Post-awards, post-purpose: Will purpose focused work win out if there aren’t awards on the line?
As the issue of awards cheating rears its head yet again, Oglivy's Alex Watts considers exactly where creative would land in a post-awards world.
If anyone won Cannes this year, it was McCann New York’s Fearless Girl. The street statue, which was commissioned by investment firm State Street Global Advisors as a statement about gender diversity in the workplace, won 18 lions in total, including four grand prix. It set a standard that’s hard to beat.
More than that, it cements a long established (and long awarded) industry trend: advertising with a purpose at the core.
It’s not hard to find other examples – Like A Girl from Always, or Worlds Apart from Heineken. All of this work lives and breathes in convincing the audience that the brand believes in the cause, and is doing what they can to change the world.
McCanns’ Fearless Girl was created by artist Kristen Visbal
But if these weren’t a factor, would purpose focused work still win out?
This isn’t necessarily a hypothetical – WPP plc and Publicis have spent 2017 considering their position in the awards circuit.
And just yesterday, the boss of media agency Atomic 212 was publicly called out by Mumbrella for cheating on numerous awards entries.
Events like these naturally result in a question mark over the value of awards, and the creation of the type of work they tend to favour.
A changed landscape
Some of the world’s best creative and digital agencies are currently being snapped up in the consultancy land grab. You can track the history of those purchases here, but probably the most relevant one for Australia was Accenture picking up The Monkeys for $63m.
Time will tell if these changes in structure will impact how agencies enter awards, but it raises a broader question – what distinguishes agencies from consultancies as we move into 2018? I doubt anyone is thinking award shows are the answer.
The sharpest tool in the shed
There’s another pressure on purpose-driven advertising in the work of Byron Sharp. Sharp argues that the majority of your consumers are not loyal – to the tune of 80% – and that the volume of sales instead comes from light, infrequent consumers.
If this holds true, work that focuses on driving loyalty misses the mark – and some of the best purpose-driven work focuses on this by establishing a link between the consumer and the brand. If that doesn’t drive sales, why would you do it?
The perceived risk of having purpose
There’s also the chance you’ll miss the mark – and that chance turns a lot of brands away. Just look at the wealth of brands who whiffed it during the marriage equality Postal Survey. Whether it’s inconsistency like OOH Media and the AFL, atonal partnerships like Coopers, or odd product placements like Magnum. For some, this chance of failure is the biggest barrier to delivering work with a purpose focus.
So Ooh! Media have taken up the No Campaign client. But hey, they put a rainbow in their profile picture + became partners with @junkee. ?? pic.twitter.com/NccrH0TgSv
— Brendan Maclean (@macleanbrendan) October 7, 2017
And, in some ways, that is a valid fear – the line that separates a hit from a miss is thin. But then you look at the home runs. GayNZ works because it’s part of a long-term commitment to community. Bundaberg Rum nailed it as well – even though it’s a newer association for them.
The volume of conversation, consideration, and positive association these brands build by having and authentic purpose has a value – and while not as easily measured as point of sale, or local area marketing, it is possible to prove the impact of this work.
The right judgement
Sharp is right about at least one thing – we shouldn’t judge our success on engagement alone, or on the idea that brand campaigns drive loyalty. As we move into 2018, it’s important that teams on both sides of the agency/client/consultancy divide put more rigour into how they define and measure success – particularly, on social.
Worlds Apart has 14 million views on Youtube – reflecting a substantial reach result. More impressively, Like A Girl sits at 64 million. These two examples start to build a case for purpose-driven work that exists beyond award shows – in the reach they drive, and the brands they help build.
The case study for Fearless Girl charts over five billion impressions for the campaign in the first 12 weeks – a staggering amount of reach. Of course, most of this coverage neglects to mention the brand, but if even 10% did… those are still good numbers.
Don’t forget the makers
The teams behind these purpose-driven campaigns aren’t doing it just for the awards – they’re highlighting real issues, and sometimes solving them in real ways. Will that stop because the awards go away? I’d say no. Sure, the volume of purpose-driven award scams might reduce – but that’s probably a good thing. The optimist would say we’ll land in a position more focused authentic work, and that’s good for everyone.
Where do we land?
We might be post-award moving into 2018, but we’re not post-purpose. There’s a place for work that connects with people who happen to be consumers, and the people making it in agencies and on the brand side – we’ve just got to make sure we’re measuring the right things, and choosing authentic purposes to support.
Alex Watts is head of social at Ogilvy.
Using Like a Girl as a case for why purpose driven advertising is effective is a bit like using Oreo’s Dunk in the Dark tweet to demonstrate why social media is effective. They’re outliers and should be used for creative inspiration, not as part of a serious discussion around the effectiveness of specific channels or strategies.
There’s only a point in using a purpose driven strategy if it makes you stand out in any way, from your competitors and in the media landscape in general. Purpose today is extremely narrowly defined, purely revolving around certain strict definitions of equality and diversity. In other words, brands are limited to demonstrating the degree to which they’re not a racist, sexist or homophobe.
I wonder in whose interest that is…
If brands want their purpose to lead to profit they need to promote an un-PC point of view. Or at least something with the tiniest degree of controversy surrounding it.
How about targeting the millions of Liberal voters for a change, instead of just your local barista?
Of course, people who work in marketing and advertising are too cowardly to do that. You see, people in advertising today don’t create work for the benefit of their brands – God forbid, it’s not like they’re capitalists or anything – they create work so that they can convey and promote their own ideology and worldview (and a rather predictable one at that).
In other words, corporations spend millions so that their PC employees and agencies can virtue signal to their friends. Now, that’s ironic.
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I actually don’t know what the author’s point of view is after reading this article. Nothing has been put at stake here. A Whitman’s Sampler of thought starters that lead nowhere.
Also confusing: Pro purpose, yet anti brand. Pro award winning work, yet anti awards.
Better try next time, mate.
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I find it ironic that the writer is calling crap on awards only to then peddle their own crap. Way to grab every hot trend and philosophy currently sitting at the epicentre of the advertising zeitgeist and misinterpret, misuse and bastardise it in order to try and appear in the know.
“work that focuses on driving loyalty misses the mark – and some of the best purpose-driven work focuses on this by establishing a link between the consumer and the brand.”
Actually, connecting with consumers is what you try to do with every type of campaign. Most of the purpose driven campaigns you’ve mentioned are populist and wide reaching, meaning that they do just what the likes of Sharp and Peter Field say. They reach the whole market and use emotion to connect with the whole category, encompassing both light and heavy buyers.
Might pay to do some research so you know what you’re talking about before writing the next one.
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Bit of heat in the comments on this one. Justified!
If the author had provided a map at the top of the article, I might have kept up with him throughout.
But he very early on lost me, and I was flat out trying to rejoin the party.
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