Apr
24How “hot” chillies really is…… A client perspective
Filed Under (JWT Blog Crew) by Udara on 24-04-2009
On the eve of Chillies , Blog Crew decided to find out how “hot” the chillies is.
From marketing heads of the largest FMCG companies to the CEOs of the leading advertising agencies, Blog Crew spoke to some of the most senior marketers and celebrated agency heads to find out how “hot” they think the chillies is…
Imal Fonseka of Hemas , Bertram Paul of Chevron , Rienzie Martinez of HSBC along with Ruchi Gunawardena of Sting Consultants gave us an insight into how hot the clients find chillies.
They were asked these three common questions where their answers should not exceed more than 5 sentences.
Question 1
Do the results of the Chillies Ad awards help you in choosing the right agency partner?
Question 2
Has the Chillies awards benefited the ad industry at all? How? (Please explain) in what way does it have a positive or negative impact?
Question 3
Has advertising in Sri Lanka seen an improvement in standards over the past 3years? ( big ideas, execution, innovation etc)
This is what these prominent individuals had to say.
Bertram Paul , Chevron
Question 1
Do the results of the Chillies Ad awards help you in choosing the right agency partner?
YES - Somewhat.
Question 2
Has the Chillies awards benefited the ad industry at all?
YES - Somewhat.
Question 3
Has advertising in Sri Lanka seen an improvement in standards over the past 3years?
Feel Chillies has led to division & ill feeling among members of the Ad industry and although some members have benefitted in terms of self promotion, image & hype - it has not favourably impacted client businesses.
Imal Fonseka , Hemas
Question 1
Do the results of the Chillies Ad awards help you in choosing the right agency partner?
We don’t select agencies based on how many awards they win. This is a myth. This misunderstand is perhaps what drives the plethora of counter- productive media releases, articles and interviews which attempt to restate various opinions. There is no such circus after the marketing awards, packaging awards or airline awards. Grow UP !.
Question 2
Has the Chillies awards benefited the ad industry at all?
We don’t reward creativity for the sake of art, we reward it because we recognize that Creativity sells. But it needs a deep understanding of the clients business and the clients customer from the agencies side combined with strong intuition and guts from the clients side to father creativity that sells. Those agencies and those clients who are enlightened enough to understand this and hence use the Chillies week to learn have truly benefited. Others have only complained and will stay complaining and boycotting.
Ruchi Goonawardena , Sting Consultants
Question 1
Do the results of the Chillies Ad awards help you in choosing the right agency partner?
NO.
The Choice of an Agency is very much dependent on the brand, the scope of the work and the core strengths of the Agency.
Question 2
Has the Chillies awards benefited the ad industry at all?
It has a positive impact in that it gets the industry together and provides a common forum or platform to project itself. This shows the commitment and enthusiasm within the industry. However, it has not resulted in a maturing of the industry, as there is still too much infighting and conflict, too much scam and it has not resulted in better quality advertising.
Question 3
Has advertising in
NO.
The owners of agencies are still running their businesses in all but a few cases. Until this changes and CEO’s of agencies are selected purely based on their capabilities the local ad industry will not mature. Further, I believe the industry must focus on education. Until they get this right, with a properly structured curriculum we will not create the right minds to think innovatively and strategically. These are the two reasons why Indian advertising is far superior to ours.
Rienzie Martinez , HSBC
Question 1
Do the results of the Chillies Ad awards help you in choosing the right agency partner?
No. It has not stimulated me to choose the ad agency
Question 2
Has the Chillies awards benefited the ad industry at all?
From the positive side of it - I think it has as it will help the industry to revisit their Marcom work annually.
Question 3
Has advertising in
I have not seen much improvement when compared with the others in the south
Both client and agency need to work together. Agency should be able to take bold decisions and take steps to persuade the client to support it. The industry must move in to performance based agency remuneration system.
Nextweek , the blog will feature key Ad-industry leaders….stay tuned….
No, we do not want to select an agency on the number of awards they have won. It is mostly on their capabilities on promting our prodicts that we choose the agencies. There is one good point in having these type of functions as the staff of the Ad agencies meet one another in one forum.
I beg to differ on part of Ruchi’s comment :Local agencies are capable of incisive strategy and innovation. Its just that they are too caught up on going one up over the other that they are too exhausted to pursue thought leadership.
Apparently the agencies which get more awards and the agencies which get the most “Coveted” awards do perform really well in terms of strategy formulation and execution (Creative concepts and production). But the other side of the coin is “cost”. With the given budgets and especially because of the “up coming” recession, most of the clients tend to compromise quality with cost. And this has been the “Excuse” for agencies, when the creativity and effectiveness of campaigns is questioned. When awarding and rewarding agencies, “Chilies” can have criteria in place to measure the value for money delivered by the agency. i.e. cost Vs creativity and sustainability. The absence of these criteria in the list, has paved the way for isolated campaigns and as a result “integrated communication” has become a myth…