Hot Take, Ep. 10: Industry Awards Are Great But Brand & Sales Lift Matter More

Marketing has come a long way, from a nondescript function on the back banner to the front-runner driving business growth. There were times when marketers couldn’t even rise to the c-suite levels in many organizations. Early practitioners, and those who followed them, made it their duty to educate other professionals about the critical role of marketing in business. As time went by, marketing has managed to carve its place on the list of most sought-after professions.

In professionalizing marketing practice, we’ve seen the rise of marketing associations. They play an important role in advancing standards of practice through various approaches, for example, accrediting curriculum or granting professional certifications to indicate that a person is qualified in the subject area.

To promote excellence among marketing practitioners, many professional associations have introduced industry awards. Some globally recognized marketing awards include Cannes Lions, Ad week, and MarCom Awards. Locally, we have MSK Awards, SOMA Awards, and Digital Media Awards but just to highlight a few. Getting any one of these is a vote of confidence in an agency’s or individual’s ability to deliver an exceptional marketing campaign. In most cases, it opens new doors of opportunities, be it more accounts for agencies or employment with lucrative pay plus fringe benefits for marketing executives.

Winning industry awards is an ad agency’s dream, a zenith. The awards have certainly pushed the creativity ranks in the marketing and advertising industry to levels never seen before. Of course, there’ll always be mediocre work. But most campaigns that we see today are particularly good, with a few displaying a great deal of ingenuity that’s out of this world. Given the gigantic amount of information being published every day, it is increasingly becoming difficult for brands to cut through the noise. Doing so requires one to stand out from the crowd, hence the high standards of artistry.

While the strides made so far are highly commendable, something queer is going on. A variant of Dutch disease is slowly permeating the industry. You see, producing a campaign that will go viral is no mean feat. Lately, the pressure to be ranked as the most creative and get the coveted attention has resulted in some ad agencies pushing the envelope and sometimes going completely off-guard rails.?

The goal of most marketing campaigns is usually two-fold, to boost sales performance and brand awareness. But it is now emerging that some ad agencies, in their quest for awards, are sacrificing and relegating these two fundamentals to the altar of creativity. Being creative is good. However, these agencies are producing overly entertaining campaigns, yet they fail to deliver as far as the marketing objectives are concerned.

As the clamour for awards persists, clients have found themselves sinking thousands and thousands of dollars in ad spend with little to show once the campaign has ended. You’ll find an ad that is extremely catchy but when you read the evaluation report afterward, there’s little or no lift on both sales and brand. With a much closer look at such campaigns, you find that the bells and whistles are getting in the way of sales/brand messaging. I have come across many case studies of shiny campaigns delivering hot air.?

The actions by these agencies that are losing their way in pursuit of fame are causing trouble for everybody else in the industry who is trying to remain true to the original mission of marketing. I believe this is one of the reasons why marketing executives today are finding it increasingly difficult to secure an adequate budget and are constantly under scrutiny to deliver results.

Most international awards have since revised their evaluation criteria. Apart from creativity and other factors, all entrants are now required to demonstrate a positive impact on sales and brand awareness. But then again, the agency can fabricate data. Perhaps, a better approach would be to commission independent studies to investigate campaign performance, with the client footing the bill.

Don’t get me wrong, though, creativity is utterly important. As a matter of fact, your marketing campaign is unlikely to get any traction if you don’t have any artistry. Instead, I’m advocating for a balance between creativity and traditional marketing goals. At the end of the day, a client won’t care whether the ad won a prestigious award if he/she didn’t get any sales or brand awareness. Let’s all get back to our original mission.

Stephen Osomba?currently serves as the Lead Partner, Communication & Marketing at?SMD Consulting Associates?where he helps SME clients deliver value by adjusting the?solutions?to each company's mission, product, strategy, and industry.