Awards rule, OK?

ARGENTINIAN AD-MAN Pablo del Campo is one of the world’s top creatives. He’s also Loerie Awards advertising chairman this year, a welcome choice who will inject an intriguing combination of Latin flair and emerging-nation realism into the proceedings. CEO of a leading Buenos Aires agency – Del Campo Nazca Saatchi & Saatchi – he’s a multiple award winner with trenchant views on the value of creative awards.

“They’re good for different reasons,” he says in an email interview. “They guarantee the idea is good and attractive for different audiences. They help attract and retain the best talent in the agencies. They help build the careers of brand executives. They help build the reputation of an agency worldwide. And they train advertising executives to think in a more simple and convincing way.

“An agency that works on a project and then receives an award for it, is more interesting than one that wins nothing – for sure. And that has nothing to do with the award itself but with the effectiveness of the idea.”

Del Campo cites TBWA’s “Trillion Dollar Campaign” as a South African example of using intelligence to solve problems with innovative ideas. “There are several strong agencies with very interesting people in SA,” he says.

Del Campo has noticed a growing trend to base creative awards on the strategic thinking as well as the creative implementation. “The traditional festivals are starting to look more like the Effie Awards, where the strategic solution to a problem is taken into consideration. That makes the impact of the idea as important as its efficacy. In the future that will be the way to differentiate good communication from bad.”

But for an agency to stand out, an occasional awards victory is irrelevant. “The key factor is to be consistent. It’s useless to win at Cannes just once, because that may be just a matter of luck. An agency that wins at Cannes and at home year after year is an agency that generates good ideas, and that can also project international business.

“There’s no better example than Andes Teletransporter. The idea – developed for a province of Argentina – became a local and international success, winning a Cannes Grand Prix this year. And that’s because globalisation produces insights that are universal, like tastes.”

Del Campo believes the renewed importance of strategy will discourage “scam” ads (produced purely to win awards, often with an irrelevant or unsuitable concept). “Scam ads will always be there – especially in print, since it’s very easy to create a print ad and place it in any magazine.

“Fortunately, the other categories have moved to a more strategic place, where you can see the problem of the brand and the strategic solution to it. There’s not much space for scams ads there.”

Does he see any parallels between Argentina and SA? It doesn’t seem so. “We’re South America and you’re South Africa. I think the fact of being from the south makes us work harder in order to match up with the ones from the north.”

• The Loerie Awards take place in Cape Town on October 1-3. Judging is August 17-25.