Advertising Contest Scam Ads and Commercials

Steffan Postaer, author of "The Happy Souls Industry" and a judge at the Dubai Lynx advertising awards show, brought up the unhappy issue of scam ads just as the 2009 contest season got underway across the globe. Although most of the world probably doesn’t know what they are, Postaer refers to the "scam" or "ghost"ads as a "universal problem" in the ad contest world. Other blogs imply the same.

For the innocent among us, "scam" ads are advertising contest entries that have never really been ads. They have not been published or run on any station. They were created not for a paying client, but by an agency or individual hoping to grab fame and fortune by winning an award. They were created solely for a contest.

"With young creatives dying to become famous, the matter never ends," Postaer wrote in his "Gods of Advertising" blog from the Dubai Lynx contest.

"We are likely seeing a few scams in the Dubai Lynx," he wrote. That would be understandable because the Lynx judging is relatively new, Dubai is a relatively young ad center and "young creatives" might think it is fertile ground for sneaking in a contest-only ad.

So, what's the big deal? Great copy is great copy and beautiful graphics can be beautiful art whether they've been produced for a client or a contest. The big deal is that Lynx, Clio, the Addys and similar contests are ad competitions, not art or prose contests. Ads are tools for selling something and they must satisfy the client that they can sell whatever he wants sold. That's why the client should be the first judge of any ad.

Postaer said the Dubai people were "methodical in handling this universal problem and do a marvelous job maintaining the show’s integrity."