Creativity is good, but effectiveness is better

What is it with advertising people and awards ceremonies?

In the days between the inaugural creative awards of the regional trade magazine, Campaign ME, and this week's bash for the second annual competition for the 'GEMAS' effectiveness awards run by monthly Gulf Marketing Review, it seems a good time to ask.

Apart from the undoubted pleasure of getting together in a large, chandelier-festooned Jumeirah ballroom with a thousand or so of your closest friends in the business to quaff unfeasible amounts of adult beverages, and celebrate one's own agency's successes (well-earned and judiciously awarded prizes with which no reasonable person could argue) and grinding your teeth in frustration at the successes of others (outrageously unjustified, politically motivated and inexplicable to the point of insanity), is there any purpose to such events that survives the hangover?

Well, it is a creative business, so why not reward creativity?

I read recently that there are more awards schemes globally in the movie business than there are feature films made each year. This is certainly not the case in advertising, where there are millions more lousy ads made than are awarded anything. The Campaign ME awards, for instance, attracted over 650 entries and their jury made just 26 awards, a respectably astringent ratio.

Big question

So what are they judging?

Simply, jurors ask themselves, 'Is this a great ad?' Is it an idea with some combination of wit, charm, originality, insight, imagination and intuition, that cuts through the clutter and clamour of the uninspired day-to-day work that is mostly to be seen on screen, on the street and in the press?

Consumers blithely ignore the overwhelming majority of commercial messages hurled at them each day, and remember at most one or two out of thousands. Therefore, an ad with a truly creative idea, executed with style and panache, is the one that is most likely to be effective in lodging its message in the heart of the consumer.

Some clients (none of ours, I hasten to add) are sometimes bafflingly hard to persuade of this. Ask them about their favourite advertising for a brand they love and they will unhesitatingly cite famous, award-winning work whose mysteriously seductive, illogically charming ways have wrapped their affections around its little finger. Yet when it comes to their own briefs, these same clients ignore their instincts and gut-feel and revert to insisting on a check-list of the obvious and hackneyed. Which viewers and readers promptly ignore.

Same qualities

This is a pity, for reams of industry data show that, in the long run, the qualities in award-winning advertising that appeal most to audiences are the same qualities that work best for clients' businesses.

Of course, marketing people are generally stronger on the left brain than the right, and for them reassurance comes in the form of effectiveness awards, well established in the developed marketing world but effectively in their second year in the Middle East, courtesy of Gulf Marketing Review.

Effectiveness awards are harder to organise, require detailed market data that had been difficult to acquire in this region in the past, and call for a degree of openness about business results that not all clients have hitherto been willing to divulge.

However, a credible effectiveness award is arguably an even bigger feather in the cap of the ambitious marketing person or agency strategic planner than a purely creative one (though creativity of execution is also important), so there will be some clammy palms in the audience this Thursday when the announcement of the GEMAS begins.

With luck or should I say if justice prevails the tables of our clients will again be groaning under the weight of more glittering baubles.

- The writer is the regional creative director of Saatchi & Saatchi.