The Hindu Business Line : Scam and scandal

The Abby Awards from the Advertising Club Bombay have been presented and the Goafest awards will be presented in April. So what is a `scam ad' asked an innocent young thing.

It sent me down memory lane down advertising's hall of shame.

My first brush with a hint of scandal came sometime in 1998 or 1999. I was then President of the Advertising Club Bombay and we were positioning the Abby awards as the premier national awards for creative excellence in advertising. The judging process had been completed and the names of the winners had been sent to the person who would engrave them on the statuette that would be held aloft with pride and joy on Abby Nite.

As I was preparing to leave my office a large brown packet landed up on my desk marked `confidential and urgent.' It contained a video tape and some press ads. A note accompanying the package alleged that a campaign for a certain yellow pages brand was a direct lift from a campaign in the UK, which was enclosed for my reference.

I was shocked. The agency head was a creative superstar in his own right. Could he do something like this? I presented the `evidence' to his partner who took care of the agency, and was a well-loved individual. A few hours later he called me and said he was withdrawing the entry.

Now this is not a scam ad. This could be called plagiarism at worst and an unfortunate coincidence at best. Let's get one fact clear. The last original idea came from God. All the rest are just adaptations. I would think a hundred times before I brand something as a plagiarism.

The next year, I was presented with a case where it was claimed that a leading agency had placed a highly creative advertisement of a leading malt beverage manufacturer in some obscure newspaper, just once, and had entered it for the award. The jury loved it. Its detractors were furious. They called it a scam ad.

That was the first time I had heard this term. It was to haunt me in the years to come. To set the record straight, I personally called the CEO of the advertiser-company and asked him if he was aware of such an advertisement. He said that maybe it was not run past him, but he assured me that he would put substantial money behind it in the coming financial year.

Now this is one reason why scam ads came into being. Many advertisers refused to accept highly creative advertisements presented to them by agencies. If the agency was convinced it was on to a great idea, it actually put its money where its mouth was, or `persuaded' the media to carry the advertisement once in some obscure place. They then entered it for an award and triumphantly went back to the marketing head and showed him this `award-winning' effort. It then won the heart of the timid marketer who would then agree to back it with legitimate ad spend.

Within a couple of years, this sporadic occurrence had turned into a full grown epidemic. The objectives too had altered. The single point agenda of the creative team was to win awards, which by then had become bigger and more coveted. Awards meant promotions, increments, trips abroad, more clients, new job offers and much more money. Large advertising agencies entered advertisements of roadside plumbers who couldn't afford a classified advertisement if they knew what one was. The media too, was proliferating. Tabloids were quick to please large agencies that gently twisted their elbows to publish these one-off advertisements free of charge.

The Advertising Agencies Association of India (AAAI) then took the unprecedented move to cancel its awards ceremony because it was felt that nearly half the entries received were scam ads. By then a scam ad had been loosely defined. It was an one-off advertisement for an advertiser who normally would not use that particular media as a part of his normal media plan, and was probably not even aware of the release. If he was aware of it, he wasn't paying for it. Now, I am not saying the AAAI was entirely right in what it did, but it certainly took the moral high ground which was difficult to argue with. I took over as President of the AAAI in the very next year after this, and had the unenviable task of coming to grips with this new disease in the industry. For the first time a scrutiny panel was set up to weed out these scam ads and place only legitimate advertising before the jury. The logic was simple. The jury should judge creativity in advertising. Advertising pre-supposed a brief from a client based on a commercial need, a presentation, an approval and the placing of that approved piece of creative in media that was planned to further the commercial interests of the advertiser and achieve the objectives of the advertising. In short, the advertising should have gone through the rigours of the process. Only then was it fair to judge it as `advertising.'

I've said it before and I'll say it again, if it does not satisfy these criteria it could be judged as fine art. Which is what it probably is, but it certainly does not qualify to be judged as advertising. It is really not fair to all the honest entrants that their work that has gone the full length should be judged alongside some work that has been dreamed up in the creative department of an advertising agency and has flown straight onto the tables of the jury who are saluting creative excellence in advertising.

The Advertising Club Bombay followed suit with its own scrutiny panel. Scam ads were weeded out and legitimate advertising made it to the jury. The `scammers' screamed blue murder. How could the scrutiny panel play God? How could they be absolutely sure that these were in fact scam ads?

Well the fact of the matter is that considering the paucity of time, it is really impossible for the scrutiny panel to swear an affidavit that a particular advertisement is a scam ad. More so, when the entrant has begun the process by lying that it isn't. And would shamefacedly continue to lie that is wasn't till he was blue in the face.

In a couple of years, some agencies that found most of their entries being weeded out decided to `boycott' the awards. Funnily while these agencies boycotted the AAAI awards, they blithely sent their entries to the Ad Club Bombay, no matter if some members of the scrutiny panel including myself were common to both the associations. The point was that the Abby awards were far too prestigious at that time and they could not be ignored.

The moment the AAAI removed the scrutiny panel and the Ad Club Bombay watered down the requirement to a simple letter from the client reaffirming that he had in fact paid for the advertisement, the flood gates opened once more.

Today we are faced with a queer situation. I opened a prestigious book brought out by the Asian Federation of Advertising Associations (AFAA) and distributed at the AdFest in Pattaya and looked at the best advertisements, country-wise. India, the economic powerhouse boasted of an advertisement for Levi's, which I believe is a large brand and has been legitimately promoted with some cutting-edge creative. All the rest of the advertisements were either for an agency itself, or for brands that were promoted rather modestly at best, and had no brand recall at all. Does that make them scam ads? Maybe not. But one wonders what happened to all the big brands advertised by all the big advertising agencies headed by all the creative tigers that we tout so proudly. Why don't they figure in this list of `the best from India'? Are the advertisers and their timidity to take the great leap of creative faith to blame? Are the advertising agencies and their dishonesty to blame? Or shall we just accept that any work entered and judged by an eminent jury should be accepted as what it is.... creative excellence in advertising.

The jury is still out on that one.

(Ramesh Narayan is a communications consultant.)

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