What’s going to happen this year?

The issues of scam ads, or ads created purely to win awards and engaged in with a vengeance again this year, shows up the dwindling ethics in the ad industry, or some part of it, which seems to be happy to throw caution, integrity and fair business practices to the winds in the name of ‘creativity at any cost’.

Winning awards has become an obsession, so much so that employment of fraudulent and corrupt means to win awards through the proliferation of scam ads have been justified as acceptable white lies and minor transgressions that, it is contended, are practised in other countries and necessary to get into international award shows.

When the issue came up last year and was taken up with the Trustees of the Sri Lanka Advertising Awards, after months of deliberation between them and the industry bodies, they concluded that no action could be taken as no complaints had been received aginst specific ads and agencies and that scam ads, calculated to be 38% of all those which won awards, did not break the letter of the law as it then existed. This begs the questions (a) whether the Trustees realistically expected one agency to make complaints about another, and (b) whether such watchdog institutions should concern themselves only with the letter of the law or enforcing the spirit of the law to uphold the integrity of the awards which is their prime responsibility.

The fact that several agencies engaged in generating an avalanche of scam ads, particularly in December before the end-year deadline, showed the effect of inaction, though the Trustees maintained that they and the Steering Committee appointed to carry out the 2008 Awards had formulated a scheme to stop scam in 2008. The Steering Committee, however, started with the caveat that “scam cannot be completely eliminated”. The original superficialities such as “No Scam” logos and the grand trumpeting of a scam prevention scheme, when the 2008 contest was launched, were found to be superficial insurance-taking with no hope to effectively combat scam. This was pointed out to the Trustees in writing by no less than 9 major agencies which sought a meeting with them. The meeting was not granted, but instead the Trustees put the ball into the court of the IAA and Four A’s and asked them and the Steering Committee to review the scam prevention system.

With some hurried consulation with the industry, an “improved” scam prevention system was put in place with 4 “Scam Busters” and a 4-point Scam Evaluation Guideline. However, the early casualty with two of the experienced industry-elected “Scam Busters” pulling out over disagreements with the Steering Committee on how they were to work may have compromised the process from the start.

The scam detection system implemented this year is still far from perfect and the “Scam Busters” had nothing more than their “gut feel” and ESP to smell out the scam ads. Details of media placement and extent of the campaign, an essential aid to scam detection, were not available to the Scam Busters, who we hope did their best in such a vacuum of information. The Steering Committee and the Trustees therefore have to now take a larger part of the responsibility to investigate the “possible scam ads” flagged by the “Scam Busters” and make their decisions to disqualify from the contest those entries appearing questionable beyond reasonable doubt.

This is indeed not an easy task as many manipulations are at work, some of which are already known – like that of a scam-flagged agency that requested a false certification of airing from a TV station, that rightly refused, and which may have now got a certification from another. This raises the question of possible corruption of the media by agencies, which promise to scratch their back if they scratched theirs through such false certifications. Now, it is only if the Steering Committee take their responsibilities seriously and independently ascertain airing, for example through media monitoring services, and other points of their 4-criteria guideline, can scam ads be eliminated.

While we thought, that the best proof against scam was the word of the Agency Heads or Clients, it appears that the compulsion to win awards at any cost and the attitude that scam ads are minor and “acceptable” transgressions about which they call tell a “white lie” creates a situation where Trustees, the final arbiters of scam, must consider all criteria of proof set out in the 4-point guideline and make some bold decisions to uphold the letter and spirit of the law and fulfill their responsibilities, where they find transgressions and doubtful entries.

The ad industry waits with bated breath to see if the Trustees and Steering Committee will fulfill the responsibilities thrust upon them by the industry or will let scam ads slip through and win, which will cause a loss of credibility for “The Chillies” which the industry only recently put together with so much hope.

What’s going to happen this year? - point of view