Just how strong is the urge to win? Year after year, shiny trophies are awarded at the advertising industry’s annual festival Goafest and yet, a lot of this stunning work has never been seen by the majority of consumers in this country. This is work produced for the purpose of winning awards alone and is run in obscure publications and on channels in unearthly time slots. Most of it is funded, created and paid for by the ad agencies themselves and the finishing work is done out of Singapore and Thailand. The same work is then entered at Cannes, Clio?s, D&AD, etc.
In the past few days, there?s been the curious case of automaker Ford making waves all the way across the world and for all the wrong reasons. Three print ads were uploaded on trade website Ads of the World, which got hammered in social media. One ad for Ford shows former Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi, giving a thumbs up sign, while three scantily dressed women are seen gagged and bound in the boot. The visuals are accompanied with the tagline ?Leave your worries behind with Figo?s extra large boot?. In another advert, global celebrity Paris Hilton is in the driver?s seat while US reality television stars ,the Kardashian sisters, are in the boot, again bound and gagged. The third ad shows F1 driver Michael Schumacher with a wicked grin, and his rivals packed off in the trunk. The ads were created by the Indian unit of advertising firm JWT, which is part of marketing communications holding company WPP.
Ironically, the ?Leave your worries behind? tagline seems to have worked in the exact reverse for ad agency JWT. What started out as objectionable advertising soon snow balled into scam advertising once Ford disclosed that it had never approved these ads. JWT then axed two of its executives, which included JWT India’s chief creative officer Bobby Pawar, in a manner of appeasing Ford.
Renowned ad film maker and ad film director of Genesis Films, Prahlad Kakar, like many others, is struck by the timing of the entire affair. In the background are India?s strained ties with Italy after the diplomatic row over the trial of two Italian marines, and the brutal rape and murder of a young girl in New Delhi that caused Indian and global advertisers to sit up and introspect on how they project women in ads. Ford?s advertising blooper couldn?t have come at a more unfortunate time. ?Ford is an American car maker and stands for certain values. It?s a family car. You can call its advertising fairly conservative in that sense. There?s no way they would want to put out visuals of women bound and gagged. Ford must have been horrified with the ads. It?s highly unlikely that they had prior knowledge about them,? said Kakar. He added that the advertising industry has always been short of inspiration and good ideas. ?But it’s one thing to try and be clever about an ad and another thing to go against the values of the brand,? he said.
The adverts are actually cleverly done caricatures, but the internet community is not laughing. ?From the New York Times, to the Huffington Post, everyone?s written a piece on it but the entire incident is just unfortunate,? said Ashish Khazanchi, vice-chairman of Publicis Ambience. ?When these ads came up for judging at the Goafest, my only thought was that it was a poor idea, and badly executed. But I never imagined that a senior creative person will get fired over this.? Khazanchi feels that it?s futile to try and take action against scam ads. Nothing can be conclusively labeled as scam. ?Like it or not, scam is around. And we just have to live with it. Brazil and Singapore showed the way and the world followed,? he said.
When asked about the furore over the Ford ads, Piyush Pandey, executive chairman and creative director, South Asia, of another WPP owned ad agency Ogilvy & Mather had his own set of questions. ?Who did these ads? Who approved them? Who ran them?? he asked. ?Someone must have approved the adverts from the agency?s side and also from the client?s side but whether they had the authority to do so?I cannot tell. But one thing is clear. Desperation and obsession about winning should not come in the way of doing meaningful business,? he said.
?I think that we are putting too much pressure on ourselves or rather, letting ourselves be pressurised too much by networks, in order to win awards. In this kind of a scenario, people can make bigger mistakes than they normally would. We need to introspect as to what gives meaning to our audience and to our personal and professional goals. Not just as individuals, but also as companies,? said Pandey.
Over the years, India has has courted controversy on many occasions. In year 2008, Leo Burnett India was the sole winner of the prestigious Grand Prix at Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival. It turned out to be a one-off ad, and worse still, a Lowe India client.
In 2009, Rediffusion Y&R uploaded an ad on the internet for Colgate Palmolive without the client’s approval. McCann Worldgroup India created three advertisements for Hanes which used slurs such as ?faggot? and ?nigger? and were carried in The Free Press Journal. It?s interesting to note that the Interpublic Group (IPG) went public and stated that the ads were false and released by two rogue employees. The client and the agency had no knowledge whatsoever.
Ad agency Ogilvy & Mather also got widespread criticism for an ad on India-Pakistan cricket which many said was made for the sole purpose of winning awards. The ad, which bagged a silver Lion at Cannes, showed a physically challenged man who notices that the gas stove is on in the background but is unable to do anything about it. The rest of the family members carry on with their affairs, and there are many tricky moments, when you think that the room will go up in flames. Interestingly, an online blogger writes that the ad was barely run in India, and that a similar ad was also seen in the Rotterdam ad festival. That ad, too, depicted a situation where someone leaves the gas on while making dinner, and other family members, oblivious to it, go about doing different activities all of which can trigger an explosion.
There?s no denying the fact that the digital medium is fast emerging as the judge and the jury for many of these ads. Santosh Desai, managing director and chief executive of Future Brands India Ltd, a division of Future Group said that digital had changed the dimensions of the business and that it?s a double-edged sword. On one hand, it allows scam ads to proliferate?anyone can make an ad and upload it on any platform and on the other hand, the risk of being found out is that much more.
Copycat ads, the other face of scam, have also been around forever. The Air India outdoor campaign done by DDB Mudra Bangalore which won a silver Lion at Cannes 2009 disturbingly resembled an earlier ad for Air France called ?Double Life? done by Euro RSCG Spain. Again, JWT India made an ad for its client Radisson which was uncannily similar to a poster on democracy produced by JWT Kuwait showing a Muslim woman in a burkha with only her eyes and mouth visible.
