The IPA (Advertising)

359 Pages·2009·0.89 MB·English

The IPA (Advertising) Effectiveness Awards
1980 – 2002:
A Reflection of Non-Marketing Advertising

Pattra Tangthieng

A thesis submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy
Department of Film, Media and Journalism
University of Stirling
September 2009
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Contents

Page
Abstract i
Acknowledgements iii
Introduction 1
Chapter 1 Overview of Advertising Awards 4
Chapter 2 Research Methodology 36
Chapter 3 Marketing and Communication
Perspectives on Advertising 70
Chapter 4 Advertising Agencies and the Conflicts 113
Chapter 5 Sales Effects of Advertising 173
Chapter 6 Communication Effects of Advertising 223
Chapter 7 Values of Learning and Competition 261
Conclusion 301
Appendices 306
Bibliography 327
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Abstract

Theoretically, advertising has been regarded as a marketing communication; that
is, advertising is subsumed under marketing. However, this thesis deconstructs the
existing theories and argues that advertising historically was not a marketing tool due to
practical conflicts within the British advertising industry. Field work was conducted by
means of interviews in addition to document research of publications by practitioners.
After the Second World War, marketing people in Britain adopted the modern marketing
concepts from the US where marketing and advertising people used the same principles
and practice of advertising. The thesis traces back to fundamental concepts in social
sciences such as economics, sociology and psychology that marketing and advertising
people applied to their disciplines. Then, relevant historical backgrounds including the
history of advertising agencies, market research and account planning are explored. They
indicate that advertising was not part of marketing communications but rather located
between marketing and communications. The application of various social sciences and
the historical backgrounds govern British agency people’s practice of advertising research
during the 1960s and 1970s. They used research to explain advertising effectiveness in
terms of both communication and sales. However, they found some disagreements
between their concepts and that of marketing people in their client companies. They felt
more frustrated when clients and research companies used scientific principles and
practice in measuring advertising effectiveness. The 1960s and 1970s events led to the
origin of the IPA (Institute of Practitioners in Advertising) Awards in 1980. The IPA
Awards were in fact the consequence of the past as they tried to maintain their stance of
developing advertising effectiveness theories as opposed to those of clients and research
companies for two decades. However, as the Awards grew and became one of the most
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recognised award schemes in the industry, they were used by agency people as a tool to
increase their agencies’ reputation rather than a demonstration of advertising
effectiveness.
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Acknowledgements

I owe much to Peter Meech, my principal supervisor, and John Izod, my
additional supervisor, for their useful comments and supportive supervision in my long
journey of doing this thesis. I would also like to thank Hamish Pringle, Janet Hull and
Jossy Elvidge at the London office of the IPA, and Sara Robertson and Sonja Mclean at
the Scottish IPA in Edinburgh for their information and permission to access interviewees.
Also, I thank all the interviewees who allowed me to tell the world their shared
experiences of the IPA Awards.
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Introduction

Effectiveness awards gain less attention from people in the advertising industry
than creative awards. It can be shown by the fact that compared with hundreds of creative
award schemes, there are two main effectiveness award schemes in the world, that is, the
IPA (Advertising) Effectiveness Awards in Britain and EFFIE Awards in the US. Other
effectiveness awards such as CASSIE in Canada or AFA Awards in Australia have the
IPA Awards as the prototype while EFFIE Awards expand internationally by selling the
franchises. In theory, effectiveness should be more important than creativity. The former
demonstrates the success of the campaign by elaborating every element of the campaign
that causes the success while the latter is a part of it. In practice, it is surprising to find the
opposite of the theory.
Most studies about advertising awards have creative awards as samples and focus
on being an award scheme in one way or another, for example, using the awards to
promote advertising agencies. There is nothing wrong to study effectiveness awards in the
same way and choose the IPA Awards as a case study. But the history of the IPA Awards
shows something more than superficially being an award scheme. The origin of the
Awards in 1980 extremely contrasted with what happened in 2002. It is surprising to
know that the Awards tried to keep its identity for two decades until the radical change in
2002. It leads the thesis to investigate the value of the Awards that lies underneath being
an award scheme. As a consequence, most of the content of the thesis is spent for
describing the value of the Awards that defies the existing theories. Then, the Awards
themselves are described in the last chapter as the tip of the iceberg.
The thesis begins with general overview of advertising awards related to the study
such as effectiveness awards, creative awards and a small award scheme in Britain called
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APG Awards. The creative awards and the APG Awards are chosen because they are
alternatives to the IPA Awards. The first chapter also includes literature review on
advertising awards and the interesting point in the IPA Awards that leads to research
questions and the research methodology in Chapter 2. Chapter 3 gives the reader two
perspectives on advertising according to its definition: marketing and communication
perspectives. The communication perspective is divided into two schools: scientific and
critical schools. The communication scientific school is compatible with the concept of
marketing management. Both are the dominant paradigm in the US. The critical school
which has been developed from the artistic character of messages was ignored in studying
advertising management until the beginning of the IPA Awards. Details of the critical
school are described in Chapter 6.
In Chapter 4, the historical backgrounds of advertising agencies are explored.
They include the agencies’ contribution to market research and differences in the
organisational structure between agencies and manufacturers, the agencies’ clients. The
contribution to and expertise in market research by agencies have been underestimated.
Under the thought of advertising as a marketing tool, it is always assumed by clients that
the nature of agencies’ business would be similar to theirs. But the products sold by
clients and agencies are different; that is, the clients sell goods while the agencies sell
communications. The difference leads to setting up the account planning department in
agencies. Based on the fact that agencies are communication business, the media
component of advertising campaigns is discussed in Chapter 5. Agencies apply the
economic knowledge of efficiency into media planning. Media planning gains less
advocacy from communication studies than economics and marketing. Media planning
involves the advertising budget but the conflict arises when agencies try to be the decision
maker of it instead of clients. While media planners can show their effective use of the
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budget and media that causes sales, creative people find it difficult to prove the efficiency
of advertising messages. Measuring the effectiveness of advertising messages is in
Chapter 6. It explores the conflicts between the American concept of advertising
effectiveness influenced by the scientific communication school and the British
difficulties to apply it into practice. The scientific communication school might
accompany the marketing concept in the US but the British agencies disagree. As creating
advertising messages relies heavily on the humanities and art, measuring message
effectiveness should not borrow from the scientific school of communication. Here, the
critical school, as the alternative paradigm, offers research methodologies beneficial to
measuring message effectiveness.
The last chapter shows the excellent competence of the IPA Awards’ founders in
combining science from the media part with art from the creative part of advertising. The
IPA Awards demonstrate such combination under the name of ‘the value of learning’.
Unfortunately, the Awards’ contributors do not address it explicitly to both their agency
peers and the client community. It leads to misuse of the Awards among agency people
when they enter them in the hope of promoting their organisations. It also leads to clients’
disbelief and reluctant cooperation in the Awards as their concept is based the scientific
marketing concept. Without realising the authentic value of learning, the history of the
Awards shows that the Awards committee tended to decrease the value of learning and
increase the importance of being an award scheme. And without realising the authentic
value of learning that distinguish the IPA Awards from other competitive awards – either
the EFFIE Awards, creative awards or the APG Awards – the IPA Awards found it
difficult to keep them alive in the award arena. As the author of the thesis, I am therefore
revealing such value that in fact has made a great contribution to the development of
advertising theories.
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Chapter 1
Overview of Advertising Awards

