Talkback: What price gold for scam ads?

One of my favourite ads of all time was a Nike billboard campaign that ran around the 1996 Atlanta Olympics that just simply said: "You don't win silver. You lose gold".

At the time, this simple statement was lauded and criticised.

I don't know, but I imagine that athletes like Michael Johnson absolutely believed in this philosophy, whereas others who believed more in the Olympic spirit of the world coming together as celebration of humanity, had a different view.

In business, there aren't a lot of prizes for coming second and, in the ad agency business, this is particularly so. It's no surprise then that winning gold at Axis, New Zealand's most prestigious creative award ceremony, is a coveted and highly desirable prize that any agency worth their salt strives for.

But at what price?

We are all too familiar with the scam ad. The ad that is conceived and produced for free and then foisted on an unsuspecting and usually obscure business or retailer (hairdressers and the local curry hut are always popular) that the agency has never had any dealings with and probably never will again.

Some in our industry argue there is nothing wrong with scam ads winning creative recognition. The argument being, that creative awards are designed to recognise the purity and originality of an idea, therefore it is irrelevant for whom the idea is for. But this age-old debate is one that has no answer and doesn't address the key issue.

What is important, and what mystifies me, is that as an industry we continually bemoan the fact that our clients do not value our ideas.

We have grown from a commission-led charging structure to become predominantly service fee-based. We are still, in the main, being paid for servicing, production and media planning and buying and not for ideas.

The acknowledgment and the power of intellectual copyright soars and the world's most powerful brands recognise it, desire it and spend millions of dollars protecting and enforcing the intangible equity as well as their trademark. Meanwhile, ad agencies, the creators of much of that equity, seem unable to charge a premium for it.

Why? We ask ourselves - somewhat perplexed by this whole conundrum.

Well consider this.

As an industry, we have decreed that a gold creative award is the highest recognition an idea can gain, the pinnacle of fresh thinking and unadulterated creativity, the ultimate celebration of our talent and our product.

But if we then award gold to scam ads, ads paid for not by the client but by the agency (in other words free) then it makes it pretty damn hard to tell the paying clients, many of whom don't get awarded gold, that we want them to pay for the ideas that weren't as creatively original as the ones we gave away.

* Nick Baylis is chief executive of advertising agency FCB New Zealand.