The annual Loerie Awards acknowledge excellence in 18 advertising and marketing categories. But, asks Brenda Atkinson, do the ads actually work?
Show me someone who hasn’t been seduced by an advert in their lifetime, and I’ll show you a badly cut pair of Levis. Much as we might hate to admit it, we are critical consumers of ad-industry product: in our heads, applause and indifference rate by turns on the Consumer Private Awards register.
And while we like to think of choice as an option we exercise in the face of increasingly sophisticated media technologies, we are to a great degree all members of niche markets, our perceptions of reality cleverly constructed by the people “in the industry”.
This weekend, members of that industry, from junior copywriters to senior executives, will gather in Northern Province for that great annual tribal celebration known as the Loerie Awards. This is where the fab and the wannabe-fab get to get down with their own, on their own turf.
While it might be true that, in the words of Abe Lincoln, “with public opinion on its side, nothing can fail”, this gathering is less about public opinion and all about peer pressure.
South Africa’s Loerie Awards reflect both the evolution of new media and increased market specialisation over a period of 20 years. Launched by the Association of Marketers in 1978 to set advertising benchmarks for the new commercial medium of television, the Loerie’s first official outing took place in 1979. Its first Grand Prix winner was Bull Brand sausages.
We might well snicker into our Diesel shirt-sleeves at the memory of that particular bit of beef, but since then the Loeries have mushroomed into a gala event with 18 mutually exclusive categories, and this year the ceremony will draw close to 3 000 people to the Sun City Superbowl.
Arguably South Africa’s most sought- after bird, the Loerie has also become the focus of a debate that has for years split industry opinion on the fervent cultivation of an awards culture within individual agencies.
Critics of this “go for gold” approach to creative production – a win-or-face-eternal- shame kind of approach – argue that clients are often the losers in the race for awards-related recognition. Once an agency has won a bird, the story goes, it is compelled to keep winning. Not only does this entrench the idea that you’re only as good as your last award, it is seen by some as an incentive to sway clients away from less glamorous media to creative product that is strategically aimed at the birds. Some agencies are estimated to plough as much as R500 000 annually into awards entries in the interests of sustaining reputation.
This has, to an extent, been addressed within the industry. Three years ago, the Association of Advertising Agencies (Triple A) launched the Apex Awards, an international initiative focusing on advertising “effectiveness” – industry jargon for an agency’s success in meeting the client’s objective, and rated according to quantifiable, market-related results.
Similarly, the Financial Mail Adfocus Ad Agencies of the Year Award stresses a “holistic approach” to advertising that rates marketing services and “strategic business solutions for the client” equally with creative, award- winning work.
Another concern expressed by small and emerging agencies is that the Loeries function as a contemporary “gentlemen’s club” intent on keeping its elitist base intact.
It’s true that if you have not won a Loerie yourself, you cannot be a Loeries judge. And indeed trying to get industry honchos to stand by personal opinion for this piece was like trying to hack the Microsoft mainframe. Mouths clamped shut quicker than you could say “the Nike swoosh”.
Of course, these are busy people. But it’s hard to believe that someone with the title of executive director needs to think for 24 hours before he or she will answer questions that they insist, via their secretary, be posed via fax. Having been referred back and forth so often I began to think I was stuck in the Telkom offices, I had to concede that “don’t quote me on this” means just that.
This reluctance to enter the debate at a public level is understandable. Advertising is a tight industry, paradoxically marked by the willingness of its members to take a break from battle now and then and have a nice cup of tea with the opposition. The majority of Loerie judges surely have a vested interest in their status vis-a-vis the awards, as do the institutional standard bearers (not really watchdogs) within the local industry. A good number of international judges, who might otherwise be considered impartial, are connected to local agency chapters.
In the absence of official commentary, one is left to conclude that the silence surrounding the value of awards – the Loerie in particular – is about protecting own interests. Add to this the fact that the average cost of attending the Loeries as a finalist is R1 000 per person, not to mention the cost of entries, and it’s clear that this is not a casual stop at the MacDonald’s drive-thru.
Whether it should be or not is still up for grabs. It is after all in the nature of awards to distinguish, to grant accolades and acknowledgement. In its current form, the Loerie ceremony enables recognition of the creative individuals who are otherwise anonymous, as campaigns for clients enter the public domain under the name of the corporate conglomerate.
Like artists, producers of creative media need the recognition of their peers. Like artists, they need a network – like the Loeries – that endorses their work and expands its consumer market.
It’s a pity, then, that as far as debate is concerned, its participants and industry associates are sitting so tight on those little eggs. Their attitude seems to be that, for something to succeed, public opinion is irrelevant.