The Colonel Blimp Cheatarama
I don’t know if you’ve seen a film called The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp, but if you haven’t, you should.
It portrays the life of a British officer who has trouble squaring his sense of honour and fair play with the merciless nature of Britain’s opponents in WW2. The upshot of it is that if you choose to play fair your opponents will fuck you, stick you in concentration camps, fuck you again and kill you (perhaps then choosing to fuck your corpse). The film was a brilliant piece of propaganda, making it clear that The Hun would not play by the Marquess of Queensbury rules, so if we wanted to win, we’d have to fight fire with fire by sinking to their level.
Bear with me here, but I think that the same situation is occurring in international advertising awards.
Although scam ads are certainly a part of the current UK ad scene (anything from Scambient ads to 2 minute directors cuts that run once on Granada Men and Motors +1), we are actually complete fucking amateurs when compared to the rest of the world.
Some agencies in other countries do the following: let you work on normal clients from 9 to 5 but make you work from 5 to 10 on scammery; mark out an entire floor plus photographic studio for creating scam; employ some teams to create nothing but scam; do ads for clients they don’t even have; do ads for Guinness that are actually ads for Irish bars and ads for Wonderbra that are actually ads for lingerie shops; take August off from their real clients to do their year’s scam ads all in one go; do adapts of international business but otherwise do nowt but scam; eat dogs and horses.
And in doing so they either fit within the letter (but not the spirit) of the rules, or accept that no one really checks up on them because certain award schemes quite like having the cash for the entries and can’t really be arsed to Miss Marple their way through an investigation that just results a big fucking headache.
So the UK doesn’t win the really big international prizes (or at least hasn’t for a few years).
Of course, I’m not saying that all the other award winners are scam (the reasons why UK advertising currently lags behind that of our overseas brethren is a whole other post), but when it comes to picking up the other prizes, we hamper ourselves by generally playing by the rules.
For example, why not create a bunch of complete and utter bullshit like this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AgHHX9R4Qtk
So we can either maintain our sense of honour and accept that we bugger our chances of more Lions, or we can get with the international cheating programme and pocket some more prizes.
I vote we set up a special clearing house agency for cheat ads. It can be called Fuck You Johnny Foreigner and it can be staffed by a bunch of brilliant account dudes, who will sell your generic ads for nose hair trimmers, superglue, hot sauce, dog food, animal charities and shoe polish. All agencies will chuck in some cash to pay for the staff and all the DPSs in Cement Mixer Monthly and the UK will top the Gunn Report every year.
Who’s in?
Ben
I hope your tongue is firmly embedded in your cheek. That Susan Silverman spot just happened to have help get the first African-American elected President of the US.
Ciaran
Ciaran, please don’t tell me you really believe that.
What’s the problem with the great schlep? I thought that was a genuine success… Wassup – 10 years later was certainly very real – why not the silverman one?
I’ve worked in agencies in Singapore, Sydney and London.
There are certain CDs in every city who know how to work the system and how to win cannes lions – mainly in print.
Print is an easy target because there are always photographers who will shoot an ad for free. Then you just show it to the charity client as a finished product and tell them the agency will pay for it to run somewhere.
Scamming an entire integrated campaign or a TVC is a lot harder (although scam tv ads have picked up you can spot them a mile away).
And the good thing is, a nice lion winning print campaign for WWF is about much use in your book these days as a titty fuck on a trannie. So the playing field is somewhat level again.
That Sarah Silverman, she’s got a potty mouth. But I like it.
I’m not 100% sure that the Big Schlep was scam. Droga 5 are quite good at award winning, after all. (Though I reckon that thing they did for Puma a few years ago was scamtastic).
The way to level to playing field isn’t to lower it to their level but to bring it up to yours. After all the anti-scam policies instituted by The One Show and quickly copied by D&AD and, to a lesser extent, Cannes happened because of the shitpile that happened after the DDB South America scam WWF 9/11 ad.
Google “Doha Fp7”, the entire first page is how they’ve been caught in various scams. Mainly due to this post:
http://bloganubis.com/2009/03/21/enough-is-enough/
Let’s get this straight the *agencies own website* doesn’t even make the front page. It’s nothing but how their nothing but a bunch of scammers.
So, you want to stop this? Create a blog where people can post scam ads from their region.
I worked in Asia for more than a decade and right before the award shows the equivalent of “Time Out” free bar magazines would be full of small space ads for non-exsistent clients that you knew were going to be entered as DPS executions. At the time I just wished that there was a way to scan them in and let the world see.
