It's the social issues, the tug at the heartstrings that always do well in any advertising awards. These public service ads can dramatise emotions and prod consciences much more boldly than any commercial for a supermarket product.
So it was no surprise that in last month's Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity - the grand judgment and celebration that, in the ad world, is as big as the Cannes Film Festival - social themes won so many of the big awards.
In a world that has been set spinning with tales of paedophiles and pornography, these themes came out at the top with a campaign called Terre des Hommes. It's not a product ad, more a charity.
The Dutch agency, Lemz, introduced a totally believable Filipina girl who goes onto chat rooms and announces herself as available. The men on the internet line respond in swarms - sometimes 10, sometimes a hundred an hour. They offer her money - but what they don't know is that "Sweetie" is computer-generated. And that while they are "chatting", their details are being obtained.
"In two weeks we identified more than 1000 men from around the world", said the group's head, Albert Jaap van Santbrink. The information was passed to the men's local police authorities.
Very worthy, but is it advertising? The judges had difficulty with that question and finally awarded it the Grand Prix for Good, a section for charities.
Last year it was McCann Melbourne that trounced the world with the Metro Trains campaign "Dumb Ways to Die" to pull in a best-ever five Grand Prix and 18 Gold Lions.
To show this talent was no fluke (though the number will never be surpassed) they pulled in a Grand Prix this year with "Guilt Trip" for V/Line. Here country parents plot ways to bring their city-flown children home for a visit by sending them guilty pangs and a train ticket.
The other Grand Prix local winner was the ANZ Bank with a surprising outdoor entry: you could call it a coming out. They sponsored the world-famous Sydney Gay Mardi Gras and celebrated it by decorating their ATMs with the campest glitter-and-rhinestones decorations since Liberace. They called them "GayTMs" and dressed them in sailor suits, rainbows and hearts and of course lots of lippy lips.
I can't judge how successful this will be in marketing terms but the goodwill factor has to be right up there. ANZ reports that 200 of their employees marched in the Mardi Gras parade, ten ATMs were dressed up, and 62 million impressions were sent out across 70 countries through media like Facebook and Twitter. And let's face it, it was a pretty brave move for a bank to make.
Back in the Netherlands - a place with some of the strangest ideas - the Product Design Grand Prix went to G-Star Raw. The young-fashion chain has produced a range of clothing made from recycled plastic waste fished from the oceans.
And that ultra capitalist, Coca-Cola, found that Peru was a nation with the saddest people. So they set up a series of photo booths, for the mandatory citizen ID cards, that would only take pictures when the subject was smiling. That won McCann Lima the Media Grand Prix.
Is all this advertising or social engineering? What happened to the snappy headline and clever commercial? Or if you like: where have all the Mad Men gone?
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