Perspective: Are Perth agencies over-indulged?
Perspective from the June issue of Campaign Brief WA magazine, out now.
For such a small market, Perth advertising seems to be awfully well looked after. It has Campaign Brief WA magazine and blog devoted to it. It has two good award shows every year – one specific (PADC) and one part of a great party night (Oasis Ball) – both of which rival anything in Australia and many internationally.
The West Australian provides a trip to Cannes via the PADC The West Australian Fellowship every year, plus sponsors a creative competition with a trip to the Caxton Weekend as a prize.
And of course, Austereo sponsors the annual Radio Writers Award with a $20,000 cash prize presented at a great lunch.
Over the years we’ve also had various creative exercises for other media, weekend workshops and special guests. Yet for all that creative support, Perth has had just one ‘golden’ moment nationally or internationally.
That was in 1985 when Steve Brown and O&M won Gold at AWARD for thePiper West poster (left) and frankly, we’re as sick of writing aboutit as you probably are of reading about it. Sorry Steve.
There have been some Silvers and a few Bronzes since then, but no moreGold in twenty-five years! I’m not counting a couple of specific mediaaward ‘Golds’.
In 1997, JDA’s Matt Cullen and Gary Tranter won the top Gold in radio’sGolden Stylus awards, precursor of today’s Sirens, for City of Perth’Jesus’. Trouble is, it wasn’t Gold at any other show.
And last year Marketforce won Gold in the Outdoor Media Awards with itsapplauding bus shelter for the Dept of Environment. Same deal.
If only the Outdoor Media Association was awarding Gold, Silver &Bronze when they had the ONE Awards, Marketforce’s ‘Stopping Distance’Adshel for the Office of Road Safety would have been another ‘Gold’. Andif the Caxton Awards gave ‘metal’ rather than just…well…a CaxtonAward, we’d be swimming in them! But, when it comes the big importantshows – multi-media/multi-category ones like AWARD, Cannes, One Showetc – we still come up short.
Maybe that will change very soon. Cannes is just around the corner (infact, by the time this appears we will have already made the turn) andonce again hopes are high that local agencies will pick up a Lion ortwo. Bronze or Silver would be good and rightly celebrated, but surelyGold has got to be the aim from this point on. Fingers crossed.
(As we now know, Meerkats won two Silver Lions with HBF radio and television – a great achievement for the agency. Perth’s only other Silver Lion came in 2001 for The Cancer Foundation’s ‘Nice People’ tvc by Adam Barker & Lori Canalini when they were at Marketforce.)
But it’s not just creative. There’s at least one media function eachmonth providing an opportunity to ‘wine and dine’ at someone else’sexpense, plus some nice giveaways just to get people to come along. Atthe end of last year Adshel gave away a $1000 Flight Centre travelvoucher at their summer party; at the beginning of this year ChannelNine gave away a trip to the Maldives at their 2010 product launch; andChannel Ten took a bunch of people to Broome for their annual trip.
And yet accounts continue to leave the state. Tourism WA was aparticularly distressing case. Sure, Mitchells locally handled themedia planning but don’t forget that Tourism WA is bound by theGovernment Master Media contract – they had to use either Mitchells orOMD (Media Decisions).
So what do you think? Is all this encouragement necessary to fosterbetter work in such an isolated market and build strong relationships?Is it just an integral part of the industry everywhere? Or is itmasking serious under-performance by agencies here?
Martin Trevaskis
22 Comments
A very interesting perspective Martin,
Sadly, for a market that is so cared for – wrapped in cotton wool even – the TV at night seems to be full of rubbish ads rather than the good stuff.
March Madness at Furniture Bazaar, Who Wants Tasty for Chooks, Stupid gimmick ads for IKEA and HBF ads that attempt to relate to people’s sensitive side regarding serious illness to sell health insurance… it seems to me that the ad community (both here and abroad) are not in touch with the public.
Consumers are not stupid. We’re not going to rush to a second rate furniture retailer just because an ad suggests madness in prices…
Anyone who knows about suffering serious illness knows that health insurers, while useful, do not make it “all better” …
And what does “who wants tasty” even mean?!?
…there is a serious disconnect between what agencies think their customers want and what we actually do want.