Ben, you have a pretty well-read blog. Ball’s in your court.
Come on…
How many people who saw The Great Schlep actually went down to Florida to persuade their Jewish grandmothers to vote for Obama?
Of those (100? 1000 tops?) how many of the grandmas actually voted?
Barack Obama won Florida by around 200,000 votes.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/politics/election2008/fl.htm
The Great Schlep made about as much difference to the 2008 US presidential election result as the last fart I did.
It’s an invented client logo on the end of a very funny comedy sketch.
Sorry so many of you seem to have been taken in.
Suckers.
Oh, and if anyone wants me to expose a scam ad, I’ll be happy to.
Totally agree with you Ben. And why should persuading old people to vote the way you want them to, be applauded? Can they not make their own minds up? It’s patronising. Scam right-on shite.
“if anyone wants me to expose a scam ad, I‚Äôll be happy to”
What’s the criteria?
An ad entered into awards that has never run or ads that are entered into awards that have run but the media and creative have been paid for by the agency (which is as prolific in London as anywhere in South East Asia)?
Scam bothers me because it’s just petty to pursue awards for the sake of it and it highlights the increasing irrelevance of creativity in advertising, something I’d rather not be reminded of.
But what really bothers me is how crap most scam ads are.
“But what really bothers me is how crap most scam ads are.”
Agreed. Given that you don’t have a brief nor a client and you can do whatever you want scams should be mind blowing. But most of them are just meh.
Ben,
The answer to your question in (2) above is yes.
The thinking displayed in (7), (8), and (9), is facile at best and not something you would have allowed others to get away with in the past.
Ciaran
Ciaran,
Oh dear.
In 2000 that state was pretty much exactly 50/50 when the result was a Republican win.
You might not have noticed, but in 2008 there was a healthy overall Democrat win.
Obama was always going to win Florida, even without the help of a funny little scam ad.
PS: there is no Santa Claus either.
Ben,
Just to protect the innocent, it was me,
not Anonymous, what wrote (13).
Ciaran
We’ve got the Chip Shop Awards http://www.chipshopawards.com and at least there’s no kidding that, say, Magic Hamster Design in Buxton will have a hope in hell’s chance of running a brilliant ad for P+G, let alone winning such a client…when the best real world work they’ll be doing is a DPS for a posh kitchen shop in ‘Derbyshire Life’.
Thanks for clearing that up.
And to the anon who asked me the question, yes I did.
The answer to that question is no. All kinds of scamming happened well before that incident and you’ll find that most creatives who entered awards through the nineties and beyond were happy to scalpel off the odd phone number or shrink the logo for the proofs.
I think that bringing up that (really very dodgy) incident misses the point about how endemic scam has been.
But, hands up, it involves friends of mine who I think got a bit more of a kicking by some very hypocritical people than they they deserved.
sorry to spoil your rant, Ben.
but as long as festivals will “live” from entrance fees the scam will be out there. even encouraged.
I’ve heard a Cannes jury member saying they had to award some asian scam ad cause it’s in the interest of the festival (yeah, like a festival is an entity by itself) – they wanted to motivate agencies from that big emerging market to enter more in years to come.
when money enters, morality dies. this story is as old as the world.
The Great Schlep may have, or may not have made the difference. That is irrelevant. Whether something is effective or not, does not make it a scam ad. The Silverman film was online during the election campaign. It was viewed by millions, therefore no scam and I find it bizarre that you are labelling it as such.
Would you believe that the author of the Middle East’s greatest scam (see Todd at post 6) was subsequently offered associate membership of D&AD?
It’s a fucker of a problem this one. And it was created by exactly the people who are now telling everyone to stop.
There are a number of very prominent CD’s, ECD’s, CCO’s and Global Big Knobs who built their careers on Wonderbra/Landrover/Bic/Playstation/highlighter pen ads that we all know were scam. And it served them well. It’s a bit rich for them to be the most vocal in condemning everyone else who’s trying to make a name for themselves.
I fucking hate losing to scam ads. For fuck sakes, everyone knows that every single Hot Wheels ad ever created is scam. Yet, they’re being awarded every year. So, I feel obliged to dabble a little myself. Not for clients I don’t have. And certainly not without client agreement. I know it’s fucking deceitful, but when some little fucker is securing themselves a fantastic job on the back of a couple of awards they got for a Lego ad, it seems remiss of us not to do something a little unethical to further our careers.
