So recently I judged a massive amount of effectiveness papers.
A massive amount.
And while there were some excellent submissions – and, sadly, a fair amount of terrible ones – the thing that struck me overall was that it appears Indian marketing is stuck in a ‘do good’ inflation race with itself.
As I’ve always been someone who has advocated the potential for brands to make a difference to their community, you’d think I’d be very happy about this, however when so much of it comes across as contrived, forced, exploitive – or worse – desperately trying to ‘one-up’ the competition without any real thought to what the audience needs – just what they want them to have – you end up feeling disillusioned by the end of it.
Not only that, but I have to question how effective these sorts of campaigns can be when it seems every brand in every category is basically doing the same thing.
As I said, left me feeling disillusioned and I appreciate that’s amazing given it came from reading countless papers about doing good, but I guess that’s another thing advertising is brilliant at doing.