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| Sunday, 15 February 2004 |
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| News Business Features Editorial
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How awards motivate ad industry By Kenneth Honter, President, Accredited Advertising Agencies Association (4As) The excitement of it all, to achieve, to be recognised as one of the best...this is what the buzz is all about every first quarter of the year. the Ad Awards, 'the most prestigious event in the calendar' call it what you will, the adrenalin rush takes all of us to a new high...with it, the cheers of the victors and the tears of those who almost made it. This year we'received 1,100 entries, the highest ever in the history of the event. That's a lot of effort...and money. Has it been a client's money well spent? Has it been a brilliant fusion of effectiveness and creativity or has it been effectiveness sacrificed for the sake of creativity? The questions will be answered at this most effervescent of evenings. Many a sleepless night has been sacrificed, many times has the brief been torn and flung away in frustration, many times has the client servicing person wailed about missing deadlines - until...until that BIG IDEA emerges, sometimes after a week, sometimes in a flash. We'll all be there...a meeting of like minds , some to applaud, some to grin and bear it...but all of us will be there to recognise the best of the best. So, is this what the Ad Awards is all about? Should the Ad awards motivate the industry or should effective marketing communications be our primary motivation? True, creativity is what fires the industry, but what is more important is that strategy should drive it. Creativity in my opinion, should be the means to the end, not the end in itself. In the words of Bob Garfield, who is acknowledged as the worlds most influential advertising critic and author of Advertising Age's widely read column "Ad Review" - "Agencies and clients alike get so caught up in the process of realizing their strategic and creative visions - and so romanticising and mystifying the so-called creative process - that they lose sight altogether of how their output is seen by the outside world. Myopia by immersion. I've heard this called, and nowhere is the phenomenon more apparent than in advertising." Every entry at this event is the effort of an advertising agency but is also an effort which had been initiated on a brief from a client. Did he hire us to win an award or did he hire us to help him achieve his marketing objectives? If we've done both, lets pat ourselves on the back...if we've done the latter, well done again, but if we've achieved only the former, the means then, did not justify the end. |
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