As for charity, I honestly believe the rules are different. It’s not a financial transaction. Charities get free work. Agencies get the freedom to play. It’s mitigated a little bit by being ineligible for a Grand Prix. If you’re lucky enough to have a charity that actually has money and is run like a proper client, all the better. But most aren’t.
I once worked somewhere that was very vocal in its condemnation of scam. But that was only in public. Behind closed doors it was: “Leave a paper trail.”
Great Schlep? I think you’re probably right. And it won a black pencil.
As did Trillion Dollar, but I feel more comfortable with that as it did a fucking amazing job at highlighting what a cunt Mugabe is. And surely anything Zimbabwean counts as a charity.
Ben,
Absolutely, positively, my last comment:
[George, above, on Susan Silverman] – ” … no scam and I find it bizarre that you are labeling it as such.”
I agree.
Ciaran
Ben, I wasn’t trying to name and shame Nigel and Paul. Just thought I’d put it up for debate.
Anyway, Like I say, was just putting up for debate.
I loved the fact that the year after their 5 year ban from entering D&AD, or one of the awards, they cleaned up with all their Economist stuff. Which is not easy to do at the end of a long running campaign.
I think they’re one of the greatest teams to have ever worked in advertising so sorry if you thought I was trying to slag them off.
Hopefully that’s the end of it? You’ve got bigger battles to fight with Ciaran by the looks of it.
It’s a very creative way to amuse lots of people.
It’s a very poor way to steer an election.
I can’t say for sure if it was technically scam or not (it has nothing to do with Obama’s campaign by the way), but it won many of its awards because people thought it made a difference (see Ciaran’s and George’s first comments). I’ve actually heard a member of that year’s D&AD Gold jury talk about that ad and end with the sentence ‘…and Obama won in Florida and won the whole election.’
I classify it, therefore, under ‘bullshit’, as I did in my post.
And I’ll be you ten grand that if it had got Bush in it would have won nothing.
It wanked off the liberal guilt of some rich people who work in advertising to win a bunch of massive awards that it had no business entering. The jurors felt good because they could say that they recognised and celebrated something which sucked Obama’s cock, and that’s why it won.
Who the fuck is Susan Silverman?
You have to hand it to the scamsters from the Middle East/Far East/South Africa/pretty-much-everywhere-but-here, for the love and the craft they put into their Art. A friend from Singapore said they even used to make logos a little bigger and add telephone numbers to make the ads look more legit. The TBWA Paris Scam Laboratoire produced some stunning client-free print, helping to make it Cannes Agency of the Year 3 times (proving your point Ben) and getting the creatives into bigger, better paid jobs. I think the Schlep issue is whether making a film without the involvement of a client and putting it on YouTube is true scam or semi-scam, or something. I was always fascinated by the Millions project. According to the awards entry film it was changing lives all over the bleedin’ place. I wanted to see one of the phones, and working on the basis that NYC had loads of them, I tried to find one. You try.
Anon,
No worries. Sorry to truncate your last comment, too.
God, running a blog is a bit of a headache sometimes.
But not the Ciaran debate stuff. That’s just fun.
Don’t agree with everything you say on here Ben, but I’ll say it again: you’re spot on with your assessment of the Great Schlep. It makes me laugh to think of all the smug ad-twats high-fiving themselves when the result came in.
As a creative looking at award winning work your jealousy can be split into two camps. Either you’re jealous of the thinking, or you’re jealous of the brief. With scam it’s invariably the latter. We’d all love to work on biros, everlasting light bulbs, lego, Barrack Obama or WWF, just like we’d all love a brief for Harvey Nicks, VW, Honda or any client who are brave and value creativity. Unfortunately most scam work shows clients and suits that creatives are no good at being persuasive, communicating, strategy and differentiating, but they are pretty good at plagiarism, style over content and being generic.
I think the tide may be turning a bit now. As a previous commenter pointed out, I feel that a lot of ECD’s looking at someone’s book nowadays will be turned off by a preponderance of scam.
A team that can do great work on real briefs for real clients is more valuable.
the great schlep ran for two months without any of the end title stuff. it was a sketch, turned into, an ad(of sorts).
not sure scam is the right word? but it is bollocks, and shouldn’t have picked up the way it did.
you’re right about the george bush thing.
I’m up for a Confederation of Uk Nasty Twatting Scamsters. I’ve bent, twisted and created an origami bunny out the rules in the past and miss the smug glow of taking the walk in the knowledge that the ad in the awards book is, ironically, ss to the ad that actually ran. Minus the coupon. Those days were ace, real work for real clients is a bit shit. And you always lose to people from places that were once part of our glorious empire. Let’s fuck them up again.
