Criti-quing the Crity 2065
By Abhaya Panday
I would like to set a precondition for anyone who
wants to read this article further. You shall read
it and forget it. If you can’t, then you shall
not discuss the content of this article with anyone except those who have absolutely no idea about advertising. Because remembering or discussing the content is going to give you nothing but discomfort.
Crity: For whom?
If you have followed the pre- and post-event publicity of Crity Award, you would have noticed that it was all about Sahus - the Sahus of agencies and enterprises. They were everywhere - in TV shows, newspapers, just name it. If any group was missing, there it was the creative fraternity for whom this award was supposedly instituted. And, if anything was missing in the conversation of these Sahus, it was the creativity in advertising. On the other hand, one award winner was unceremoniously cut short by the host of the event while he was delivering his acceptance speech. What more can describe the plight of creative professionals in our country?
Creativity or Effectivity ?
It seems there is a confusion within the advertising industry about the nature of this award. The confusion is whether the Crity stands for creativity or effectivity or is it a mixture of both? As far as I understand, Crity is awarded for creativity and craft, not effectivity. The objective of Crity Awards clearly says that this award is instituted for the creative excellence in advertising. Regarding effectivity, there is no proper mechanism or tools, nor any credible institution in our country, to measure this aspect of advertising. And this situation will remain the same for quite some time to come.
In the midst of this confusion, I heard one the judges talking about public recall as one of the criteria for judging the advertisements. Public recall is not truly a measure of creativity unless you are making ads for Super Bowl in the United States, where the ads are shown once but remembered for months. But such is the level of creativity of American ads shown during Super Bowl or such is the quality of attention of ad viewers, whichever way you take it. In our context, public recall is mainly a function of exposure. The more an ad is exposed to viewers, more the chances of its recall. But that does not necessarily mean that the ad, which is freely recalled, is creative and vice versa. What about a creative ad that is made one year back and exposed for just a few times? What about the hosts of FMCG ads that appear daily in media but lack creativity? Sometimes even absurd ads get strong recall. However, there is a distinction between creativity and absurdity. Therefore, including such criterion as public recall in determining the best ad is perhaps flawed.
Judgment
There are basically two types of influence on judges, which affect the quality of their judgment. First is the extrinsic influence, which comes from vested interests. But such idea has, so far, failed to find any substance. The second is inadequate knowledge about the issue, which you could term as intrinsic influence. You could also add personal biases in this category. I don’t know how qualified the judges are in their own area of work, but as far as I know, barring a few, most of the judges are neither advertising professionals nor they have any significant contribution to the Nepali advertising or have any credentials in this field. The only criterion for their selection, apparently, is their involvement in areas that sounds common with advertising. If you are a writer, then you are deemed qualified to judge copy of the ads because both, writing and advertising copy, involve words. If you are film or television producer, you could judge the TV commercial or its components because both film and advertising involve images and sounds. Following this logic, you wouldn’t be surprised to see a graffiti painter judging a modern art competition. After all, it is all about colours.
Advertising is fundamentally a different discipline than journalism, literature or filmmaking. It is different because it has different set of principles and objectives. For this discussion, advertising is essentially an idea, which is brought to life through execution. Creativity in advertising is the beauty and sophistication of the idea and its expression. The execution, however, is focused on nothing else but substantiation of the idea itself. But the caveat is, you cannot have an advertising idea outside the boundaries of brand positioning or promise and execution outside the boundaries of the idea. If you fail to understand the idea, in the context of the discipline, you will also fail to understand its execution. Failing to internalize - not simply know - this simple yet fundamental wisdom will lead to erroneous results. Words, visuals and audios are simply the common denominators between advertising and other set of disciplines-like paint is common denominator between graffiti and modern art. And, internalizing this wisdom takes time. One does not become a qualified judge on advertising simply by watching ads or attending a two-day orientation, like one does not become a doctor by watching patients or attending a few health seminars.
You must have heard the story of a few blind people trying to describe an elephant by holding its different parts. In the absence of proper ownership of the advertising wisdom, the overall judgment seemed incoherent, probably because the judges understood advertising in different ways. The panel of judges who judged a set of categories saw things differently than judges who judged next set of categories. To give you an example, the Best TVC did not have nominations in any of its components such as script, direction, editing or camera. And the Best Commercial Campaign had nothing to boast about in Print, TV, Radio, Outdoor or any of its components. Of course advertising does not work the way mathematics does, but in no discipline you will find the sum completely free of all its parts. Have you ever heard of a class topper who managed to fail in all subjects or failed to attempt the subjects within the curriculum?
Despite all these, one must salute the attempt of AAN to honour creativity and creative professionals in the country by overcoming all odds. As we advertising professionals are gradually learning the science and art of advertising, the advertising industry is also gradually learning to honour our work.
(Panday is the Creative Head of Advertising Avenues Nepal Ltd.)
