Scam ads – to ban or not to ban?

By Jayantha P. Sittampalam
Managing Director
Cameron Pale & Medina (Pvt) Ltd

Ad agencies are hell bent on eradicating the scurvy called scam that has affected the industry. Last year, accusations of winning awards by entering scam ads were levelled against many agencies, but resulted in no action - the awards were neither withdrawn nor suspect agencies banned.

This year it’s different, assures, the Sri Lanka Advertising Awards, the joint initiative by the 4As and IAA member agencies to host the Chillies – the island’s premier ad awards.

A draft document circulated among its member agencies outlined how ads are screened for scam at this year’s Chillies Awards
Prepared by the Steering Committee of Chillies 2008, it proposes four criteria for evaluating suspect scam ads. They are : legitimate client & client statement, usage of media, the rupees and cents spent on it and the schedule run. The first needs the collusion of the client and therefore could prove the most difficult to circumvent by agencies on their own. But clients are as greedy as agencies for the awards, since winning validates the effort and justifies decisions taken by the parties involved not to mention bringing them fame and career success.

The other three mentioned are more circumstantial than direct and therefore needs investigation, submission of evidence and conclusive proof that the ads under scrutiny are in fact scam by a committee aptly named scam busters. By the looks of all of this it will be seriously difficult to prove an ad is scam – just like attempting to prove a minister corrupt.

While this problem will remain for longer than we care to argue about it, the real question is, do we need to prove that an ad is scam at all, and for what purpose?

What is scam? A scam ad is one that’s produced purely for submitting as an entry to an award competitions, with no real need for it, nor a genuine commissioning by a client to produce such an ad.

Banning such ads is very noble, you’d think. Ads should be out there selling and agencies that produce ads that are merely to display their skill at creative has no place at a serious ad awards scheme such as the Chillies. Right?

Well not exactly. The Chillies judge ads for creativity and not effectiveness. In fact, it was for this very purpose that the Chillies Awards was born – to judge creative for itself and not subject it to ill effects of base commerce. The criterion of pulling customers in and improving sales was taken as a given – meaning that if the ad was appropriately creative then that ad would automatically reach and convince customers that the product advertised was worth purchasing -automatically. Sounds a bit far fetched, I know, but the ad community had a very detailed and carefully crafted argument to prove that this was the case. Since nobody in the ad industry wished to prove this improbable – for then the whole idea of advertising being an art form would be seriously questioned – everyone was quick to not only accept the idea but also to loudly celebrate it.

There lies the rub. The moment we agree that ads can be judged purely for their creative content giving no mind to how effective they are in the market place, they no longer need to serve a useful purpose. It’s sole reason for existence is as a display or artistic production and of the agencies’ creative talent. Scam ads do the same thing to show the creative talent of the agencies. So why discourage them as a scourge to be banned, burned and buried in infamy? Seems like intricately woven hypocrisy, whichever way one looks at it. Indeed the crime isn’t that scam ads are entered but that they are judged alongside genuine ads. Then, scam ads enjoy an undue advantage, like athletes on drugs competing against those on natural power.

The answer is to allow scam ads to be declared as such and compete against other scam ads. That would give agencies a platform to display their creative talent without the ignominy of misrepresentation. Free from the dictates of a cruel, uncompromising world where real customers pay real money for products based on appeals in genuine ads, agencies can be creative to their hearts’ content – with neither hypocrisy nor pressures of the marketplace getting in the way.

Not only will this eradicate the need for laborious testing and evaluation, it would also institute a level playing field – always a pre-requisite for justice and fairplay. What’s more, Sri Lanka could then compete shoulder to shoulder against their international counterparts at global award competition and perhaps stand a better chance at walking away with a prestigious award or two – one of the prime stated objectives of the Sri Lanka Advertising Awards.