you did not enter it in awards.
The question is one of integrity and values.
The human mind can rationalize anything.
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