Monthly Archives: March 2011

What can Children teach us about advertising awards?

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Let me make thing clear at the outset, I love awards. I have absolutely nothing against awards. I do have issues with awards that are neither transparent nor authentic. Both represents a form of public swindling that borders what can be called as cheating. This is something that children don’t do. They fight hard, and fight above board.

Advertising awards are supposed to do three things. One, it is supposed to enhance the prestige of the brand. Two, it is supposed to showcase the ability of the agency. Three, crafting path breaking ads becomes a way of life for brands that win. They are doing exact opposite. The awards are dominated by money power, more entries more awards and they are dominated by ‘created for awards’ ads.

There is a simple piece of statistics that we all need to look at. In 2009 at Goa Fest over 200 awards were given out. Of this about 70 were won by brands that were less than 5% of market share in their category. In 2010, of the 214 awards given out, 66 were won by brands that were less than 5% of their category. Now here are some interesting facts. There is no overlap between these brands in 2009 and 2010. Which means brands that won in 2009 did not win in 2010. None of these 120 brands that won crossed the 5% mark. They remained fringe brands that the tracking agencies find hard to track.

Even more startling is the fact that 85% awards are won by just 4 agencies, year on year. This is because 85% of entries come from these agencies. Somehow it is not celebration of best of best, it is a celebration of who entered more to win more.

We need to consider this with some interest. Creating award winning campaigns did not push the brand to greater success. Creating path breaking ads did not become mainstream culture for these brands. The creation of winning campaign thus only helped the agencies that created it. It would seem that there are many big brands that won awards, and did very well in market place. These are largely true, but were the ads part of mainstream campaigns is debatable.

Today there are major issues with award functions. May be there is very little right with advertising awards. The judging of shows has been compromised systemically year on year. Genuine ads often don’t make it, created specially win it.  Because they are created for awards, efficacy is never in consideration. It seems advertising award shows have become bigger business than celebrating advertising.

We as an industry are faced with key questions. Is there a way of improving? Can we improve the award shows, or completely reform them?

To find the answers I looked at school children. The joys of winning awards are hard wired into us from school. They remain the best template for being evaluated and being declared a winner. The system is simple, transparent and proven. More importantly they are egalitarian, they promote participation, and  the whole school believes in them. It suffers from none of the issues that are facing advertising awards today.

Here are a set of reforms that our award shows need to undergo, and the lessons are drawn from school children

First, be open to evaluation from a completely independent jury. The school awards are not judged by classmates. Winning an award in school does not mean hankering for extra marks in math exam. As an industry if we want to be rewarded for differentiated thinking, it should be from a panel of judges that we respect and value. Get the critiques, filmmakers, musicians, even clients into the jury

Second, we need to be genuine about ourselves and our work. The school children do not get their outside school friends to come and play in school team. Nor do they resort to lies or tricks to earn extra points. They are open, honest and transparent. We as an industry are caught in the circle of lies. We keep telling lies and only we believe they are the truth.  Schools don’t have what is called as process breach.

Third, the schools make it clear how the system of evaluation would work. How much of objectivity and how much of creativity matters are made clear from start. They stick to time lines and rules. Advertising awards and participating entrants need to play by rules.

If we have to award created for award ads, then let’s keep them free of brands, let’s celebrate the craft, independent of brands. The specially created ads any way don’t matter, at least we would be serious about what we award.

These are not radical suggestions. These are easily implementable. Yet somehow I think it won’t happen. We as communication professionals are change agents. We make consumers to change established behavioral patterns. Yet we are the most rigid and inflexible people.

I do hope, we can learn from our kids.

Realty Brand Guide

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This is something that would have happened to most of you.

You get a SMS in middle of the night, you wake up wondering, who is sending you a message so late, is everything ok? You discover that the message is from your local real estate developer who is offering you your dream home in some yet to be developed suburb of city at some ‘exciting’ prices. You curse, and try and go back to sleep, promising never to even consider buying a property from such unscrupulous developers.

This is the real issue with the real estate market in India.

Home is the biggest investment you will ever make. It is the single biggest transaction one does in a lifetime.  It is carefully considered, evaluated, mulled over and the whole family gets involved in it. And the real deal is that the transaction is not over after you have paid the money. This is a really long purchase cycle.

This makes the segment a unique blend of product and service. The hard factors that are on offer are evaluated very carefully, but the softer aspects like service, sensibility, adaptability, and reflection of local culture starts to become the differentiator.

Yet, this is the segment that has commoditized the fastest. The real estate ads are standard, the real estate offers are standard and the real estate pitch is standard. This fails to create a bond with the potential buyers, and the relationship remains transactional.

The current communication and the brand architecture have fuelled this increasing commoditization of the category. Brands want to have a unique vocabulary for themselves. They want to own idioms that help them create the right impression. For some unexplainable reasons the real estate brands have abandoned this. They speak the same language, leverage the same idioms, and create the same connections. Here are some rules that most brands adhere by

  • The name of property should always be in English. A Hindi/vernacular name instantly means a drop in possible prices. We will never know Spain from Turkey as they all are in a suburb near you.
  • Mention possible rise in property value. What this means is that we are overpriced, but we hope you will not bargain and instead get lured by the promise of future
  • Mention fixed returns in large point size. What it means is that we don’t sell real estate anymore, but we need to raise some serious money. Banks ask a lot of questions, consumers are not likely to do so
  • No EMI till possession means that as a brand we have large amount of inventory left, and we need to sell it off quickly. This is really clever as what looks like a discount is actually a price rise in disguise. And we evaluative money wise Indians never figure this out
  • Never mention the fact that you are far away from civilization. Add the word extension, or new to a relatively well known locality. The consumer will never be able to figure out where the new development comes up with
  • Always mention a host of amenities and features. This will ensure that consumers get lost in unnecessary details and do not evaluate the flat. This will ensue that people talk more about packaging and less about the product.

And these are not all the things people do. To add a bit of zing first the brands used voices of actors and now use celebrities. With a plethora of celebrities who just act as wallpapers in ads, even that is not working.

May be the real estate sector needs to see its brand beyond brick and mortar, and start to reflect aspirations and dreams. Homes are not about money appreciation, homes are about relationship appreciation.  May be the brands need to explore these dimensions far more than features and sizes. Even the high technology categories have moved beyond feeds and speed.

Till then, the brands should be losing sleep and stop waking people up in middle of the night.