The Mumbrella confessional: What it’s like to work at a scam agency
In the first of an occasional series, an anonymous creative tells Mumbrella’s Robin Hicks what it’s like working within an agency dedicated to using scam to win awards.
I worked for this agency as a creative. I quit for a job at another agency when the churn and burn culture and the preoccupation with awards became too much. But I still have friends who work there.
Every agency network does scam in Singapore, more or less. But I can safely say that this was the most extreme environment I’ve ever worked in.
Whenever awards seasons kicks in, the whole place goes crazy. The pressure is on all the creatives to deliver award-winning ideas from the local CEO, the regional CEO and the creative director, with the global creative director breathing down his neck.
There are roundtable sessions held on a Monday morning, first thing at 9am, when the creatives teams share their ideas. The brief is to spot a social problem somewhere in the world, and come up with a brilliant way to solve it. The creative director picks the ideas he likes the most; the ones with the most award-winning potential.
We usually only had the weekend to work on these ideas, so many of them were half-baked and not properly thought through. Some were just plain weird.
I had a problem with an idea that would supposedly be a health benefit to women in a particular part of the world. What if we got it wrong? It could be dangerous, I suggested. I was ignored. This idea has gone on to win a number of awards.
And that’s the goal – awards. Despite what the agency might say about wanting to do good, its ambitions are purely about winning metal, and therefore winning new business and revenue on the back of it all.
Another idea I had a problem with was an app supposedly designed to help people with a particular disability. It simply didn’t work. But that was beside the point. It would win at Cannes.
This agency is not an app-developing agency. Apps are just not part of the agency’s skill set. But the company releases this stuff as ‘testers’ dressed up as workable solutions that will change the world.
And when it emerges that these life-saving apps don’t actually work, suddenly the people at the top vanish – and the juniors are thrown under the bus.
That’s the culture of the place.
The people in charge, who in my view have no business being in the creative industry, ensure that they’re protected and can carry on regardless of any scrutiny the agency falls under.
A big issue is that the creative department is seriously under-staffed. We’d work all week – a typical day is 9am to 9pm – mostly on real clients. But during awards seasons, we’d work from 9am to 2am (sometimes pulling all-nighters to meet awards deadlines) on scam that would eat into time on paying clients whose work would suffer as a consequence.
The agency lost a large chunk of one of its largest accounts because the work had deteriorated while we were working on scam.
For the scam work itself, the agency would bring in unpaid interns to do the grunt work, under the guise that they were being taught the trade. They’d get overloaded with projects, would have no idea what they were for, and get no credit for their contribution.
They would put the deck and case study videos together, sourcing all the footage from Vimeo and YouTube. They would find the footage, cut it, and write script for the video. I did a few of these myself.
Did I have a choice? Yes. Creatives do have a choice whether or not to do scam. But ultimately, if you’re not winning awards you will be let go. You will be under the microscope and not in a good way. So effectively it’s a must.
And a lot of people can’t really go anywhere – the job is all they have. And if they question the system, as I did on a number of occasions, they will come under scrutiny.
I thought if I stayed there any longer I’d either burn out or get into serious trouble, because of the sort of scam work the agency was producing.
I’m at another agency now. Do they do scam? Yes, they do. The difference is that they do not cross the line of pretending to help people, which is the worst sort of lie an agency can tell.
- Have you got a confession? We’ll protect your anonymity – email robin.hicks@mumbrella.asia.com
Articles like these focus exclusively on the theme that poor creatives are being held at gunpoint to do scams by bad bosses.
But there is another critical fallout which has been ignored for years.
In my opinion, scam culture degrades the skills of an entire agency….across all positions.
In the case of REAL award winning ideas, there is serious learning to be had. Clients, suits, creatives….they are all working together with the same goal….to put out something something unique that will work in the market. Suits, planners and creatives learn how to collaborate with clients on extracting and shaping great briefs. And tell good ideas from bad ones. Creatives learn how to craft campaigns that move consumers to action.
All that learning is lost when an agency focuses on scam. The scam idea usually involves one or two people from creative….suits and planners are almost never involved in creation.
Then you have agency CEOs and CCOs coming on here and moaning about how hard it is to find talent…..of course it is….because they did NOTHING to teach your people any skills at all.
As a result, planners have no idea how to write exciting briefs that provide rich fodder, suits and creatives have no clue on what makes a real idea a good one……and it is the client who ultimately pays for all this.
But nowadays even clients seem drawn to this kind of corrupt way of working….I guess they find it hard to resist when they are offered ideas for free.
ReplyThanks for sharing this @Anonymous one. I think we know where you’re talking about.
You forgot to mention how that creative director’s eyes will light up whenever creatives want to discuss scam ideas. But when you want to talk real work, will say he’s tired and to lets talk another day, and then sometimes the work is due next day.
I hope this agency and the bosses will grow up and stop living in their own world.
ReplyDear poor creative. Had you had the balls and ability you would have chosen not to. There are examples of creatives in these scam agencies who don’t participate in the round table.
Don’t blame the game, blame yourself for perpetuating it.
Reply@TheDevil – clearly you’ve never been there. It’s not about balls. It’s about keeping your job. If you’re a target and selected or requested to do scam then it’s not as simple as saying “no.” A little empathy maybe?
ReplyOh you know me now.
ReplyI know you like you know the anonymous creative.
ReplyMy story happened about 15 years ago in another Asian city. But nothing, it seems, has changed… Long story short, I got fired for “insubordination” after showing reluctance to take part in a similar enforced scam culture.
I had just won some metal (actually glass orbs) at the previous year’s AP Adfest – with scams. But I didn’t want to go through that “scam cram” regimen over and over again, and I was unable to conceal my disgust.
ReplyGrey is such great agency what to say I was working for Grey dhaka . I was pregnant people in that office planed game so well and me and my husband had to leave dhaka in 8 mth of my pregnancy …..and they are team player in true sense …all of them follow each other and show true humanity
ReplyThis happens in Australia too. I work there 🙁
ReplyYou poor dudes should go work at Grey then.
They have a pool table and ping pong table… I mean, they have a culture. You will also overflow with award-winning ideas after those games.
http://grey.com/singapore/culture
“All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. Yup, we would not want our people to be overwhelmed by work, would we? After all, pool is a great way to get the creative juices flowing with award-winning ideas.”
ReplyHaha…it’s a disease across Asia now..scams are in! Malaysia is no exception….name them here ! Noted with shame ..Dentsu, Asatsu,Dik,(all Japs) …Many more they are desparately looking for awards , not clients…! The CCO CEO or whatever Cs are in for it!…The above article sounds oh so familiar and can fit any and many agencies in Malaysia…! Congrats….!
ReplyDo you know what is sad? There are many ECDs who win with real work with tons of awards in Australia, Japan, China, and yes Singapore (just check the work of the well known digital-driven ECDs).
And here we hear creatives saying they are victims of circumstances or industry peer pressure. It is not impossible to do award winning real work. You just need to try harder at this rather than waste so much time on scam.
In the 4As agencies in Singapore, there is an 80-20 rule i.e. 20% of the time on real work and 80% of the time on scam, pro bono, ghost, initiative work.
ReplyAn agency I worked at entered work for every award show and only won 1 or 2 One Show (finalists). ECD was going on about how great it was. But if you look at the numbers – tens of thousands spent for 2 finalists for work that never ran. Now, if we made that kind of returns on shares, would we be as thrilled?
Replyhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xeBnAxjmiRg
Replywhere money gone with this tvc ?
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