Advertising heads defend their tribe
?I have a huge problem with the word scam,? said advertising guru and Lintas veteran Alyque Padamsee. ?Scam is outstanding creative work done for a client that the agency wishes it had. Most agencies wish that they had gutsy clients.?
The root cause of the problem, according to Padamsee, is advertisers who?ve been known to sit on outstanding creative work. ?Because clients don?t always recognise or accept good creative work, ad agencies have to find other ways of getting their work published,? he said. Padamsee sees nothing wrong with these ads and does not believe that Ford did not have prior knowledge. ?Why did they wait so long to act then, if they had not approved the ads? Seems to me that the kitchen got too hot, and all the cooks ran out,? said Padamsee.
KV Sridhar, chief creative officer, India subcontinent, Leo Burnett India refuses to label an ad of limited release as scam. ?There?s one sort of advertising which is mainstream advertising, and another sort that?s targetted at select audiences and critical acclaim. It?s extremely rare that you manage both. If a client and agency together decide on an idea (campaign) for select audiences and for critical claim, what?s wrong in that? That?s the prerogative of the advertiser. Would you say that critically acclaimed Vidya Balan starrer Kahaani is not original work? Or is it only a mainstream big budget Bollywood film that?s regarded as real cinema?? queries Sridhar.
Sridhar is also quick to criticise the firings at JWT. ?Should this have worked the other way, and let?s assume that the ads were a runaway success, would Ford still say that it has no knowledge of this entire campaign?? he asks. The ads did not suit Sridhar?s palate, but he said that the action taken was extreme. ?This is not the first controversial ad created,? he said referring to United Colors of Benetton?s gutsy Unhate campaign which had world leaders in lip lock. Sridhar points out that in the Olympics Games, if a player is found to have used drugs, then he is deprived of his metals. The case is similar in advertising: If something is legally wrong; the agency is stripped off its metals. But to label a perfectly legitimate campaign as ?scam? is just plain wrong, he says.
There are a lot of ads that have had a limited run in India, say agency executives. For instance, Levi’s slim fit ?stick? ads or the ad for Mentos sour marbles. The commercial for Mentos sour marbles especially stands out because it shows a person using his/her fingernail to write ?really sour? on a blackboard. The viewer cringes.
Not everyone?s batting for these ads though. Desai from Future Brands says that scam ads proliferate in print and poster categories. Many of the public service ads are exploitative and are designed to shock. It?s hard to imagine that these ads were ever carried in mainstream media. Desai, who quit advertising after 21 long years, says that no other industry keeps personal growth at the centre the way advertising does. ?Networks may have their part in scam. But I refuse to see creative people as some kind of victims. These awards are as much about individuals. The culture of awards is legitimised internally. Creative energy is spent on unproductive work and there is a lack of connect with the real world.? The chasm is only too visible in Ford?s case. ?The market (online community) has spoken loud and clear. This is not an organised group that protested. Ford has faced huge damage to its reputation,? said Desai.
Josy Paul, chairman, BBDO India believes it is time for some soul searching. ?We don’t want scams to become the face of our industry. There are so many great campaigns that the Indian advertising industry can be proud of. Ideas that have entertained audiences, built brands and transformed the fortunes of companies. It’s time to celebrate these game-changing ideas so that all of us in advertising realise that nobody needs to do scam ads to become famous or win recognition.?
Paul suggests that one way to exorcise these ghost ads is if the creative and business leaders come together to discuss and debate the issue, and then take a pledge to get rid of this underground menace. But he adds a note of caution. ?In the process we should be careful not to kill the experimentative proactive spirit of the industry. It’s what helps to push brands and the industry forward,? he said.
Perhaps the one silver lining is that this particular case could just stem the rise of scam or ?proactive? work. Shashi Sinha, chairman of Awards Governing Council, Goafest and CEO, IPG Media Brands said that a lot of advertisers will think twice about proactive work done by their agencies and what is going out in their name. Sinha doesn?t refer to these ads as scam.
By Sinha?s own admission, a big part of this matrix is the fact that advertisers indulge their agencies. Advertisers see this as a sort of a quid pro quo: If the proactive work wins, then all the better. Kakar believes that there must be due diligence on the part of award committees and councils. ?Open the ads to public scrutiny. Let the public decide whether they?ve seen these ads or not. Like at a wedding, sSpeak now, or forever hold your peace,? he said.
According to BBDO’s Paul, almost 70% of the work being judged in international award shows are based on results. International juries are trained to smell scams since these ads tend to talk only to the jury. These ads rarely make the shortlist, he says.
Interestingly, Sajan Raj Kurup- founder of ad agency Creativeland Asia, who was also the chairman of the digital jury at Goafest this year has stepped down. He is protesting against the many scam ads that are feted and awarded in the festivals. Creativeland Asia has also withdrawn its entries. Commenting in general on agencies that stay away without referring to a particular case or individual, Sridhar said, ?If people have a problem with the Goafest, they should sit at a table with their peers and discuss their issues. A lot of agency CEOs give their valuable time in order to make these awards happen. Unlike Cannes Lions, this is not a commercial institution.?
JWT India and Ford had no fresh comments to offer at the time of filing the story other than what they have already said in an official statement. Arvind Sharma, chairman of Indian subcontinent, Leo Burnett and president, Advertising Agencies Association of India (AAAI) was contacted but declined to participate on account of other pressing festival related concerns. Ad man Bobby Pawar’s phone remained switched off.