Agencies face five year awards ban for scam ads
A fraudulent awards entry from the Brazilian office of advertising agency DDB has triggered a crackdown on scam ads by one of the world’s biggest awards festivals.
The US-based One Show announced the zero tolerance rule change after the “Tsunami” DDB ad – purporting to be for WWF and featuring a squadron of airliners bearing down on New York during the 911 attack – was outed as a scam ad.
The One Show issued a statement saying:
In the light of the recent events surrounding the “Tsunami Ad” created by DDB Brazil for WWF, the One Club announces today that we will implement what we believe to be the most stringent and thorough “fake ads” policy in our industry.
The One Club defines “fake ads” as: ads created for nonexistent clients or made and run without a client’s approval, or ads created expressly for award shows that are run once to meet the requirements of a tear sheet.
For 2010 and onwards, the One Show will be adopting the following new rules and penalties.
1. An agency or regional office of an agency network that enters an ad made for nonexistent clients, or made and run without a client’s approval, will be banned from entering the One Show for 5 years.
2. The entire team credited on the “fake” entries will be banned from entering the One Show for 5 years.
3. An agency or regional office of an agency network that enters an ad that has run once, on late night TV, or has only run because the agency produced a single ad and paid to run it themselves*, will be banned from entering The One Show for 3 years.
* The One Club reserves the right to review ‘late-night, ran-once’ and launch versions, at The One Club’s discretion. If it is determined that the ad was created expressly for award show entry, the penalty will hold.
The One Club exists to champion excellence in advertising and design in all its forms. We will stringently enforce these rules and penalties to ensure that The One Show remains the pinnacle of advertising and design created for marketers and brands.
The One Show encourages other international award shows to follow suit with similar policies. In addition, we are in the process of developing an initiative in the agency, client, and creative communities, in which individuals and agencies will be called upon to monitor and eliminate “fake” ads at their source. A detailed guidelines will appear in the 2010 One Show Call for Entry.”
The issue of scam ads has also arisen in Australia. One of the most high profile incidents also involved DDB. Last year the Sydney office of DDB admitted that a series of ads it created had not been commissioned by clients. It ran print ads across a single column in a local paper, and a TVC only once in an early morning slot on a TV station in Adelaide. At the time, DDB said the staff member responsible had been reprimanded.
In the UK, the trade magazine Campaign banned a creative duo from its awards for three years, and permanently barred them from sitting on its jury after they won its print awards with a scam ad.
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Now AWARD in Australia has to follow suit or they will look stupid.
I might even rejoin.
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Past transgressions aside, finally one award show may regain credibility. I bet that bad ad wouldn’t have gotten a merit if some of those very same judges hadn’t won their positions with their own scam. You can always tell the difference between real creatives who understand both pushing creative boundaries as well as reality (weiden, BBH, goodby, etc)…vs those who think a poster of planes crashing makes a good point.
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I remember as a young ‘un being asked to book midnight-dawn spots on Wollongong TV so ‘ads’ could qualify for awards entry. I’m disappointed to hear 1000 years later, and in this age of accountability, that nothing much has changed. Also as a resident of Manhattan at the time and witness to 9/11 this particular ‘ad’ made me sick to my stomach.
This issue is one for all award shows really regardless of discipline. If you choose to gain your income by working in Advertising, you’re choosing a commercial path to use your talents, not a purely artistic one. That being the case, surely creativity, strategic insight, brilliant execution etc. should be validated by the inclusion of audited business outcomes? Whats the point of the industry patting each other on the back for great thinking, if the thinking didn’t achieve anything commercially?
We all know clients who won’t take risks and go the creative edge with us…thats the ‘creative challenge’ innit? If agencies had to prove business outcomes when entering any awards programme this would firstly validate what it is we do as being more than a load of BS, and would do a lot to stop the scammers.
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Legit ads? Risky call.
Four fifths of all entries would dry up.
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Award shows could include a ‘Scam’ category in the list then all the scam can go into one pool, legitimately. Creatives still get a chance to be awarded for flexing their creative muscles outside of traditional ‘boundaries’ (like it being a real ad for a real client with a real media spend).
Most scam ads are genuinely awesome ads and are worth sharing and potentially being awarded for, but maybe in an honest, open way.
May even be a good way to pitch for new business for an imaginary or potential client if the ads are good enough. Just a thought..
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Why not have a rule that the PAID media expenditure must be at least 10% (or whatever) of the production budget. These are easily auditable and quantifiable criteria. Maybe we could then find criteria that weeded out ads of dubious taste. Really … the WTC to scam-promote WWF?
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Don’t the Effies by their very nature get around this problem?
They also ensure less introspective analysis and more on the direct impact ads have in the market.
It may not be as fashionable, but it is much more effective.
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@Oli – Better still, why not get paid for ideas your client won’t use?
http://www.creative-exchange.com/
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Most scam is the easiest thing in the world to do. If you want to see it, read Archive. Scam doesn’t ‘raise the creative bar’ it does just the opposite. It devalues the creative dept because everyone else truly believes creatives only care about awards and not whether it’s a good, powerful ad that solves the brief.
Otherwise, shows should celebrate the best work that got made. Especially if we’re tying jobs and salary to awards like we do. Otherwise, it’s fraud.
As for the Effies, they’re just as easy for planners to BS with the numbers.
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