How many times have we laughed our guts out watching a very witty ad, shared its link with our friends on social networking sites, with little or no recollection of what product was actually being endorsed by the ad? It may have totally worked from the creative point of view, but did the brand even register?
It is this factor that the Effie Awards organized by the Advertising Club attempt to uncover by focussing on the effectiveness of the ad, and not just its creative high points. ‘Bada hai toh behtar hai’ they say in ad parlance, and the Effies in its 15th year clearly stood for that. With 603 entries - a steep 28% jump from last year’s tally, 28 categories, 57 agencies and 285 jury members spread across Delhi, Mumbai and Bangalore and 26 sessions of judging, the Effies this time by every standard was ‘behtar’. It saw a neck-to-neck battle between defending champions Ogilvy which managed to win the maximum number of metals, i.e., 28, but lost the title of ‘Agency of the Year’ to Mullen Lowe Lintas, which took home six Gold Effies, five Silver and 13 Bronze awards including the ‘Grand Effie of the Year’ for their Paper Boat commercial. Meanwhile, Hindustan Unilever completed a hat-trick by winning the ‘Client of the Year’ award for the third time.
To leading marketers present at the event, we asked one moot question - How exactly is an ad judged for its effectiveness? Is there a way by which one can put a number to an ad campaign’s success? We got some very interesting responses indeed!
THE ULTIMATE TEST
Anuradha Aggarwal, CMO, Marico Industries, says, “Campaigns build brands and businesses. The ultimate test of an ad’s success is the market. Effies are a good recognition of campaigns that work in the market. It is not about creativity but creativity that delivers in real life. The key metrics for measuring the success of a campaign is to find out if it has achieved what it set out to achieve. The simplest way is to see if the advertisement has compelled the consumers to buy your product.”
But there are occasions when it is the novelty of the product or plain goodwill of the brand that pushes the consumer to the stores. In that case, one can say the ad campaign may or may not have had any impact on the consumer. It would be quite a task to understand if it was really the ad that translated into sales for the brand. Simplifying it for us, one of the jury members for the Effie Awards, Kamal Basu, Marketing & PR Head, Volkswagen India, says, “For every case we evaluated, we first identified the problem for that brand in the marketplace. We found out what the agency did to rectify that issue and the results. So it is not just about the sales – but about the brand’s transformation or what the campaign did to overcome the problem.”
Some of the best examples of that would be the Dabur Vatika and Truecaller ads. With Dabur Vatika, the Mullen Lowe Lintas team managed to convey something very unique. For the first time in the history of Indian hair advertising, a brand had the guts to say that ‘some people don’t need hair to look beautiful’. A reverse connection of sorts, but aptly giving strength to those suffering from cancer, which was also a part of Dabur Vatika’s CSR activity.
Elaborating on why the ad deserved to win a Gold Effie, Sanjay Tripathy, Senior EVP - Head Marketing, Product, Analytics, Digital & E-Commerce, HDFC Life, says, “Hair oil ads always celebrate hair. But here we saw something different. They created a new product - a coffee table book to celebrate the women who fought the loss of hair.” On the other hand, Truecaller in its first ever TV commercial used an almost-real story of a celebrity to establish a brand connect. A humble approach to stardom, yet packing a punch.
‘For marketers, a sniper approach works’
IT ALL STARTS WITH A GREAT BRIEF!
MARKETER’S CHOICE
It is no wonder then that the Effies are the marketer’s choice awards. To substantiate that point, Gaurav Mehta, Chief Marketing Officer, OLX South Asia whose team won a Silver at the Effies says, “The Effies actually judge and report how your business is reacting to the inputs that you are sending out to the market. And that’s why I put Effies on a high pedestal, very frankly. It’s important that the work you are doing is getting returns for the business.”
Building on that thought, ‘Client of the Year’ Geetu Verma, Executive Director - Foods & Refreshments, Hindustan Unilever, says, “Today, because of the importance brands are giving to the Effie Awards, there is a lot of conversation around it. It is in turn leading to a bigger number of agencies coming to the Effies with a much more chiselled out approach. It has changed the kind of conversation the clients and agencies have and it is no more restricted to the creative bit. We have graduated to questions like ‘What would this ad achieve, what problems will it solve and what measures should be put in place for it?’.”
That explains why clients and creative agencies alike like the Effies. Winner of ‘Agency of the Year’ Joseph George, Regional President, South & Southeast Asia, Mullen Lowe Lintas Group, says, “Creativity and effectiveness are not from two different planets. For anything to be creative, it has to be effective. That is why we shy away from awards that only recognize creativity. If a piece of work is not evaluated in terms of what it did in the marketplace, how it affected the consumer’s mind, then it can’t be called a creative solution.”
Madhu Dutta, Head, Marketing & Digital, Raymond Limited echoes this sentiment: “The Effie Awards renders itself in terms of what is the ROI (Return on Investment). At the end of the day, it’s not just about spending money and doing great creatives. If it doesn’t bring back positive results to the brand and to the overall organization, then it is hardly effective no matter how many awards you win from a creative point of view.”
GROWING WITH THE TIMES
The Effie Awards have evolved over time. This year, they introduced newer categories like the New Product or Service - Best Campaign for a Start-up, keeping in mind the importance of the start-up ecosystem in India. The Digital Campaign category was renamed as the Integrated Marketing category, considering that Digital is not just restricted to just another additional channel of marketing in today’s world. Also, for the first time, entries were submitted online.
Elaborating on the changes the Effies has witnessed over the years, Loveleen Sahrawat, Head - Corporate Brand, Financial Services, Aditya Birla Group, who was also a jury member, says, “About seven years ago, this platform was owned by people in planning and servicing, but now you have a lot of creative people talking about winning Effies, and that’s really encouraging. You can’t separate the strategy from the execution, it is one. And I am really excited about this trend.”
NEEDED: SOME CHECKS
However, there are some voices in the industry that feel the Effies may be moving away from what it had set out to do a few years ago. Says Nagesh Alai, Group Chairman, FCB Ulka Group, “Initially, the weightage was on the market-share, and on whether the potential customer was converted into an actual customer... If it increased the market-share of the product per se. But over the past few years, increasingly, at least in India, there is the subconscious weightage given to creative even when it is meant to get only 25-30% of it. People push good creative campaigns which they like for the awards. We need to move away from that trend, otherwise sooner or later, both the creative awards and the Effie awards will merge into one, or will be seen as one.” On a positive note, Alai who is also one of the Heads of Jury for the Asia Pacific Effie Awards 2016, adds, “I hope that with checks and balances, things will improve.”
Feedback: neeta.nair@exchange4media.com
