One-off ads appear in free mag for Indian expats in Singapore in time for Cannes deadline
Ambitiously creative ads for a washing powder and a carpet protector have appeared in two April editions of a free community magazine for Indian expats in Singapore just before the deadline for the Cannes Lions advertising awards show.
The ads, for Unilever brand Persil and 3M’s Scotchgard, do not appear to have run in any publication but the April 17 and 24 editions of Singapore Press Holdings weekly freebie Tabla!.
The deadline for submissions for Cannes was 24 April.
The Persil campaign by Lowe Singapore, in three different half-page ads, depicts overweight children wearing muddied sports gear, with the message that parents should encourage them to do more exercise. “Let dirt shape them, not the TV,” reads the copy in one of the ads above an image of a boy in cycling gear. Another ad featuring a young cricketer reads: “Let dirt shape them, not junk food.”
A third execution of the idea, which is a spin-off of Persil’s long-running global ‘Dirt is good’ campaign, featured a forlorn-looking boy and the line: “Let dirt shape them, not video games.”
In the same two editions of the weekly magazine, another series of three executions of an idea appeared as half-page ads – for Scotchgard carpets and rugs stain remover.
The ads follow a familiar formula for work crafted with awards juries in mind; a visual metaphor for the product and a small logo placed in a corner.
The ads for the 3M-made product show spilt fluids collected neatly on top of pieces of broken glass, having avoided contact with the carpet thanks to Scotchgard. The copy surrounding the logo reads: “Repels fluids, blocks stains, resists soiling”.
Tabla! is distributed in condos, international schools, 7-Elevens, Shell service stations and Changi Airport, and has a claimed weekly circulation of 30,000. At ratecard, a half-page full-colour ad costs S$2,727.60.
Mumbrella was tipped off about the ads by a reader, who commented on a story about Ogilvy’s recent ‘mums and maids’ campaign (another reader said that they’d seen a poster from the Scotchgard campaign on Orchard Road):
Did anyone else notice that TABLA is now the new IS magazine for scam ads? Flip through the pages of Tabla this month, and you’ll see the ScotchGuard print ad (2 or 3 of them in one issue too!) and 2 half page print ads for some detergent brand.
And this is TABLA. A freakin’ weekly newspaper with a circulation rate of close to 0, I am assuming. I only flipped through it as it came free with our morning coffee. Which client in their right state of non-scam mind would pay for an insertion in Tabla?!
In comparison, there were 0 scam ads in the April issue of IS (or rather, the newly named SG).
Slow claps, people, slow claps.
I-S Magazine, or SG Magazine as it is now known following a rebrand last year, was the only media platform used for the world’s most awarded print ad of 2014. BBDO Singapore’s work for Guinness draught-in-a-bottle ran as five fractional ads in a single April edition of the free listings title just before the deadline for Cannes last year.
I told you so….the scotch guard ad with the blue background is the one I saw at Orchard Road bus shelter…then they took it down after they read the tipoff here…but when you lie and cheat there is no place to hide.
BTW that Persil ad is really wtf! Terrible….no consumer understands what ‘dirt is good’ means…yeah dirt is good but only for unilever, because you need to buy more washing powder to get it off….dont BS us that it is anything else!
ReplyDon’t get over zealous in your witch hunt Robin.
ReplyYou have no idea just how much pressure the local creatives, CDs, ECDs and CCOs are under to win awards.
The regional and global heads just assign targets for each office to win, from the security of their highly paid positions.
If the local underlings don’t win in 2015, there’s no 2016 for them.
Once it was an ego thing.
Now its survival.
It’s simple in its brutality.
And brutal in its simplicity.
Posters like #2 are exactly like the gonad-less specimens in our world who perpetuate this nonsense. Well done Mumbrella for not backing down…we need to eradicate this scam kaka because it creates top creative leadership that are useless at making real ads…and yet they get paid 30, 40 50K a month….as a client that is worrying. What is worse is that these guys and gals then pass on these nasty habits to juniors and go on to judge award shows with their warped sensibilities so even the results of award shows are skewed. We need to ban these posers from judging unless they show that they can do real ads well.
Reply@Be Kind
ReplyWhat a shit life it must be working in a creative agency if that is the case.
Spinal atrophy and underdeveloped gonards aren’t restricted to creatives.
ReplyIt’s fairly distributed across all departments in most network agencies.
Planners who knowingly fudge numbers to make case studies sound legit and post rationalise objectives to fit the work.
Producers who beg and lie to production houses to produce scam ads and make entry videos.
Suits who sell their principles to get clients to ‘approve’ the scams.
Media folks who find cheap and free media.
Agency heads who pretend all this isn’t happening under their roof.
It’s amazing any real work is done between March to June.
So that’s your excuse?
ReplyI guess fellows like you who has all the time to comment are those without a real job. Not to mention doing real ads.
Haha just like me 🙂
ReplyI actually agree with what you’ve said. What was once something that stroked our egos, has now become something that is in every creative’s KPI and something they need as arsenal if they want to survive in this business. Frankly, lots of ECDs have this mentality that “oh, you dont have awards? you are not hungry/passionate/talented enough.” They hardly care if the individual does great things for real clients. So if we want to get rid of scam, the ECDs need to recognise that awards aren’t everything. And stop placing that Lion’s head on a fucking pedestal.
ReplyLOVE that mumbrella is taking a vigilante stance against scam ads! Go Robin!
ReplyThat Persil ad is sooooo bad it is funny. WTF happened there, Lowe! At least the DDB ScotchGard ad is rather nicely crafted – very scammy but it’s the kind of stuff that judges like.
ReplyYou’re a journalist that covers a creative industry. Why can’t you just celebrate creativity?
Who cares if it’s scam advertising or not? It’s not even about the pressures creatives are under… it is just increasingly difficult to find brave clients in this new world of accountability and ROI.
If there wasn’t scam.. there wouldn’t be a creative benchmark to push the envelope further. Cannes would get REALLY freaking boring, very quickly.
Embrace it Robin… or go write about the finance industry or something!
Honestly, who made you the compliance officer for the ad business anyway?
ReplyWhat a troll….LOL!
Replyhttp://www.wired.com/2015/05/creepy-ads-use-litterbugs-dna-shame-publicly/
Aside from commenters called it fake – on Wired – the ad features an Ogilvy HK employee. Which is odd given the claims –
ReplyHey robin, might be interesting if we got to read about all the submissions the different agencies submitted to Cannes this year. Not so much to see which is scam (though won’t be surprised if many of them are), but would be interesting to see the types of work done by each agency. As a creative in Singapore, it’s interesting to see the type of work done in our backyards! Any chance we could take a peek at the roundup of work this year? Maybe we could discuss which ones are the most interesting!
ReplyHave your say