Belgiovane: Logie for best TV commercial of the year would help reduce scam advertising
Introducing a Logie Award for the top TV commercial would help reduce the level of scam advertising by having the general public choose their favourite ad of the year, says BWM founding partner/ECD Rob Belgiovane.
He’s confident the category will be added in time for the 2011 Logie Awards after his suggestion to David Gyngell, CEO of Channel Nine, which broadcasts the annual television awards show, met with a positive response. The nominees are published in TV Week with the winners decided by public vote.
It was too late to add the awards to this year’s awards in May, but Gyngell has put it on the agenda for the first meeting about next year’s awards.
It’s something that has been running successfully in othermarkets: the Emmy Awards has a category for Outstanding Commercial of the Yearand TVNZ runs the Fair Go Ad Awards, an hour-long program showcasing the bestand worst ads of the year as voted by the public.
Why now? Reducing scam advertising is on the agenda globallywith international awards shows such as the New York One Show banning agenciescaught entering scam ads and other awards shows tightening their entryrequirements.
“People are sick and tired of the agencies that win oftenwinning because they’ve constructed ads that are designed to win awards. Itmakes the industry look like it lacks integrity,” says Belgiovane (left). “This seemslike a fair way to really decide what is great advertising because youcertainly can’t enter a scam for something like the Logies, it has to have runfor people to know it.”
He says that whether the general public can be trusted tovote on the best commercial is irrelevant because they either like something orthey don’t so it’s not a question of trust, it’s whatever they vote for is whatthey love.
“If that aligns with what we are voting for in the awardjuries based on the industry people, even better. The ultimate outcome is thatif you can win the People’s Choice Award and the same commercial, forexample, wins the industry award, then that’s what you would classify as reallygreat advertising,” he says.
He says it’s a situation where everybody wins: “The publicgets to engage in another aspect and a significant aspect of what’s on theirscreen, Channel Nine benefits from making the Logies extremely relevant totheir primary target the media and advertising industry and of course theadvertising agency who wins benefits because you’re discovering what thegeneral public think is great work so it should help us get a betterunderstanding of what’s going on out in the community.”
Belgiovane says the people who make the ads are judgingpractically every advertising award in the country: “So it becomes very incestuous, very in-industry, so thiswould be one of the first awards judged by the people, i.e., the people the adswere intended to appeal to,” he says. “So while there are a lot of awards allof them are judged by people who work in advertising and in a small populationlike Australia you basically get a situation where just about every award hasthe same jury and usually they are the people who did the work anyway, so youcan’t help but have a biased outcome for any given jury of industrypractioners. What happens when you go to the general public is you get a veryunbiased view of what is really good or what is not good.”
28 Comments
great idea
Sweeeeeeet!
Still no idea how this is going to stop scam ads.
I don’t understand how this will this reduce the amount of scam advertising.
The ads in contention need to be so familiar with the voters that they’d have to have run a bazillion times.
The top few ads that the TV Week people reckon most appealed to Beryl from Bayswater will be listed in the voting form in TV Week and Beryl from Bayswater will vote for her favourite. Probably that year’s ‘Not Happy Jan’ or HBA’s ‘Head went that way legs went that way’ or the Big Ad.
Yeah it might be a good idea to put ads in the Logies but it’s so far from the world of scam it’s not funny.
Damn right! I’d swap my Lion for a Logie anyday. At least my friends and family would know what the hell it is.
Perfect but who is going to decide who the nominees are?
I’d love to see a Logie (or similar) for ads.
But I don’t think there is a hope in hell that the results of the public voting will be in any way aligned to what is winning awards. Or that it will stop scams. The ads that would get up in a Logies vote will be big TV ideas. The ads that get up for scams are invariably print, posters or online.
For a taste of what to expect, check out the public votes they have each in the States for the Superbowl ads, and compare them to what gets rewarded in the industry.
There is no agreement. But nor, necessarily, should there be. A People’s Choice award would basically be a giant research group. And they are not exactly renowned for getting things right.. The Logies themselves do not usually pick the best quality shows.
The other issue will be that the Logies have a shortlist for the public voting. Who will pick it?
Still, I’d love to see it. You can bet our clients will put far more love towards a Logie winner than a Cannes winner.
i’m on a horse.
Given the public taste for mediocrity in all things, and Channel 9’s leadership in all things mediocre, it’d be interesting to see just what the great unwashed would choose. No, really. This is the audience that brought back Hey Hey it’s Saturday by public demand, so let’s see what ad they reckon is great. A massive dose of reality might save a lot of hand-wringing in agencyland, not to say all the in-fighting on this blog.
Aren’t the logies for things people enjoy watching – not hate watching??
I’m ready for my close up Mr DeMille.
This is an age old argument. But the socialist in me says:
‘Heaven forbid our advertising be judged by the people that we’re actually advertising to. Unfortunately the great unwashed are the majority, and most know enough about advertising to know the ads they like. Do you think a Pommie judge, or a few yuppies from in Manly or Bondi are better qualified to judge public opinion?”
Mighty Friday. I love you!
Fuck yeah. I want a logie.
I think what you advertising geniuses are forgetting is the Logie watchers / voters are your target…
This is a great idea – — keep craft for advertising awards judged by the industry, otherwise, let the people chose….
It’s a great idea. It’s a good reminder that the people who wanted Hey Hey back, and vote for logies form a huge part of our tarhet market. these are the people our ads need to resonate with, not the judging panel at other award shows. If you can do both, like the Big Ad, you are a frikkin champion, sunshine.
I love how Rob presents as though he’s a noble soldier for advertising.
He’s pushing his own barrow and he sees this as another platform to sell his wares.
Reducing scam advertising? Yeah right.
Isn’t this just gonna be an award for ads with massive media budgets, that everyone has seen? Clients like…hmmm….Telstra Big Pond and Sanatarium?
@ 1:10
don’t hate the player baby, hate the game…
awards shows are just marketing and promotion exercises after all
@1:43
Somewhere along the way we forgot what it’s all about and how we got there in the first place.
Disillusioned, cheesed off, yet sadly not surprised. I don’t know what to believe in anymore. First Santa, then Marion Jones, now this.
Santa was a drug cheat? I’m gutted.
@2:26
Seriously mate, where the fuck have you been?
http://n1.cdn.spikedhumor.com/1/34000/9265_santa.jpg
Doesn’t Daryl Summers have a logi?. Pass.
So the judges of the best ad Logie will be drawn from the same talent pool as the drongos who sit in judgement of my/your concepts in research focus groups. Be careful what you wish for.
9:50 PM you’re a horses arse
It’s a good idea. So good the Emmy’s have been doing it here in the USA for over a decade. An Australian writer has one but she’s too modest to PR herself.
A logie????….the brits gave a bafta once for best ad….prefer a bafta to a logie…but thats the difference living in the colonies i guess!!!!!!!!!
Yes it’s a great idea, because we’ll be taking ourselves even more seriously from now.
Judging from focus groups, we can expect ads like ‘don’t chop the dinosaur head daddy’ to go straight to the top. I shit you not, mums love that ad.
Awesome.
No joke, I was the writer of the very last Logie awared to ads years ago (Export Cola) and it was stopped the following year because a client stood up and tossed off as if it was as significant as a television industry award. It is not.
how on earth would this stop scam?
fecking stupid…