Ad Creativity Awards and the Client's Bottom Line

There are at least 40 well-known advertising awards shows in the world, e.g. Cannes Lion, Clio’s, the Caples, Loeries, etc. And they are meant to acknowledge high creative standards and achievement in the advertising industry. To buttress this view, Procter and Gamble, world’s current biggest advertiser, has a computerized system that uses advertising awards, including a measure of awards per client dollar spent, to rate advertising agencies (Al Ries 2006).

It is believed that these awards shows provide great value if only in terms of giving many people in the advertising industry a lot of pleasure and a deserved relief from a business that mostly involves clients, bosses and colleagues yelling at one another all the time (Chris Moerdyk 2006). Yet others consider these awards self-indulgent distractions from what really matters, i.e. the client’s bottom line.

For Susan Eberhart, executive VP-director of communications planning at ZenithOptimedia, “you can have the greatest creative in the world and if it doesn’t reach the right people in the right context, it doesn’t matter.” While writing about disruptions in advertising sometime ago (BrandFaces, Issue No. 24, 2005), I referred to Oprah Winfrey- give away of 200 Pontiac G-6s, which, incidentally, won a Cannes Media Lion. Despite recording great press, sales went 30% below General Motors’ expectations (Jack Trout 2005).

In what is popularly tagged “Curse of the Clio,” it has been verified that a large number of Clio winners lost their accounts not too long after taking home their statutes. And this reminds me of a fairly good dinner I had at a restaurant on Victoria Island a couple of years back courtesy of a small-size ad agency which deemed it fit to celebrate an award it won at a local creativity show on which I presided as a judge. Shortly after the ‘party,’ the agency lost the account!

General Motors’ impressive new ads say: “we have the best product, here’s why.” However, the just-released annual automotive issue of Consumer Reports, which published its influential top preferences for 2006, did not feature an American vehicle. Meanwhile, the past decade of GM advertising cost more than thrice the value of the entire company. Its recent capitalization of $10.9 billion is nothing compared to its ad spend of $32.9 billion between 1996 and present. Meanwhile, this places the company as the biggest advertiser in America for eight of the past 10 years (Al Ries).

That GM’s market share continues to decline is indirectly addressed by Professor John Philip Jones of Syracuse University, New York, in his famous assertion that only 41% of advertising actually works (Louise Marsland 2006). I wonder what the single-minded focus of the advertising industry on winning creativity awards means to the brand and as a result to the client who owns the brand.

Traditionally, the ad agency’s role is to be the objective “outsider,” though it insists that it is a “marketing partner” with its clients. The agency advises the client on how to best sell their products or services to their marketplace, how to position the brand against the competition, and how to craft their marketing message with that “reason to buy.” But I notice that in an attempt to find a “creative” solution to the marketing problem, agencies retreat to highfalutin prosody, emotion or humour as their esteemed contributions to the brand.

That is the reason a lot of advertising lacks that “reason to buy.” Take for example the radio commercial done for a newly consolidated Nigerian bank (great creative execution with an intellectual slant), which opens with an introduction of the abacus, links it with the cerebral exploits of one of our own, a computer guru in diaspora, warns that in future years the human brain may be replaced by computers, and closes out with a claim that the bank makes the future good, better.

I find it intriguing that the commercial does not in any way help establish the point of difference for the bank. Why, for example, should the very wealthy, but semi-literate Balogun market woman prefer the bank to the many choices out there? What on earth does she care about the abacus, or could the bank’s positioning deliberately be targeting the literate/sophisticated elite of our society? But I bet the commercial will win a Clio any day!

The problem with most of our ads is that they do not focus on the more difficult job of communicating persuasion. The irony is if the “abacus” commercial was executed to persuade by explaining the problem, the consequences of the problem, the working of the brand/category and the benefits of the brand, it would have no chances of winning a creativity award. Ads with a product window just do not get to win creativity awards (Bijou Dominic 2005).

I share Professor Jones’ view that advertising in its short term role can actually give brand buying a push even as well-executed ads are capable of adding to what he calls accumulated added value (AAV). Unfortunately, the Hummer slogan, i.e. “Like nothing else,” fails to position the brand in any meaningful way. It does not even tell us what the target market is for a Hummer. I am not surprised that marketing gurus like Al Ries consistently call for the scrapping of the automobile.

They opine that a company GM’s size should not be marketing niche vehicles. More so, they submit that Hummer sales last year represented only 1.3% of GM’s unit volume. Advertisers spent $2.5 million for 30” spots during this year’s Super Bowl. While more of the 130 million viewers watched the commercials than the game, organizations like Blueliner marketing company are beginning to be rather more concerned about the translation of such commercials to the bottom line.

The company creates Super Bowl Ad Awards with a marketing perspective, by looking at advertisers that spent their marketing dollars most wisely, got the best ROI from their Super Bowl commercials, etc. This effort is similar to the Apex Awards in South Africa, the country’s premier results-based awards and the only industry awards to which the South African consumer can relate. The awards show assumes that if an advertiser wins an award based on effectiveness, it will also be a campaign approved by most consumers
( Chris Moerdyk).

Our ad agencies need to rebuild their reputations around being able to help their clients identify the right competitive strategy for a brand, while it is time for our creative folks to stop seeing themselves as makers of movies and commercials. After all, lawyers do not give themselves awards for creativity in trials! Of course clients know that awards serve the purpose of helping agencies get more accounts, and not to help clients get more businesses (Jack Trout).

The goal of an ad campaign is not to win an award but to establish a position in the mind of the prospect- ask Mercedes Benz, BMW, Volvo and Porsche. I would rather see an award for the “Best Qualitative Research on the total advertising spends in specific Nigerian media for the past five years and what percentage increases the various media have experienced.” These awards shows should care whether the clients who spend their money to create and release the ads have any returns for their money.

Ad agencies should rather focus on developing ads that help build market share for their clients’ brands because the ultimate proof of the creative pudding is the business benefit to the client’s brand (Tersea Gouws 2004).