today's AMAZING TV AD : honda's "cog" 2 minute tv spot

for more on this, go to this post : http://the-wawam-file.blogspot.com/2008/04/cog-honda-tv-spot-another-amazing-ad.html; april 14 post.
the inspiration is mount pinatubo when some years ago, all of a sudden, after decades of being dormant, it decided to erupt, spewing debris and ash several kilometers high, blowing ashes to float everywhere, far and wide, turning the skies gloomy gray as far away as metro manila, hundreds of kilometers away, covering metro manila streets and rooftops with thick ash. the pinatubo eruption was so powerful that its ashes changed the color of sunsets not only in the philippines but also worldwide.

that's what happens when clients and advertising agencies decide to run ads not worthy to be called advertising. its dark, its huge and very irritating and unfortunately, everywhere!


all they are doing is wawam! what a waste of advertising money!


here is a first row view of Philippine Advertising and Philippine Marketing.

mount pinatubo erupts shooting ashes several kilometers high, then floating to blanket many other towns hundreds of kilometers away

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Tuesday, September 23, 2008

Philippine Ad Congress' Araw Awards winning scam ads - "araw ng parangal" or "araw ng lokohan"?

everybody in the philippine ad industry knows this. it's the worst kept secret in the ad industry - the scam ads that win the Araw Awards ("araw" means day or sun, depending on the usage. in this award, it's meant to mean the sun) in the ad competition during the Philippine Ad Congress. these scam ads do win the awards. on the day the scam ads win, is it an "araw ng parangal" (day of tribute) or is it an "araw ng lokohan" (day of scams)?

scam ads are one-shot ads where ad agencies develop creatives for the sole purpose of making the most creative ads to win awards. ad agencies usually look for very small clients, even those who normally can't afford advertising and have not had an ad ever, and convince them to use their business in the ad. they air/publish the ad only once just to comply with the award criteria.

scam ads are not meant to build the business of the client as what advertising ought to do. in the first place, scam ads can never do that - it's aired/printed only once and they're too creative that only creative directors can understand and appreciate the ads. creative directors are usually the judges of ad competitions. scam ads are not tools for building business, they're tools to boost the egos of creative directors who want to win awards.

everybody knows about scam ads. most complain about them, even despise them. and yet over many years of ad competition awards - they continue to be there. it's really easy to stop the scam ads, just ad another criteria to entries for the awards that has the effect of banning them. but the reality is the philippine advertising industry has not done anything to get rid of it even though many have said they don't like it.

ad competitions are set up not only to give tribute to the best work, but more importantly it's to inspire and push creativity to higher levels to improve the over-all quality of the whole industry. the idea is to be able to help uplift the creativity of the ads we see on a daily basis in media.

scam ads prevent that from happening because the creatives know the work they do on a daily basis for their regular clients will never win awards, why bother to improve them? they would rather do their best work for scam ads which has a higher chance of winning awards for them. and scam ads are just too few to make an impact on the industry.

when will this stop? that's probably a question will never be able to answer.

your suggestions on how to stop scam ads? are they necessary? what are the benefits?

1 comment:

  1. the philippine advertising industry awards dishonesty? wow!

    ReplyDelete

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