Couldn’t sleep last night, a cunt, me, thanks for clearing it all up Ben. I am fucking Sarah Silverman by the way.
Oh fuck have I missed the fun again?
Before I jack this in for good and go back to being a professional footballer, I have an observation to make:
I’ve worked with loads of people who’ve won big awards over the years, and they all share a common trait – they are thick as fuck.
There’s a correlation I hypothesise: The thicker the cunt, the more awarded.
I believe it may be a form of autism.
In a world where Titanic wins Oscars and Scorcese has to wait until he’s just about ready to be embalmed, this advertising lark is a bit of a bugger for anyone with an IQ above 60.
Done a bit of digging.
The Silverman film was commissioned by The Jewish Council for Education and Research. So you are right to say that Obama and his team of Campaigners had nothing to do with it, however, The Jewish Council is still a client, so in my mind, it is still not a scam ad. People just assumed it was part of Obama’s overall campaign, which is not the case.
Did it make a difference?
While effectiveness plays no part in determining scam, it’s interesting to know that according to the polls, McCain’s Republicans held around 65% of Florida votes prior to this campaign. The final count was 52% in Obama’s favour.
George,
You cannot possibly believe that this campaign swung Florida yet still have the ability to breathe without instructions.
Look! Even Droga5 say it won the election!
http://www.droga5.com/Awards/Webbys/webbys08/schlep/index.html
Hang on! Nationwide, Jewish people were twice as likely to vote for Obama anyway!
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/7661872.stm
And when you add that fact to the one Droga5 used to enter their campaign – the vast majority of elderly people vote – you have, Bingo! This campaign did fuck-all.
Droga5 also mentioned that they got 25000 confirmed schleppers (nowhere near enough to swing the election), but this is just the number of people who joined the Facebook group.
More facts:
Between 1924 and 2004, Jews have given their vote to the more progressive candidates at an average rate of 76 percent. In fact, none of the more conservative candidates have ever mustered more than 40 percent of the Jewish vote, while more than half received less than 20 percent.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/lily-koppel/the-great-schlep-jewish-g_b_129752.html
and the JCER was set up by two senior jewish ad men.
a fake, sorry, real but fake, organasation that was set up off the back of the great schlep. and has done nothing since cannes?
oh, and they also set up jewsvote.org which aims to show how they create viral work and use their seeding genius to create debates and engage with real people.
it’s not technically scam, i agree, but when you are your own client and you create work designed to piggyback someone elses campaign? it all stinks of fish.
still, their goal was to create a name for themselves with some popular award winning work. so job done. even if it is all bollocks.
God bless you Ben. I always thought I was alone thinking that Schlep was the most shameless scams I’ve ever seen lauded by one and all.
It wasn’t commissioned by the client, it wasn’t payed for by the client, it wasn’t even endorsed by the client.
Admittedly it was different. But so would be Alan Partridge asking Catholics in Norwich to tell their gay cousins in Hartlepool to vote UKIP.
Ben,
OK, so it wasn’t my last word.
So, supposing I concede everything you say about whether or not it helped Obama in Florida(and I don’t, note I say helped), my question:
Why do you consider it a scam?
Ciaran
Oh.
It wasn’t paid for by the client.
That falls under D&AD’s definition of scam.
Even without that, I’d say it’s because the people behind it lied about the effect it had and the stupid jurors lapped those lies up and awarded it.
Is that against any explicitly stated rules? I’d say it is for some schemes.
Either way, it’s using dishonesty to gain an unfair advantage and that makes our business look dodgy, duplicitous and dumb.
Can you see why that’s a bad thing?
Ben,
By client, do you mean Barack Obama?
What follows your second sentence is just personal opinion/rant.
Ciaran
It seems that there is a hell of a lot of shit about it that I had no idea about. A bit like this guy:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2B9MqNzQuuk&feature=fvst
Apparently it’s so well-known over in the States that Droga pays for much of the work that he runs himself, that they’ve coined the phrase ‘Droga Dollars’.
don’t get me wrong – i really rate the greta schlep ad. But…
The % of Jews voting Democrat in 2008 went up from 74% to 77% vs. 2004. Even if every extra vote was due to Silverman (unlikely) – that’s about 15000 votes in a majority of 200k. So it helped; but its not the whole story
No Ciaran, I meant that the people who made the ad approved the ad and ran the ad.
That’s scam.
