Via Campaign, I read that Cannes is considering introducing a new category. 'Effectiveness'.
(30th July , page 22 - can't find it online).
Yes, you read that right. Effectiveness. Campaigns will be awarded for achieving what they set out to do. They will be recognised for delivering on the promises that were (presumably) made to the clients who paid for them.
Anyone who's put a Cannes entry together will know that establishing the efficacy of a particular piece of work is not the most important consideration in your submission, but nevertheless the pretence is there. It could of course be argued that creative work is different, that it can indeed be judged an some vacuous scale of 'creativity', and that that in itself is a noble endeavour.
Except, of course, it isn't. We've always been a bit embarrassed by our preoccupation with awards, which is why so much effort has been spent over the years establishing the link between creativity and effectiveness. The Gunn Report, that league table of 'creativity', was created after Donald Gunn, then of Leo Burnett, analysed the performance of winning ads from festivals around the year and found that they were significantly more effective in business terms than the norm. His paper presenting these findings, 'Do Award Winning Commercials Sell?' was published in 1994, and became the genesis of the Gunn Report. The Gunn Report was born from effectiveness, not creativity.
It wasn't just Gunn. In the Campaign article mentioned above, Richard Exon of Y&R states 'Thanks to the IPA and Thinkbox, amongst others, the evidence of a causal link between creativity and effectiveness is unassailable'. So far, so good.
So, you'd assume that Richard, like me, thinks the idea of an Effectiveness award is ridiculous. Well, he does. But not for the same reasons. He concludes 'Ultimately we need [the] separation nbetwwen Cannes and Efffectiveness awards. When we see a campaign performing well in both, and we know taht both sets of judges have been uncompromising, we can be absolutely confident of the link between creativity and effectiveness'.
So, the link that was 'unassailable' just a few paragraphs earlier is looking slightly shakier. All that's being said, of course, is what we already know - some work is effective, but not creative. Some is creative, but not effective. Some is both.
But by saying that agencies should win prizes for work that is creative but not effective is utterly idiotic. Our entire point as a business is to employ creativity in the name of business effectiveness. Of course there's creatively poor, but highly effective work - just ask Michael Winner - but surely we should be arguing that the application of creativity can do the job better. So, for example, if e-sure had a meerkat, maybe they could have halved their media budget.
In a time of increasingly risk-averse clients (and agencies), suggesting that we are somehow pursuing our own agenda of art for art's sake is only going to be counter-productive, leading to less risk-taking and poorer work.
Besides there are already awards for pure creativity. Details here.
-- Toby
Comments