Zombie Campaigns. The old Award Show Problem revisited.

Mai 16th, 2010 • Allgemein

Once upon a time there was a man named David Ogilvy who said something very true about advertising – ‘We sell or else’. We all think that this is the mission of advertising agencies (however you define them). No matter whether we talk about selling in a sense of branding, customer services, hard sales – we need to help solving our client’s business problem. Form follows function. Advertising does not end in itself.

We all know pretty often this is not the case. Not always but often advertising ends in itself. Especially when it comes to ad awards. Many of you know the rules of the game – the more awards you collect as an agency the more creative you are allowed to call yourself. That’s the currency of the advertising industry. But this currency follows a bizarre distribution logic – the most important awards worldwide do not reward effective campaigns and ideas. They reward funny concepts designed for awards shows without an effect on clients, markets and brands. Most often nobody has seen these ‘campaigns’ at all simply because they do not exist except on award shows. Zombie campaigns.

No, not every piece of marketing communication which has won a gold, silver or bronze nail at last weekend’s ADC (Art Director’s Club Germany) congress in Frankfurt and other award shows falls into this category. But some do. Zombie campaigns can easily be identified by doing a campaign reality check. Just ask yourself these questions.

The Zombie Creation Checklist

• Does the awarded campaign look like a fancy idea as trigger for a good marketing effect? Or just like a good idea?
• Does it look like something driven by an agency or by the client?
• Is the client an unusual small brand in comparison to the remaining client list of the agency?
• Is it technically feasible (if interactive) at all?
• Was there any real audience? Or were the only platforms to stage the concept ‘blogs’?

Let’s take a look at two pieces of zombie creation which won an anwful lot of awards this weekend. The fact that both ideas come from Germany’s notorious creative hotshop no 1, Jung von Matt, is not surprising – campaigns like the two following ones are essential to stay on top of Germany’s most creative agency charts. And Jung von Matt is absolutely professional with these types of ‘campaigns’. And yes, other agencies act exactly the same. I just picked these two as I found these two especially remarkable as typical Zombie Creation.

Zombie #1 – Eichborn, Fly Banner

Okay, you got it? Eichborn is a German publisher with a fly as a logo. The agency attached little banners to flies as a ‘promotion’ on Frankfurt’s book fair. How many people were addressed by a fly banner? Four? Five? How many photographers did you see in this little Youtube clip? Ten? This is a nice little idea. But its reason to exist is to live on Youtube and ad blogs. It has no reach, it does not communicate anything – it’s just there to win an award.

Zombie #2 – Last Call

Oh please! Who believes this thing did ever work? Even if anybody left his phone number on one of these flyers…how is a whole cinema supposed to interact with a movie individually. Voice recognition? Check. Mobile? Check. But how will you coordinate 15 people giving different orders to the protagonist on the screen. Either the little film does not explain the concept properly…or the project never really existed. I know of nobody who has encountered this spectacular marketing concept. In my opinion this is not a working concept. It is something like a prototype which pretends to be a marketing campaign. But it isn’t.

We make art. Not money.
I know I offend people with this rant. I know I chose two examples among a list of wonderful, working and effective creative solutions staged at this year’s ADC congress and other award shows. But as I love marketing and as I believe in strong ideas I cannot understand why zombie creation still gets awarded in 2010. Talking about relevance, ROI and new agency forms seems like lip service in the light of these types of awarded campaigns.

Hey, sure. We are talking about the Art Director’s Club. I know this is not the Effie Award which (…well…) rewards working, efficient concepts. Nevertheless zombie creation confuses me. It simply makes me ask myself what our output as ad/marketing people is. Is it working campaigns? Product- and brand-focused relevance for customers? And yes, cool, creative campaigns are relevant if they work. But PR stunts for our agencies aren’t.

For god’s sake. It’s 2010. And awarded output which just exists to look nice at award shows and on ad blogs is so 1986. It’s an extremely uncool waste of time – and I prefer to visit a gallery to see art. 

That’s my position. And now kill me.

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Tags: ADC, Agencies, Awards, Business, Creativity, Experimental, Germany, Ideas, Strategy, Truth, visual

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