Scam ad shakes world advertising

Johannesburg - A deeply insensitive Brazilian-made advertisement for the World Wildlife Fund, which ran without WWF approval, has prompted the toughest sanction ever imposed in America against scam ads.

The move has been welcomed in South Africa, but there's also a feeling that similar action is not needed here.

The cause of all the trouble was DDB Brazil, whose ad (in both print and television formats) showed dozens of aeroplanes hurtling towards the World Trade Centre in New York. The script and copy observe that the 2004 tsunami killed 100 times more people than the 9/11 terrorist attacks that destroyed the twin towers. "The planet is brutally powerful. Respect it."

Two problems: the insensitivity of the ad and the fact that it was not approved by the client. The agency ran it anyway and entered it into the One Club Show, one of the world's top four advertising awards ceremonies - where it won a merit award. But when the truth emerged, The One Club withdrew the award and slapped a five-year ban on entering the competition (starting in 2010) against any agency that enters a "fake" ad - and also against the entire team credited with the ad. It defines a fake as an ad made for non-existent clients, or run without client approval.

A three-year ban will be imposed if you enter an ad that has run only once, or on late-night TV (when airings are cheap), or paid for by the agency instead of a client.

Andrew Human, MD of the Loerie Awards, says the Loeries will re-examine its stance on scams, but he doesn't believe scam work has much chance of winning awards. This is partly because pro-active work is allowed, and partly because in this small market the judges have a good idea of which work is genuine.

In some countries, pro-active advertising is not considered a scam as long as the client goes along with the plan. This is where the agency and perhaps the production house do the work at no cost to test an idea. The client approves but doesn't have to pay for it. If it works - or wins an award - it may receive more extensive exposure.

"Being pro-active and pushing for better work are all part of advertising," says Human.

Every country has examples of scams, though Brazil and some eastern countries seem to be turning scamming into a higher art form than the ads themselves.

A South African example, which won a Loerie Grand Prix two years ago and has been justified as pro-active, was the campaign against video piracy by TBWA Hunt Lascaris. The idea was that videos of the movie Tsotsi would be sold cheaply on street corners.

But 10 minutes into the movie, it would break down, and the viewer would be told his R50 was a donation to the campaign.

In theory, thousands of people would receive a strong message about video piracy. In reality, this never happened on any significant scale. Few if any phony videos were sold. It was a great idea that was never put into practice.

A Guide to Scamming

Scam ads are made by ad agencies primarily to win awards and they flout the conventions of ad-making. One giveaway is when a substantial TV campaign is produced for a hair-dressing salon, dog parlour or bookstore, which wouldn't normally spend that kind of money on advertising. Among their characteristics, apart from those mentioned above:

• The agency makes and runs an ad without the client's approval;
• The agency runs an ad for an imaginary client;
• The client is complicit in the scam. He signs off an ad, but is told it will cost him nothing;
• The ad is run once in order to qualify for entry to an award, usually at low cost. For example, an ad may be placed in a small community free-sheet, or aired on television at 03:00, when rates are low;
• The ad is produced and aired at no cost to the client, who may be counted as a client only because of this one-off deal.
• The ad is run in small size, but when entered for a competition it is enlarged to a much bigger size, and sometimes even altered to make it more likely to win an award.

- Fin24.com