Sorry if you’ve spent all day having your little fairy dreams crushed by reality but you’ve got to concede gullibility at some point.
Don’t confuse my reality with yours.
I think the reality is that you’ve had the basis for your post questioned, legitimately, and have been jumping through hoops since in an attempt to justify it.
And not very successfully.
Ciaran
Does anyone else who has read the above comments agree with Ciaran?
Just so we’re clear, he thinks that a daft little comedy sketch REALLY swung the 2008 US Presidential election.
Really.
He really thinks that.
Stop laughing.
Easy Chewie.
I liked Neil French’s appraisal of scam:
“if it’s interesting, who gives a fuck?”
And on the Schlep, it did Obama’s brand no harm.
I don’t think it was *really* designed to get people to persuade grannies – otherwise data-driven direct channels would prob have been more apt.
But it did express the absolute urgency for change – whatever it takes. For that reason I don’t think Ciaran is wildly off the mark.
I don’t think Labour Isn’t Working won an election either. It all just helps.
The problem is, we have no real idea of the effect of The Great Schlep.
I absolutely admit that it persuaded some people to vote Obama who would not otherwise have done.
My point here is that Droga5 are claiming it won Florida, whereas in reality it was a successful exercise in self-promotion for the people behind it.
That claim, added to the other bullshittery behind it, makes the ad scam because it helped it to win awards that it wouldn’t otherwise have won.
That doesn’t mean it didn’t have a positive effect. That doesn’t mean it didn’t make a few old Jewish people vote Obama.
But it didn’t make any fucking difference to the US Election, and to claim so is stupid and a lie.
ciaran. sorry to lay it on, but read my earlier post and do a bit of a background check on the client that was invented to back the campaign. a joint venture between agency and a seeding strategist. it had nothing to do with the obama campaign. apart from piggy backing it. yet that’s why it picked up.
Ben,
Maybe I missed where I actually wrote what you accused me of writing in 49 above.
Hang on, now I get it, you clarify what I say by writing what you would like me to have said and then claim I wrote it – brilliant Ben.
Ciaran
The Big Shcam.
Ditto to GROUT-LEGS.
Ciaran-
Ciaran,
You’re right. I somewhat overstated what you were suggesting. I apologise.
Look! It’s easy to admit you’re wrong! I just did it there!
Go on, we’ll all think a bit more of you if you do.
xxx
Ciaran, it only helped in the same way that John Doe’s vote in New York helped.
By that I mean that if it hadn’t happened, the outcome would have been identical.
So in some ways, it didn’t help at all.
So you were wrong.
And you’re wrong about whether or not it’s scam because it fits D&AD’s definition of scam.
And you’re wrong because you said your third or fourth comment would be your last.
Are you going to do anything right today?
(Hint: admit you’re wrong.)
Bens right.
Well done for putting it out there. Whether it’s Schlep, Ecko or Coco De Mere. There are people out there who have built massive careers on this shit. Time they felt a bit guilty.
The only thing that really wins elections in Florida is pregnant chads (and no, that’s not a typo)
Catfight!
i liked this too
It’s no secret that Droga was the original scammer.
He won his first awards for ads for a shop owned by his dad’s mate. He did the same thing at Saatchi London and Singapore. And he still figures out ways to win awards for work that is in the grey area (despite the impressive entry video ‘millions’ is a whole other story) – albeit not one off print ads for a charity.
But he also did and does great work for real brands. The scam work just brought the awards which in turn gave him better briefs to work on at better agencies.
The system is fucked, but as scamp says in his book, awards are a means to an end. The thing is, if you’re still doing ‘pro-active’ work after 8 or so years in advertising, something went wrong. Hate the game, not the player.
@Ciaran McCabe
You do know that Jersey Shore is scripted too, right?
I hate The Great Schlep. Pointless and patronising. Full of stereotypes. At least, it tried to point out that Obama is not a vicious Muslim. Coz they all are. Why did they not have a Palestinian on the couch?
Oh shit sherlock!
To Bollocks,
Your parents sure know how to name a kid!
Ciaran
‘Classic’ scam print ads seem to me to fit an easily identified style. No copy and often no headline. (Easy for international jurors to understand.) Generic rather than particular to a brand. Smart-alec rather than thought-provoking or persuasive. I don’t know if these are all scams but they LOOK that way. Why on earth do juries continue to award work done in this over-familiar style, scam or not?
http://bit.ly/a3IiyX
http://bit.ly/b3cosD
http://bit.ly/d58XwP
http://bit.ly/XopuG