will scam ads win big again in 2009 Philippine Advertising Congress?

‘Goodvertising’ top Subic ad talk
By Robert Gonzaga
Philippine
Daily InquirerFirst
Posted 04:51:00 11/20/2009

SUBIC BAY FREEPORT — By doing good, the advertising industry could thrive in the future, a top advertising executive in South Africa told delegates to the 21st Philippine Advertising Congress (PAC) here Thursday.

Mike Schalit, chief creative officer of Network BBDO South Africa, said the advertising industry should “turn away from cute, clever advertising designed to win awards but don’t do any good in the world.”

“What about the real problems of the world? Like homelessness. What can we do about that?” he asked.

read in full here: http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/inquirerheadlines/nation/view/20091120-237322/Goodvertising-top-Subic-ad-talk

this one caught my attention: “turn away from cute, clever advertising designed to win awards but don’t do any good in the world.”

cute and clever advertising are great, it’s the last part that i have problems with – “designed to win awards”. we got reminded of the “scam ads” that populate the philippine ad con awards that we had written about in 2008.

no doubt, scam ads will once again win in the adcon. it is almost like an industry within an industry, a mafia like operation that ad agencies, creatives specifically run. all the effort just to win awards.

these efforts that creatives run in mafia like fashion does not do anything good to the ad industry, all it does is enhance the egoes of individual creatives. it does not even build business for clients.

creatives do not do the same kind of quality work on a daily basis that they present to legitimate clients. this kind of award winning work are just too difficult to do, to time consuming, very risky for them and offers no ego reward for them. it will be a miracle if we see these types in print or in tv for 10% of the work.

there are 3 parts to what Mike Schalit said, the third part is the point i am making:

“turn away from cute, clever advertising designed to win awards but don’t do any good in the world.”

posted here: http://wawam.wordpress.com/2009/11/20/will-scam-ads-win-big-again-in-2009-philippine-advertising-congress-2/

pErsPecTIve : the 21st (2009) Philipine Advertising Congress logo

we know what the word "perspectives" mean and the logo is very good in capturing what it means. however, it looks like the word "readability" was totally forgotten.

it is quite common - creatives fall in love with a creative concept but forgets an ad or in this case an image needs to be readable first. fail on readability for a logo or "understandability" for an ad and most likely everything else fails.

you need to strain your eyes and your brain to get to what the logo is all about. you get afreaid that logo designer forgot a letter or your eyes are failing you as you missed reading a letter. the tendency of the viewer is to first ask the question - are all the letters in there? is it spelled correctly?

the logo earns high marks on concept and on the cognitive part but it does not deliver very well on the creative part. for a logo for the whole ad industry and an ad congress which primarily celebrates creativity, this logo fails. it's a thinking creativity, not a creative creativity.

we find it too stiff, boxed in even while creativity and yes the ad congress itself is all about honoring those who have come up with ads that are thinking out of the box, free of constraints. this one put everything inside boxes, the exact opposite of what creativity means. creativity that is boxed in, 4 boxes to be exact, is not at all creative. did a client design this ad or an account servicing person?

did we take that literally? yes, we did. and so did the logo. ever heard of "boxed-in creativity"? we would rather not as that makes it un-creative.

the above comes frrom my perspective.

go to the ad congress website: http://www.adcon.com.ph/v2/

21st (2009) Philippine Advertising Congress : November 18 to 21, 2009

double click image for larger view

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?