Advertising should be a way of assisting the consumer during the buying decision process, not throwing rubbish offers at them and hoping for mob mentality. Does anyone really think that the IKEA ads have made any difference to their bottom line? All the ad needs to say is IKEA – Ellen Stirling BLVD, Innaloo – and people will come because it’s IKEA… watching someone balance a table on their foot, or repeatedly scan a box “amazed by the price” is just idiotic… the prices aren’t that good…
Sorry for the rant, but for an industry that is so intent on congratulating itself for being the masters of the universe, we should be getting better ads than what we have.
Thanks.
I think you’re WAY off track here 8:39. Retail ads work mate. I’m not saying they’re good, but they work. What would you suggest? Furniture Bazaar do a fluffy branding ad and wait for customers to roll in? Sure, it’s a generic approach, but what do you think their product is? It’s the same as every other furniture store.
As for HBF, I think you’re wrong. Having been very sick last year, I was really happy with the level of cover I got from my health insurer. Even surprised. The HBF TV and radio taps into that emotion.
Now. Here’s the real area I think Perth’s agencies are spoilt in.
We use interstate companies and resources to make campaigns, and then complain about the lack of resources here. You can’t have it both ways. Either support your local advertising industry, or be prepared for all the good people to have to move East to work.
Martin,
There’s one big stumbling block that we can’t seem to ever overcome here that could take us into the Gold league. It’s called crafting. And crafting takes money. And, as we know, most Perth clients don’t have heaps of that. And certainly don’t see the value in throwing thousands at international level retouching or grading.
It sounds like an excuse, but we hear it over and over again when the judges do their piece to camera for the local awards they’ve just judged, “Your work could be world class, but you need to craft it better”.
It’s the single most frustrating element of working in Perth when you’re trying to do great ‘Gold-class’ work. How many times do Perth creatives hear this when they’re given a brief; “Can you use existing photography?” or, “Can you do it in stock?”
And then if you’re lucky enough to use a photographer and there’s even enough money for a basic grade, we are still miles away from international level.
Plus, and this is a real problem, we have no products. Take a look at most Gold work and you’ll see it’s for products. Things. With benefits. Not local Government initiatives, or insurance premiums, or fucking land estates. This will probably never change in Perth and it’s why we try harder with the briefs we get that have the potential to be really nice (like Meerkats have done with HBF).
I believe creatives in Perth are as inventive, talented and daring as anywhere in the world, but are constantly reigned-in by fearful clients with no vision, no desire to do awesome work and no ‘real’ money.
Why are there so many shit-awful TV ads 8.39? It’s damn simple – because that’s what the clients want.
There are a few things working against us at big International awards I think, and i am not using these as excuses (for lazy and uninspiring creative) but just putting it out there.
Big Brands: Perth lacks clients that provide the instantly recognisable logo in the bottom right hand side of the page. Would Diesel have won with ‘Be Stupid’ if the logo said Jeans West? I don’t know, but I don’t think it hurts. Even if it isn’t a conscious decision by award judges I am sure a recognisable logo associated with good work helps you stand out from the crowd at judging time.
Budgets: Yes big budgets provide slicker production values and get the top people to work on the job. But the forgotten benefit a decent budget provides is time. Perth has always had a sausage factory mentality to the work and every agency is pumping out ads as fast as they can to make the little amount of profit they can out of lots of jobs. My experience elsewhere has been agencies dealing with less jobs but charging the client a lot more to produce the work. This allows the process to become a lot less rushed and a whole heap more considered. Who wouldn’t want more time to craft every job more, let alone more time to concept up the idea in the first place? We don’t get six months to come up with the new TV campaign we get six days (if we are lucky).
Agency support: I don’t know too many creatives in Perth who don’t want to good work. But I know plenty of Account service, media people and studio bods who find Creative tiresome or difficult because they keep on winging about getting the good idea up or spending more money or time to make a better ad when really they just want to make the money, get the job finished quickly and go home. Obviously certain agencies are worse than others about valuing the creative process. But the next time you see an account service person accusing a creative team slacking off down the pub because they are out concepting, tell them if those ideas stop coming then we are all out of the job. Creativity needs nurturing and I think most Perth agencies could do more towards doing this.
