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A reply - Anna Hutson's response to Paul Feldwick's review of the APG / IPA meeting on the future direction of the IPA Effectiveness awards.... By Stephen Woodford, Chairman of the IPA Value of Advertising committee and C.E.O., WCRS. The story so far.... The APG and IPA held a meeting last year to discuss options to develop and improve the IPA Effectiveness Awards. Paul Feldwick spoke at the meeting and wrote a piece for Sharp Stick, using the "Hall of Bright Carvings" metaphor from the Gormenghast trilogy. This provided an enduring image of pointless ritual and futility, with peasants toiling year round to create elaborate effigies that no-one but the Hall's curator ever sees. Anna responded with a plaintive plea for clarity about what the IPA awards were asking "the peasants" to create, given that good, old-fashioned ROI cases were no longer all that was needed to win an award. Her own contribution to the vivid metaphors category was of Olympic medals being awarded to sprinters who ran their race in the most elaborate and innovative manner, say by doing backflips every other step. To answer Anna's cry for guidance about what sort of gymnastics we require to catch the judges eye for 2002 (remember closing date is 17th May), I'd refer you to the most comprehensive and clear Guide to Entrants yet, on the IPA website. But the myth that we're not interested in old-fashioned, ads-in/ sales-out stories is just that. We welcome with open arms cases which are straight-forward ROI-based (sprints and marathons) and such cases can win the top prizes (prizes which, by popular demand, have reverted to the traditional Gold/Silver/Bronze/ Commendation structure) As Anna remarks, Finance Directors by and large remain as unconvinced as ever about the ability to demonstrate unequivocally the direct contribution of advertising to business success and high-profile cases help maintain the pressure to put advertising further up the corporate agendas. So why have the Awards changed (yet again, some might groan) for 2002? Primarily to reflect the concerns and issues raised by two sets of people. First, the membership of the IPA and second, the authors themselves. After the 2000 Awards, we consulted widely with the IPA member agencies about "their" flagship awards programme, to ensure it reflected the reality of their work on behalf of their clients and to be of use to them in demonstrating the commercial worth of what we as an industry create. The IPA membership comprises, broadly-speaking, every significant creative agency (which it always has done) and now every significant media agency. There is also small but growing membership in new media and direct communications. We want the Awards to have the ability to recognise the contribution to business success of every one of these agencies, whether it be a classic, creative case history (with a stonking ROI story as it's centrepiece), or a change in media strategy that doubled the productivity of a client's budget or even a campaign using text-messaging. We want to see creative and media agencies entering joint papers, reflecting how both contribute in partnership to success in the real world. We want to see papers that identify the contribution of one strand of activity and papers that look at how they all work together in beautiful harmony. In short, we want to see papers that reflect the reality of how agencies create commercial success for their clients. To signify this obvious, rather than brave, new world, we've dropped "Advertising" from the title of the Awards. We want cases that celebrate "Effectiveness", broadly, narrowly, above, through and below the line. The second group that concerned us was you, the reader of this article, as an interested party and potential author. Your views, judging by the APG/IPA meeting, were very much in favour of maintaining the high intellectual standards and rigour of the Awards. There was no desire for anything that could be construed as "dumbing down" (following the format of the Effies for example).But there was a strong desire to make the judging criteria more transparent (which we've done on the website) There was a desire above all to make the awards reflect real working lives. The widespread feeling that the top prizes only went to innovative cases and that "old-fashioned" sales successes were no longer wanted, needed to be corrected. The perceived focus on purely advertising effects, or having to account for "other" effects purely to allow the full radiant glory of the creative contribution to shine through doesn't reflect the integrated reality most of work on behalf of clients. I could go on, but I hope my point is clear. The Effectiveness Awards do and must continue to evolve to reflect the practice of IPA agencies. Who'd have thought even two years ago that the Chairman of one of the bluest-chip FMCG companies would be attributing his excellent financial results to a text-message campaign, as John Sunderland of Cadbury's did recently? I'd hope that the agency concerned (CHECK) will be entering a paper, so we can share their learning. I'd like to end with my own analogy for the Awards. They are rarefied to the extent of the many ten of thousands of brands that advertise over a two year period, we get maybe 60 or 70 papers entered. They are demanding and difficult to win and they constantly push the boundaries of practice and knowledge. As the Formula One seasons gets underway again this would be my chosen metaphor -practically every significant technology and innovation on a family hatchback first saw light of day on the racetrack, going right back to the start of motoring. Cars today a re safer, faster, cheaper in relative terms, more environment-friendly than ever, because the extremes are tested and proven in competition. Likewise I'd argue that the UK Advertising industry in all its forms is more creative, more productive, more successful and more respected globally today than ever. Like motor-racing it is an industry where Britain leads the world and in my view the Effectiveness Awards are it's Formula 1. Murray Walker or Mervyn Peake - it's up to you! (c) Account Planning Group 1995-2002
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