The Guardian's Three Little Pigs Mini Movie Ad—Does it Work?

This is a tad delayed, but I recently watched some of the popular ads from the Cannes Film Festival and this one struck a cord. It was entertaining, original and made it's point well. It falls into what you would probably classify as a mini-movie ad in that's it's a few minutes long—but well worth it!



What do you think? When this type of advert started coming out a number of years ago, I was a little skeptical that they'd fly since most commercials are not entertaining enough to hold a viewer's attention for that long. The few that I'd seen didn't fall into that category—few commercials do. This one, however, I wanted to watch a few times—not unlike the famous IKEA Lamp commercial (watch it if you haven't before).

DDB's Offensive 9/11 Ad Ushers In Some Much Needed Award Show Rules

I was apparently living under a rock last Tuesday when AdFreak first broke the news about DDB Brasil's tasteless 9/11 ad (above) which has continued to blow up throughout the blogosphere and has DDB Brasil and the client, WWF, backpedaling like crazy to escape the international bad PR. You can check out the day-by-day updates on the original AdFreak post.

Essentially, the print ad shows hundreds of planes flying into lower Manhattan and the copy compares the death toll between 9/11 and the 2004 Tsunami. The copy reads, ‘The tsunami killed 100 times more people than 9/11. The planet is brutally powerful. Respect it. Preserve it.’

Wow.

I get that our planet is powerful and can be very destructive, and I do believe we need to take some drastic action to curb climate change, but seriously? How do you possibly compare a natural disaster to a terrorist attack? The oddest thing is that this concept actually won a One Show Merit Award for public service work. Yeah. I would think the One Show would know better. It's not just that it's an offensive ad, but it's just a bad concept too.

As AdWeek's Barbara Lippert said, “Aside from being offensive and cringe-worthy, it's also just an ugly and dumb piece of creative, scoring high on the 'gratuitous use of tragedy to make a nonsensical argument' meter.”

It's shock value only, so how did it win a One Show Merit Award? Beats me.

That brings us to the next uproar. Aside from the fact that the One Show bestowed its honor on such a bad, tasteless ad, there is the question of whether the ad is even legit for entry. Once the corporate backpedaling started, WWF immediately claimed that they never approved such an ad to run. Sound familiar? Well, once the finger pointing began, it turns out that someone in the local Brazil WWF office actually did approve the ad and it ran at least once.

Well, okay, it ran once in a newspaper somewhere, but sometimes there's still the question of whether that really makes it award eligible. It's part of the larger issue of award chasing: Agencies like awards. They look pretty on display and they give that little ego boost and assurance to creatives that they actually are pretty good at what they do. But award chasing gets a little out of hand sometimes with people submitting fake ads, ads that were never approved, ads that never ran or sometimes ads that the agency footed the bill to run once, just so they'd be eligible for awards. Wow, that makes us ad industry folk sound like a bunch of cheats, doesn't it? The sad thing is this happens rather often on all levels of ad competitions from the local level to the international level.

In Barbara Lippert's AdWeek article on the recent DDB Brasil fiasco she quotes David Baldwin, former chairman of the One Club as saying that somehow the award shows always get blamed for giving awards to fake ads. True, I can't imagine the daunting task of trying to fact check every ad submission to some of these competitions, but at the same time, as far as I know, the award shows have never really penalized anyone for these fake entries. You might lose your award, but that's it. I remember once stumbling across a little note in Communication Arts retracting one of the campaigns I loved from their ad annual because it had never run, but it was a tiny little footnote that I just accidentally happened to see. There was also the Cannes Bronze Lion awarded to the agency that produced the fake J.C. Penney spot last year. I believe they lost their Lion, but that's about it. And did that really matter compared to the huge recognition they got for that fake ad?

The truth is, at the moment there's little to no incentive not to cheat in most of these shows. Sure, most ad agencies will figure out a way to make it technically legit (i.e., it ran once in this tiny little publication) but are those really any more legit than a totally fake ad?

In response to the uproar around DDB Brasil's controversial ad, the One Show has enacted new rules to deter fake entries. Basically, if you enter a fake ad and get found out, the agency and everyone credited is banned from entering the One Show for five years. If you enter an ad that 'ran once,' or the agency paid to run, etc., but isn't really legit, under The One Show's discretion the agency is banned for three years.

Personally, I applaud the One Show for finally taking some much needed steps to deter this ever-growing practice. I think the banning will help enormously, assuming it's enforced.

* On another note, check out the even worse TV spot from DDB Brasil that surfaced this past week. They apparently tried to enter it in the Cannes Film Festival, but thankfully, it didn't get shortlisted.

We Are Fallon Plaque Is Complete

Because we blogged about this a few months ago, the good people at Fallon sent us an update on their We Are Fallon plaque. The idea was, they solicited former and current employees to donate awards they'd won at the agency to be melted together into a giant plaque to hang in Fallon's new office space. The idea is very cool, melting together awards to represent what's made the agency what it is today. They received over one hundred donated awards for the project! More than one from some ad greats like Bob Barrie. Speaking of which, you should check a few more of the promo videos that came out since we last blogged about this as well as the final making of the plaque videos at their website for the project.

It's all very well done, but would you expect any less from Fallon?

Award Show Reality Check

To continue my string of posts on this Cannes/JCPenney issue (which I apparently can't get enough of) this blog post might shed some light on how the spot came to Cannes. Was it unapproved "pork"? Or produced by Epoch just for giggles?

Fake Ad, Real Award?

The ad world is chattering away about the JCPenney "Speed Dressing" win at Cannes last week. The chatter isn't just about how this amusing spot won a Bronze Lion, but that the spot itself is a fake. JCPenney says it had nothing to do with it and is up in arms about the spot ruining the company's wholesome image. The spot was not entered by JCPenney or its ad agency Saatchi & Saatchi, but by Epoch Films in New York. JCPenney is currently trying to get the spot pulled from the internet, where it's flourished since its Cannes win.

The nagging question in my mind is, how did it win? I'm not expert on Cannes by any means, but awards generally require the work submitted to be legit and something that's actually run in the media. Cannes rules don't appear to be any different.

The whole debacle is pretty amusing to me (although I wouldn't want to be working JCPenney PR or on that account at Saatchi right now). JCPenney thinks the spot ruins their brand and image. Others argue all this press is nothing but good for the company and the spot will help them with a younger, more hip audience. You be the judge. Check out the spot below. Does it help or hurt?



This spot has been disappearing on YouTube. If you can't view it here, try this link.