Brand Recall

I had, a little while back, written about spam ads clogging bandwidth during Advertising Awards. I am led to believe that this is an issue dogging not just the Indian Advertising Industry, but the world over.

The recently concluded Goa Fest was a victim of scam ads too! The issue has been well documented by Sreekant Khandekar in agencyfaqs!

If all that the industry needs is a networking arena to drink, make merry, smoke up and be happy, I don’t seem to understand why they should hide behind a skirt called ‘ad awards’?

I would not be surprised if we found that almost all the awards doled out during the fest were scams released in some obscure newspaper in Assam or some channel watched (!!?!?!!) by people living in a tribal location serving no purpose. I cannot agree less when he says that the industry should exhibit honesty. Let us be clear that the ad awards functions conducted by spending a lot of money is to showcase campaigns that may or may not have seen the light of day and segregate them. Let us see how many agencies come up with great selling campaigns and how many of them are working towards giving a vent to their creativity. I am sure the industry will be much appreciated for such a move and the clients (me included from the other side of the table now!) would really appreciate such honesty.

I heard in one of the interviews where Mr. Madhukar Kamat said that he would like to change the pitching process in this country. With all due respects sir, the clients would be very happy to do so. But would it be possible for the agencies also to showcase ONLY those campaigns which have been great in terms of its selling capabilities and not just high on the creative quotient.

Having been on the clients’ side for a while now, I find that quite a few agencies (including the big ones) lack the selling quotient in their campaigns and it reflects starting from the pitch process. Agencies should function as partners (in crime or glory) and to always state that the client does not have the (pardon me) ‘balls’ to release an award winning campaign is a pathetic excuse. As a client, my job is to identify selling communication work and not feed the frenzy of the advertising fraternity to satisfy their creative needs.

This is not true only in advertising. I am sure anyone reading this would agree that this is a fact for any creative industry. Take feature films. Some excellent creative work does not sell. Have we ever wondered why? An author is as good as the sales of his / her book. Which is why they are called ‘Best selling authors’ and not ‘Best writing authors’ !!!

Hope floats… still !!!! Stop blaming the client for all that does not happen and start working together. I am sure the advertising industry could do much better without these awards which to my mind is just a farce.