As I said, I don’t think the above points are excuses for us not achieving better results at international awards. But I do think they are day to day factors that we have to either over come or change to level the playing field with the Londons and New Yorks of the world.
10.26 I couldn’t agree more. Budgets, lack of tangible products and client ambition all play into the equation. And 9.19 your right too – sorry Martin, but there is a place for retail. Furniture Bazaar plays to people who want a cheap deal on furniture. I bet their March sales reflect that. Just because its not original, it doesn’t mean its not informative and therefore welcomed by consumers.
But finally I also think its about people. Really smart, talented, disciplined creative people cost money. The best cost a lot of money. The way many agencies remunerate their staff and foster talent is shockingly inadequate compared to other professional service industries such as law, accounting and finance. This is perhaps why the best Perth bred agency types will move on to do bigger and better things in other markets.
In the end agencies get what they pay for. And so do clients.
10.57.
Not sure I agree with you on big brands. Perth’s got Ikea which is about as big as they come. Then there’s the perpetual underachievers listed on another post Lotteries, RAC, TAB, Red Rooster, Cash Converters. Three of these are national brands and the other two are high profile enough to count as national. But all five present the perfect opportunity for WA-based agencies to push category advertising in surprising and interesting directions. What they all seem to lack in their communications at the moment is any sense of strategic direction – that unique insight which leads to big ideas. Crack those insights and I’m sure we have the creative firepower in our agencies to produce more award-winners. For me, the real challenge is to incentivise the people that produce and sell in the strategy – the agency planners and account teams since – with a few notable exceptions – very few of them currently understand the important role they have to play in creating great work.
Re Mr Bronze’s comments, on crafting.
A lot of Perth’s creative people come up with advertising ideas that are too expensive to produce really well within the budget they have.
It is better to come up with a simpler idea that doesn’t require complex productions.
For instance- simple scripts with a locked off camera, and one talent.
Even the big agencies use to do work like that like even when they had big budgets, like The Campaign Palace.
In press, write a great headline and use that without any visual. And craft the hell out of type- that’s cheap.
It’s seems a number of Perth creatives just want to do the same work as the East or London etc, if you use simplicity, they usually the best ideas anyway with effortless
production.
Re suits, really there the same wherever you go, Perth, East or London etc, you can’t blame them, a lot of the skill is in getting your work through the agency system, to the client and made well without being watered down.
9.19 – Agree that the SALE angle may work, but do we need such stupidities as “March Madness” – don’t we have more self respect than that… I don’t want fluffy ads for a furniture retailer, they are just as insulting. Sale sale sale ads only succeed in undervaluing the quality of product being sold . Having international experience, Australia is one of the only countries that’s in sale mode 365-days a year… the words mean nothing any more…. January Joy, Fab February, March Madness, Awesome April… when are any of the furniture retailers / electronics stores / rug stores etc etc etc ever not in sale… has anyone EVER paid full price for a rug?! The constant bombardment of ads such as these have simply made the idea of paying good money for such products a joke.
10:26 – Exactly! I have experienced this first hand. Clients want gold but don’t have the money to buy aluminium foil, and it’s the consumer that suffers. It makes TV viewing painful and radio unbearable.
It is easy to blame the cheapness of media – especially TV – here in WA for the proliferation of rubbish ads. But having witnessed post-cable TV in the UK I can confirm 95% of stuff over there is rubbish too (with a minimum pixel-size disclaimer copy running throughout the ads). It comes down to client vision and agency ambition. HBF is a classic case.
Martin, you say Perth agencies are under performing and that this is evidenced in the lack of awards – specifically gold awards. But is a creative award the only mark of good advertising?
What do you think of the ‘Lionel’ campaign for Bunnings? A long running and very memorable campaign that was responsible for Bunnings becoming Australia’s undoubted leader in hardware. So far as I know, this hasn’t picked up any awards – so is it crap? And what about the work that 303 did for BankWest? A highly successful relaunch, that arguably, built the foundations for what is now a national brand. It also didn’t trouble the judges.
Creativity is a wonderful tool in an agencies arsenal. But it’s only one. I don’t think you can suggest that agencies are under performing, just because they don’t use it.
