So, for the second year running, a full service advertising agency has been awarded the top PR award at Cannes. Or so it seems. I’m assuming that this tactic from Cannes, in itself, is a smart PR idea to get more agencies to submit their cases and to do them better than advertising agencies. But is the award winning case really ‘PR’?
To start with, the jury says, among other things,
“excellence and creativity in public relations doesn’t have an address. We’re in an era where the labels matter less and less”
the winners will be the ones, no matter what their label, who “reach across the disciplines and grasp hands.”
Now, I’m all for integration across functions and agencies given the fact that we are all working towards one goal – to solve the client’s problems and help them achieve their objectives. But there are quite a few operational issues that force the industry to continue with the labels that are so abhorred by the Cannes jury. And strangely, most of it comes from clients…not from agencies willing to go all out to help the clients.
So, let me list the issues.
1. The NAB ‘campaign’ seemingly started from a single tweet. And it caught the fancy of the online community in Australia. A rudimentary check on the number of followers of NAB’s twitter account indicates that about 2,500+ people may have been following them on Twitter when the February 11th tweet was ‘orchestrated’. Excellent – that’s some reach! The Twitter profile of NAB is its owned media property and it is a wise decision by the bank and the agency to utilize it to launch the campaign.
But that’s the real deal. The campaign was launched on Twitter. What did the agency and bank to do to ensure that it reaches a much wider audience? If this was a PR firm, it would have looked at opportunities where it can convince a large number of Australians that the break-up is due to x, y and z factors that could benefit them. This would involve more use of owned media properties (like the Break-up blog, quite appropriate, I agree), using media relations to reach end-users and offline events to engage with both end-users and decision makers…just to list a few tactics.
But what actually happened? The agency went on a fabulous paid media spree. This included full page adverts in almost all national newspapers and generous use of outdoor media. Of course, if the objective was to spread the word in the interest of the client, this is great bang for the buck. But I’d love to know which division in NAB signed off the media budget. Chances are, it may not be the PR division.
2. A simple way to find out who owns the campaign is to look at where the core idea originated from. In this case, I suppose a full service advertising agency came up with the idea. If, by any freak chance, NAB’s PR agency on record came up with this brilliant gimmick, would the advertising agency be willing to work on executing it? Chances are, they may not. After all, it is ideas that they bring to the table…would they look at it from the point of view of the client and work on an idea sold by the PR agency?
Let’s not jump to conclusions here. If they indeed had, this award would go to the PR agency. It went to the advertising agency…which means a full service advertising agency came up with this idea…a traditional marketing/advertising idea…albeit a brilliant one.
3. The core idea itself is nothing short of a very, very, very clever gimmick. It spells out the bank’s USP brilliantly but is not rooted in any customer-centric facts. Yes, there was this price advantage that Westpac pointed out in its seemingly weak retort to NAB’s campaign, but in essence what NAB is saying is that they’re cheaper…than the other three. How they say this is where the magic happened. And that’s where the differentiation lies. PR yearns for authenticity to convince a client’s target audience. Gimmicks are a way to get the TA interested, but someone’s got to convince them that behind the gimmick there is a tangible benefit that the TA can trust and believe in.
PR adopts gimmicks too, no doubt, but it is not followed by more aggressive communication of the gimmick (like paid media usage, which is, I’d say…easy – you pay your way to say *whatever* you want). Gimmicks in PR are followed by facts – the ‘Hey we got your attention…now, listen to something that makes sense for you’. In NAB’s case, I agree that a massive gimmick was indeed followed by facts, but this is the simple ‘visit our store for 50% cheaper prices than our competitors x, y and z’. If that message is plastered all over the country by paying for all that space and the service/commodity is something that people need, why wouldn’t they queue up to the bank’s branches? Where is PR in all this? When I say PR, I mean authentic communication…not a clever gimmick that is communicated largely using paid media.
PR’s use of paid media is, in my opinion, to compliment content promotion. And that content itself is authentic and meaningful…not a gimmick intended to increase visibility or footfall. And in doing so, the objective is to use those kinds of media vehicles that are perceived as authentic. If this is not the case in NAB’s campaign, why bother calling it PR and convincing ourselves against simple common sense?
The case study also notes that the ‘Break-up’ completely dominated Australian media, including generous television coverage. So, what were they reporting? That NAB has cheaper rates compared to its 3 competitors? Or that NAB is naming and shaming 3 of its competitors using outdoor media? I’d love to know. If it is the former, hats off to the agency – this is what PR dreams of enabling for the client. If it’s the latter, sorry, no cookies for you – the reporting was just like a standard report about any ‘incident’ in the country. The difference is easy to comprehend – if the agency leeched on to other visible media/influencers by largely paying them, it is simply an advertising campaign. If they did by convincing visible media and influencers and let them spread the word on their own, that is PR. It is not a question of paid media alone that I’m pointing out to – it is the question how paid media was applied and for what purpose.
Now, don’t get me wrong. I love what NAB is doing on their Facebook and Twitter page – just take a look at the responses there. They are customized, personal and fabulously worded. This is brilliant social media usage by the bank, whether managed internally (looks like it) or outsourced. But why confuse a time-bound advertising campaign with PR and also top it with a PR award? Because PR agencies couldn’t come up with or submit decent case studies? Now that’s a vastly different issue altogether and the solution is not to insult both advertising and PR by giving the former an award meant for the latter.
Think about it – is Clemenger BBDO Melbourne pitching for PR clients now in Australia? Or, are potential clients looking for a PR agency in Australia thinking of Clemenger BBDO Melbourne as one of their choices? Chances are, no, in both cases. So, why all this charade?
Related, recommended read:
1. NAB’s “The Break Up”: a Traditional Marketing Campaign with an Efficient Social Media PUSH (Feb.17, 2011)
2. NAB â??break-upâ?? a PR lesson for start-ups (Jun.22, 2011)
3. Hats off to NAB… Seriously! (Feb.14, 2011)
Photo courtesy, Campaign Asia.