The many faces of irresponsability, part II.

A few months ago, right after Cannes to be more accurate, I wrote a blog entry with the same title exposing the oh-so-talked-about issue of JC Penney’s “Speed Dressing” ad.
Today, after the scandal, we are shocked (well, not really) again to hear the news about a Lion being taken away from TBWA/Paris for an Amnesty International print ad against the Chinese Government (Olympic themed.) The reason? Media buying. Apparently the ad only ran once, with the intention to be entered at the festival. Only that the running date was after the Cannes entry deadline.
Again, the issue of “fake” or “ghost” ads strikes back. Ads that are only produced to be entered in award shows. Agencies have been doing this for years, and now even clients do it. Cannes Lions 2008 “client of the year”, Procter and Gamble, has used award shows to test creativity. The ad dubbed “interview” by Tide (where a guy in a job interview is interrupted by a talking stain in his shirt) was a winner in the 2007 edition of the festival, and had a minimal media buy then, it was until it won the award that the client decided to run it with more frequency until it reached the Super Bowl and became very popular. Apparently P&G did the same thing this year with Crest’s “You can say anything with a smile.” Expect the TV ads to be seen on more popular media after they won awards.
The controversy around “fake” ads only gets worse. Leo Burnett India won a Gold Lion for an ad for a brand that wasn’t even on their client roster, Luxor Highlighters.
Is it enough to run an ad once in a cheap place where no one will see it to believe it’s legit and submit it to award shows?
Saatchi & Saatchi’s ad for JC Penney almost cost them the account. The ad was apparently made and submitted by a production company, Epoch Films, although it credited Saatchi people including ECD Gerry Graff.
How stupid are we as an industry (and our industry is conformed not only by agencies, but by third parties such as, yes, production companies) that in the middle of a credibility crisis from both the public and our clients, we play around with brands just to get an award. Gawker.com makes no mistake when calling advertising an "award-obsessed" industry.
The problem is that we let other people play with brands. In the Saatchi case, Epoch Films is a production company that has worked with them in the past. Probably at some point, either the director or somebody from the creative team had ideas that could “look cool” and not be presented to the client. That is, they're meant to be done for the following things: a) Use it in the directors reel/portfolio, b) Use it in the creatives portfolio, c) Use it in the production company's reel, and d) submit it to award shows. The latter carries a certain amount of risk due to client interference. Now there's two ways to deal with this.

1. Since most awards shows require "approval from the client" for every submitted piece, you can go to your client and say in a very political way, "look, we bust our asses here doing everything you ask us to do, and we have this ad that we took the liberty of shooting, it didn't cost you anything, in fact we split the costs with the production company because they really liked the idea, and we want to submit it to award shows, you only have to sign and run the ad once in the cheapest media space possible."
That client may or may not sign the release, depending on his conscience levels. If the client is honest and smart he'll say "no, stick it up your ass, you're fired, you don't give a damn about the brand, you only care about award shows." Which by the way, is what most clients think about creatives. The other type of client would say "what the hell, I already have you do everything I want, go win your stupid awards, I don't give a damn about them, go kiss each others asses and when you come back I'll have you doing the same stupid stuff that I've always asked for."
2. You can skip the client part, talk to a buddy at the award show or create some fake release form and "ta-dah", you've got yourself a shortlist and most likely a winner, because if you're going through the trouble of creating a ghost ad with no client approval it better be as good as to win something. Then you can have the bad luck Saatchi had when a little thing called YouTube spread the ad online until it reached some guy in Texas who works for JC Penney and went, WTF?
There's a third way, which is never to do ghost ads. But that's stupid isn't it, how would we get those awards?
Our industry can be hugely irresponsible, we play around with brands like it has no consequences. Whether we like it or not, when we are empowered with brands we are given a huge responsibility. And I'm not saying we should do what the client says, but we have to be honest about our job, which by the way is not winning awards. Awards should merely be a consequence of great work, not an objective.
Everybody has bad clients and everybody has to get through them, and a campaign that wins awards despite everything is a million times better than the one created as a ghost. It is a very dangerous thing that with the industry being so unpopular there's people gambling with brands. These actions have consequences.
There is light at the end of the tunnel, go trough this years Titanium and Integrated Lions winners. Go through the work of agencies like Droga5, Crispin, Goodby (who has the policy of not entering work to award shows), and others who care more about good work and less about Lions, One Shows, Clios, et al. Awards are not wrong. They are a necessary thing for agencies seeking new business and for creatives seeking career moves. But an award is no longer enough to judge work, it’s the whole story, where it came from, how it came to be and how it is delivered that matters. In the words of Mark Fenske “Our job is to make clients and brands famous for the right reason.”