Zombie Campaigns. The old Award Show Problem revisited.

Mai 16th, 2010 • 1 comment Allgemein
Tags: ADC, Agencies, Awards, Business, Creativity, Experimental, Germany, Ideas, Strategy, Truth, visual

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’?

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