Here’s a quote from Rosser Reeves, a pioneer in our industry. “Let’s say you have $1,000,000 tied up in your little company and suddenly your advertising isn’t working and sales are going down. And everything depends on it. Your future depends on it, your family’s future depends on it, other people’s families depend on it. Now, what do you want from me? Fine writing? Or do you want to see the goddamned sales curve stop moving down and start moving up?”
4.53, I think you are missing Martin’s point. He’s arguing that our creative achievements are not high enough given the pampering and incentives that our media push to the creative departments. I agree with him.
I didn’t read into Martin’s views that he thinks we are doing a bad job for our clients.
Agencies in Perth, Australia and all over the world get results for our clients or we go out of business.
‘It has Campaign Brief WA magazine and blog devoted to it’
With all due respect CB what would you be doing if we weren’t here?
I love all the chat about agency success and awards – it’s as though the 2 are actually linked in the real world – from the client side when you are sitting in a meeting with your MD and CFO believe me, they couldn’t give a rats arse how may awards the last ad won. The important issues are sales, profit and brand awareness (in that order? Depends how sales are going).
Some agencies need to wake up and service their clients rather than their ego.
Ask a parent, husband or wife if they ‘get’ the HBF ads or if they are impressed it won some awards in France and I think I know the answer.
7.33pm
What is your view of the Effies? Gold standard or irrelevant? Just wondering…
9.40pm
The EFFIES or any other awards don’t, in my view mean anything to the consumer – like so much in marketing – they appear to be for the marketeers……. It’s nice to win an award and have a party for sure but winning awards is not the main task in hand.
I agree with 4:53 and 6:08 in part – if what the agencies do doesn’t make the “goddamned sales curve stop moving down and start moving up?” then the agencies don’t deserve to either win awards or stay in business.
7.33 you are absolutely correct however even to clients creative awards do have a result. Clients are generally attracted to winners. Agencies that win awards tend to be the ones that always make the pitch lists. They also tend to be the ones that can attract the best creative talent. Overall though, I hardly think we in Perth can be labeled an industry ‘driven by awards’.
6.21. Without CB you and I would be even more anonymous than our posts, getting only a passing mention when we’re hired or fired in the pages of Adnews or B&T.
“Creativity is a wonderful tool in an agencies arsenal. But it’s only one. I don’t think you can suggest that agencies are under performing, just because they don’t use it.” I think if 4.53 is a creative he/she should bring out the creative gun more often.
I think it is funny that our industry is so hung up on awards…..why the constant need for a pat on the back? is it because as a creative they wish they were working in film or TV when the general public actually admire and love the work they do and not advertising which the average punter detests…..not that some of the work isn’t brilliant…i just think it doesn’t need all the congratulations.
Awards do not necessarily show the relationship between a good ad (in execution) and the effectiveness of the campaign. If an electrical retailer or furniture shop’s aim in advertising is to maintain or increase sales and an ad does that, then it is effective in the mind of a client, regardless of ad being good or bad or annoying in execution.
Remember not all agencies enter their ads for awards as at the end of the day the clients are paying their bills, not the awards.
Hi gang. Long time no serious. Perth is fine. WA is okay. It’s hard to pick on you all, so I’ll choose an easy target this late at night. Sales. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fMiBVlXctM8
and of course
http://www.youtube.com/watch#!v=nb_R1VZqLcE
Anyhoo, sell, sell, sell.
Perth will not progress further until creatives begin to accept that, in addition to taking credit for great work, they need to start taking responsibility for the shit stuff
Hi 10:12,
I agree, take this years Caxtons as an example…… I guess the bit of plastic sheet that made the horse run either fell out of my copy of the WEST or was too expensive to include in the first place….. ad or art? if the client had paid for that crap I gess heads woudl have rolled!
Lets get real.
1:14 – perfect sentiment…. there’s a lot of BS around and a lot of ego too. What type of responsibility should be taken for crap work? Clients pay either way. The ironic thing is they actually pay less for good work in the long run as improved business follows good ideas.
Perhaps CB should run a hall of shame for creatives whose ideas are shit – it could be a healthy balance with the awards. The consumer still won’t care less but it could be entertaining.