The cat has been finally belled. Early last month, Dewan Arun Nanda, Rediffusion DY&R chairman and president of the Advertising Agencies Association of India (AAAI), wrote a strongly-worded letter to all members, highlighting an issue he felt was seriously undermining Indian agencies’ credibility. The letter announced AAAI’s decision to scrap its 1999 advertising awards and asked agencies not to create campaigns specifically for prizes.
It has been one of Indian advertising’s worst-kept secrets. That many ads are created not to sell the client’s products but to win awards. So, many see Nanda’s letter as a bold and necessary step. "We’ve observed in the course of judging and after reviewing the information that we’ve received an abnormally high number of entries which we believe don’t strictly adhere to the spirit behind the awards. It’s sickening. There’s just one campaign shoved in some obscure daily and then immediately registered for awards... Are agencies that desperate for fame? Or is it a way to tell clients that they are the best?" asks Nanda.
Sources claim the move was triggered by a note sent to Nanda and AAAI executive committee members that about 40 per cent of print entries submitted for the ‘99 awards were released in the last week of December (the last month for qualifying for the awards). "Most of those were from major agencies and released in just single edition dailies. No brand-building, no media spend-just one insertion," sources told Outlook. Says Sandip Kumar, president, Enterprise-Nexus Equity: "Awards for the sake of awards-transparent for all to see but none to complain."
AAAI held an emergency meeting on February 21 at which Nanda raised serious concerns about the judging system, authentication of entries and whether the entries were genuine both in letter and spirit. Interestingly, Nanda-along with Ogilvy & Mather head and chairman of the awards committee, Ranjan Kapur-had decided in January to introduce a validation system whereby the agencies would be asked to provide detailed information about shortlisted campaigns. Nanda also read out a letter from Madisson dmbb head Sam Balsara expressing similar concerns.
The note says: "All these ads have one or more of the following in common: a) they are released in December; b) and in publications like Asian Age (one edition), The Daily or Trinity. The Daily even offered a special rate for such ads; c) they may not have the agency’s key number since the client hasn’t cleared it and d) they are visual-dominated and have very little copy, no product photograph and expect the consumer to make a leap in his mind before he gets the message."
Contract’s Ram Sehgal also sent a letter against awarding such ads. The panel then scrapped the award ceremony. The only dissenter was Kapur who "wanted the awards for TV commercials to go through as these didn’t seem as contaminated", say sources. Kapur, away in Colombo when Outlook contacted him, said he preferred to leave the ball in the AAAI’s court.
"We had to do this some day. Advertising is all about brand-building and effective marketing. We would like to reward great advertising created in the course of business but not those who are there for the heck of it," Nanda told Outlook. "And we are also aware of the agencies’ sensitivities. So, we aren’t naming these campaigns. It’s our problem and we need to set the house in order," he added.
The first salvo was fired some time ago when a few agencies complained to organisers of the Mumbai Ad Club Awards that a top agency had, while submitting its entries, changed its campaign from what appeared in the media and picked up a few awards. Thereafter, several agencies-primarily middle-level ones-have been petitioning the AAAI about such practices. Now that the awards have been scrapped, agencies are likely to adhere to more stringent guidelines.
But Shivjeet Kullar, creative director, Joint-Arms Partnership, feels it’s unlikely agencies will change. "No one can check them. They all go through this craze for awards. I picked up 109 of them during my five-year tenure with Contract. It’s like my son Vir’s craze for tazos-he has 115."
Is there an answer to this madness? McCann Erickson president Nikhil Nehru feels that associations like the AAAI need to work on a different model for awards: "Agencies need to take serious note of this scrapping of the AAAI awards and get out of this mad race for prizes. Maybe we could look at a system where we have a section for creatives which were not released." That would be a better way to resolve this imbroglio.