Professional awards are an honour and prestige not only for economists such as
the Nobel Prizes or film makers such as the Oscars but also for advertising agency people.
There are very few directories about advertising award schemes and no single official one
that can describe all advertising awards in the world. It is because there are a huge
number of awards that occur and increased every year. Some directory websites such as
Adslogans (2005), About Advertising (New York Times, 2005), and The Award Bureau
(Anon, 2005) name not more than twelve advertising related award schemes. Directories
such as Yell give 20 names of awards (Yell Group, 2005). The number is nearly equal to
that given by the University of Texas at Austin (2007). Probably, the most reliable
resource would be AdForum (Maydream, 2007a, 2007b, 2007c, 2007d, 2007e, 2007f,
2007g, 2007h, 2007i, 2007j). It gives 63 advertising award schemes running from 1999 to
2007. The number of 63 indicates the fact that awards have become a popular event for
advertising people. AdForum also shows that there are approximately 40 award schemes
held from March to December 2007 and in some months about seven to nine schemes
within a month. Therefore, it is interesting to investigate the advertising awards.
Very few award schemes can be counted as global although most of them claim to
be. American awards such as Clio Awards or One Show might be well-known in the West
but might not in the East where Asia Pacific AdFest is more welcomed. It does not mean
that discrimination occurs in the awards but that advertising people choose to enter the
award scheme they can see the potential to win. It can be said that most of the advertising
awards are national or regional. In the UK, there are a few recognised advertising awards
such as London International Advertising Awards, D&AD (Design and Art Direction)
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Awards, British Television Advertising Awards and the IPA (Advertising) Effectiveness
Awards. The majority are those for creativity in advertising. It has been accepted that
creative awards have long been targeted by agency people. It might be because creativity
is the heart of agencies’ work in the sense that it demonstrates agencies’ uniqueness
which distinguishes them from clients’ or research companies’ task. Creative awards are
therefore the place for agencies to celebrate ‘the beauty of their advertising messages’.
Usually, creative awards are divided into media types such as television, radio, press or
outdoor. Entrants have to submit selected advertisements by medium which will then be
judged and, if successful, awarded prizes. More recently, other departments in agencies
also think about being recognised; award schemes for media planning and buying or
account planning thus emerge. Today, advertising awards might include other relevant
marketing communication activities such as sales promotion and direct marketing to make
competitions for integrated campaigns.
To create a competition, any award scheme generally has a formula. The primary
component consists of a) entering the competition which consists of entry categories and
entry requirements and b) judging the entries which consists of judges, judging criteria
and prize structure. The secondary component consists of activities such as gala dinner
ceremony, publicity and training like seminars and workshops. Both components are the
basis of analysing the structure of advertising awards and will be used again for the
extensive analysis of the IPA Awards in the last chapter. In this chapter, one creative
award scheme, one account planning award scheme and one effectiveness award scheme
will be described on the basis of the two structural components of award competitions.
These award schemes are the main competitors to the IPA Awards and will be referred
again in the last chapter. For the IPA Awards, this chapter gives the reader the brief
background of the Awards. Critical news about the Awards, particularly the radical