MIAMI—Yesterday afternoon, I ran into a young-ish ad executive. He’s serving on one of the jury panels here at the Clio Awards, the ad industry’s annual celebration of itself. I asked him if, during his review of the best advertising produced this year, he’d noticed any overarching trends. “Yes,” he said. “I’ve noticed that advertising sucks.”
For an awards gala, the vibe here is distinctly self-hating. Even the eminent old-timers are cynical. At the Lifetime Achievement dinner on Sunday night (held in a ballroom of the Ritz-Carlton’s mammoth oceanside compound here in South Beach), the Clios honored Bob Greenberg. Greenberg is the chairman of the agency R/GA, and a man the New York Times recently called “Madison Avenue’s 30-Second Spot Remover.” Dressed all in black, he stood before the halibut-nibbling masses and proclaimed the 30-second television spot the “most expensive form of advertising” (often $20,000 per second, by his calculation) and also the “least efficient.” It was an admirably iconoclastic speech (and cheers to the Clios for feting an iconoclast rather than a politicker). But it was a downer. Where’s all the puffery, I wondered. Isn’t that what awards shows are for?
Luckily, Monday night’s event had puffery to spare. Throngs of tipsy “creatives” from around the world (many dressed in New York black, many others in skateboard couture) packed Miami’s Jackie Gleason Theater, eager to applaud the winners in categories such as “Internet Advertising,” “Print/Posters,” and “Design.” The mood was bouncy, as 1) no one was forced to ponder the demise of television advertising, because the awards for TV and radio work aren’t given out until tonight, and 2) there had been an open bar for a full two hours leading up to the show. When you’re trying to ignore industrywide malaise, liquor helps.
As it turns out, they give Clios out like candy. Though only six categories were in play last night, the Clios awarded a whopping 29 “Gold” awards (including 17 in a single category), along with additional scores of “Silvers” and “Bronzes.” One winner of multiple awards clogged the theater’s aisle with 10 or 12 trophies, arrayed like an army regiment.
I kept my focus mainly on the winners of “Grand Clios,” of which there can be only one, and sometimes none, in each category. (You know, like a real award.) Most of these Grand Clio winners were international, and therefore unfamiliar to American consumers. Some highlights:
The Grand Clio in “Innovative Media” went to an agency in New Zealand for an Adidas campaign called “Be the Ball” (marking the introduction of the official ball for this summer’s World Cup). The campaign consisted of strapping people into a giant, hollow soccer ball and then launching the ball hundreds of feet in the air. A video played in the theater last night showed us the giant ball rising then falling violently back down (restrained, by some bungee devices, from making a hard impact on the pavement). The video also showed screaming passengers inside the ball. This struck me as a silly (if big-budget) publicity stunt, rather than a top-shelf example of “innovative media.” But I wasn’t on the jury.
Another Grand Clio went to Japan’s Dentsu agency for a campaign called “Fill the City With Questions” created for an Internet portal called Goo. Dentsu bought out what appeared to be every square inch of advertising space in the Tokyo subway system, along with billboards attached to a helicopter and a boat. I didn’t fully understand what was happening (I so rarely do when it comes to ornate Japanese pop-culture phenomena), but it seemed that there was a sort of scavenger hunt wherein people had to find Dentsu’s questions around the city (actual question example: “How many junior high schools in the Shibuya district have volunteer clubs?”) and then use Goo to answer them and win a contest. Like I say, I didn’t quite get it. But it sure was complicated, and that seems to be a highly prized attribute when it comes to assessing these multiplatform, media-agnostic thingamajigs. I would have liked to see someone from Dentsu explain the whole thing, but—thankfully, given how many awards are given out—no acceptance speeches are allowed.
In the Print category, a Grand Clio went to an ad called “Head” for the Sony PlayStation 2. The ad shows a dude with his head split in half, and inside his skull we see a grab bag of bizarre Goth imagery, including some body parts. This didn’t feel the least bit new to me, but the award presenter raved about how provocative it was. I found one of the other shortlist Print entries (which did not win a prize) far more provocative: The ad, made in Bangkok, Thailand, shows a grid of hundreds of snapshots of a young woman’s crossed legs. In one lone shot, her legs are uncrossed, offering us a peek at her pink panties. “More Shots. More Chances,” reads the text, which advertises a 2-gigabyte Kodak camera memory card.
In the “Integrated Media” category, a Grand Clio went to a campaign for the MINI automobile. Called MOTORmate, the campaign sent MINI owners to a Web site (www.motormate.com) where they could purchase funny, add-on trinkets for their cars: a dainty horn more appropriate to the MINI’s size, a centrifugal-force meter (poking fun at the MINI’s putt-putt image). The idea was to parody the ongoing after-market modification fad, in which people trick out their subcompacts with spoilers and fancy hubcaps. “The idea was not to open a new revenue stream for MINI,” said the agency behind the campaign, “but to create a new relationship with its customers.” I think the MOTORmate site is pretty funny, but when a funny little one-joke Web site garners one of advertising’s highest honors, it doesn’t speak well of the industry’s health.
Despite all the lip service paid last night to “integrated media” and “multiplatform campaigns” and “media agnosticism”—spurred, of course, by fears for the future of the TV ad—there was really nothing new under the sun here. Indeed, at an afternoon workshop yesterday, one ad exec pointed out that the campaign for Apple’s iPod (a hyper-modern, digital platform if there ever was one) consisted mainly of simple billboards and television ads powered by iconic images (those silhouetted dancers) and some concise copy (“1,000 songs in your pocket”).
Likewise, the iPod Web site isn’t some overdesigned, “integrated” Rube Goldberg contraption. It has good/better/best comparisons of the different iPod models, and a place where you can give your credit-card information and buy the product. “Just like a mail-order catalog,” the ad exec said.
