An ode to adland’s one-off wonders

Chennai: A senior adlander had an old friend from college visiting from out of town. The friend worked in finance and had no inkling about the ways of the ‘glamorous’ world of advertising. The adman had to attend an awards show that evening. His agency was expected to go up on stage a few times, too, so it made all the more sense to take his pal along.

The visitor was impressed – with the scale of the event, the attendance, the wins of his friend’s agency, and the industry’s camaraderie on show. On the drive back from the gala, the friend asked how the winners are arrived at.

He was told about the jury process right from the call for entries to the multiple judging rounds. His friend was curious about who comprised the jury. After hearing him out, the visitor clarified, “So you guys are on the jury, you enter the awards, and you award the winners?”

That’s how advertising awards work, he was told. In some cases, clients, too, are roped in to judge, and auditors monitor the process. The visitor was still processing how an industry judges its own work when he left the next morning. It may be tough for an outsider to comprehend, but that’s the beauty of streams like advertising and cinema.

I have maintained that advertising awards – creative and others – perform a critical role in raising the bar and inspiring the next. Even if awards are won for work created for awards, they have earned their place in the spotlight by meeting certain criteria and impressing certain juries with ideas and craft.

That said, equating such work with real work at scale that worked seems to have not just become acceptable but the norm. Award shows and categories within awards meant to recognise not just creativity but also other parameters have started getting populated with one-off creative wonders.

Digital consumption and shorter campaign cycles have only catalysed this. You need content 24x7 and the intended life of a piece of content might be one day or less. It’s no longer that looked-down-on single print insert in the cheapest daily of the time; it’s absolutely legit.

And then the results. “It led to a 20% increase in queries in 24 hours” is acceptable when the objective stated in the entry case study is to spike inbounds. Attribution for the “5% increase in first-time voters” can be appropriated by a one-time innovation. The beauty lies in control at both ends: you get to frame the problem, and also attribute results solely to the ad campaign entered.

The question on the minds of several ad folks is often on what is being judged – the case study or the work? Should the process and calibration be different for different kinds of awards? If yes, what explains the same case study with minor tweaks (it would take some time to spot the differences) being entered in different competitions? If the campaign is already entrenched in the jurors’ minds, the category matters less and less. This is gaming, and we have perfected it.

As for organisers, the more entries, the merrier. For entrants, the same entry (hardly) tweaked for different categories means a higher chance of taking home a bigger haul. If that eliminates ones with smaller purses from harbouring any such ambitions, so be it. More importantly, it puts the ones who have mastered the awards game on a pedestal, even for one big breakthrough campaign cheered by the jury – over an entrant with consistent, hardworking creative campaigns that connect with real audiences.

The industry has come to accept the fact that what works in the Indian market does not work very well at international awards. It would be a shame if that happened at the Indian awards as well.

The creative ranking conundrum

And then, there are the lists and rankings. Many moons ago, I interviewed a certain Dr Peter Tufano, then Dean at Oxford’s Said Business School, for a financial daily. The headline stayed with me: ‘B-school rankings are incredibly imperfect'. That was in 2012. Have things gotten better or worse with the crass commercialisation of media? You tell me. Or ask Maheshwar Peri.

Now let’s look at how the lists of most creative agencies, networks and people in advertising are arrived at, and celebrated, before being upset with clients for not giving agencies seats at the high table.

One idea executed well is what it takes. It travels the world. Across festivals. First, there’s the seeding part – these days it’s on LinkedIn, where you get people to create some buzz around a campaign. In cases where it’s an obvious one-off that you don’t want people to call out, this phase is skipped. As people like Publicis’ Tahaab Rais have pointed out, the ‘L’ word kicks in ahead of festivals. It happens everywhere, including in Indian award shows.

Most rankings look at the number of awards an agency or individual is credited with winning, with wins at each festival deemed worthy of consideration, begetting points. The same campaign winning at different festivals that are included in this ranking adds to the tally with each win. This decides the most creative agency, not the number of hardworking campaigns that made the end-consumer go wow.

There are cases like Ogilvy India, where the agency is ranked high on creative lists but also churns out popular work that we have seen and appreciated. There are also cases where some agencies with the best work are absent from the top 20, while a one-off wonder that worked on international juries puts some agencies in that reckoner. Do we really think clients are stupid?

For agencies that aspire to be featured on these rankings, the festivals that are considered by those putting together the rankings are must-enter arenas. And those usually cost thousands of dollars, taking away a commanding share of the wallet. Often, there is no small change left then for them to participate in local awards. In times of network acquisitions for cost optimisation and attendant layoffs, one wonders how long this global entry fee game will go on.

The fleeting GFE

A friend had lamented the other day about ads not being sticky like in the good ol’ days, being increasingly fleeting and easily forgettable. IMHO, nothing lasts as long in the cluttered mind anymore – not the superhit movie, maybe the superhit song that makes it to the memes. Because before you know it, the next one is upon us. In the meantime, we may have added to the ad industry’s turbulence by continuing to celebrate the one-offs that are first seen at award shows more than the ones that run across IPL seasons.

All award juries, including creative award juries, have the responsibility to ensure that they celebrate clutter-breaking mainstream work more than the one-offs. We all know one when we see it. The one-offs are necessary, but is there a way for us to acknowledge that they’re different?

The legacy earned with one-off ads and campaigns is transactional and transient. We can pretend all we want. But availing a GFE (or BFE) is not the same as the real thing.

Disclosure: Views are my own and will not influence awards I help curate, including Ad Club Madras’ Maddys 2026, which will be guided by the jury chairpersons.