Agencies cheating themselves over scam ads

The Chillies Awards held to celebrate the best in advertising was also the subject of immense scandal and debate last year over the issue of scam ads.

The Chairman of the Board of Trustees, Gerald De Saram, told The Sunday Times FT that he does not believe the awards will ever be entirely free of scam.

"I don't think there's a single awards process in the work that is entirely free of scam," he said, when asked by The Sunday Times FT to respond to the issue of scam ads. "People who sail very close to the edge will always find ways of going by the letter of the law as opposed to the spirit of the law. I think ultimately, and this is my view as chairman of the Trustees, the only way scam will get knocked out is for the ultimate stakeholders, the agencies to do something about it."

De Saram said the agencies came together to put up the Chillies as an excellent project to raise the standards of advertising in Sri Lanka and in particular, to raise the standard of creativity. "Having set it up, for them to then go and break the spirit of their own event is to me utterly meaningless. If you're going to cheat at your own event, something that you have put in place to raise the standards of your own advertising, you're cheating yourself. There's no point in having the Chillies." He added that it is up to the agency heads to see the bigger picture and play accordingly. "There is only so much that the Trustees can do in wielding the big stick and being the policeman. It's impossible to bring in a foolproof method of monitoring and enforcing this. Ultimately, it's up the agencies."

De Saram said the Trustees are essentially there to ensure that what is in the blueprint or the rule book is actually what is practiced during the evaluation process of the entries and the awards. "The issue of scam, I believe, has been there for some time and I don't think any of the agencies that took part or the two associations would deny that," he said. "Somehow, it reached a high last year in 2007 and there was a huge uproar amongst some of the members of these two associations, the people who took part and the agencies. The process for bringing up objections or issues after the Chillies awards night is that they are entitled to write to the Trustees within 30 days of that date, pointing out any deficiencies in the system. Loads of agencies wrote in complaining of scam but none of was specific in naming agencies and awards but they did give a consensus and a general idea that there was a problem."

"The Trustees then looked through all the issues that were being thrown out and we found that the blueprint that governs the awards process had not been drafted in a way that clearly identified and defined scam," De Saram said. "It allowed for ads that had even a single insertion in a paper or a radio station and that was signed off by the agency head and the client, so none of these ads that were being complained about had actually broken the rules."

De Saram said that since none of them had broken the rules at the time of the event, nothing could be done. "But recognizing the issues," he continued, "we produced a set of proposals which took longer to produce than we initially envisaged because it was a contentious issue that was wide ranging. We had to get input from a diverse cross section of stakeholders.

We had to debate it ourselves because the Trustees also had views. We got views from the previous steering committee who got the views of the judges of the awards."

De Saram said he felt it was worth the extra time because the Trustees were able to produce a comprehensive and practical set of proposals which were then presented to the stakeholders of the awards, being the two associations representing the advertising and marketing fraternity.

An industry insider who spoke to The Sunday Times FT said there is new concern that scam ads are happening all over again. According to the insider, it was estimated that approximately 40 percent of the ads submitted to the Chillies last year were scam.

"The rules did not prohibit scam ads but the real concern is that these are bogus ads and the awards are based on a fraud and scam and people are creating bogus ads to win awards," he said. "Sometimes, agencies are paying for them and running it themselves to win awards and a number of agencies are concerned with this.

It has affected the industry badly. It is total corruption and fraud. Frankly, there are three or four agencies that are keen to do it and they are gung ho about it."