An example is tonight’s Hall of Fame Awards which was advertised as a banner ad on soccernet.com, and on two walls at Raffles Link – our most celebrated creatives pose for the camera, representing the newly introduced creative director’s award for the HOF 2006.
Another example was the Singapore Media Awards which was advertised on radio and more.
The only people who are interested in award shows are agencies, who then rope in their clients for a “great night at a great table, with great company”, according to one of our blog watchers, thc. Thanks for your comments by the way.
Which is fair. I think award shows are great opportunities to reward creativity and having all your peers gathered together for a few evenings in a year is great. I, for one, love the atmosphere.
So why then, would running an ad on Class 95FM, for example, be of any use? Surely organisers can simply send an email to all the agencies in Singapore. There are only 300 plus of them and if that’s too many, then the usual suspects who are active at award shows are easy enough to identify and target.
One obvious reason why such ads appear on mainstream media is because parties such as SMRT Media are supporters of the award shows and it’s part of their partnership agreement to offer up some free ad space.
But I’m thinking, SMRT Media is a commercial organisation and it can make good money out of the space it’s giving away. I’m all for showing support of a worthy cause, but the support has to mean something.
I think it’s great SMRT Media is providing a platform for people our industry respect, such as Tay Guan Hin, Rob Gax, Ng Tian It etc., to come out from behind the scenes to be acknowledged for the work they do. But I don’t believe these names mean anything to the average MRT commuter, and he/she definitely won’t buy a table at the next award show.
My point is, trade messages in mainstream media does not make sense and there our media planners should know this much better than me.
I’m happy to be corrected on this.
1 comment:
I was delighted to see all these industry faces in the MRT at a time when I was freelancing for BBDO. It was very inspirational to me.
Putting those posters in SMRT stations like Raffles Place, Tanjong Pagar and Bugis was done to target the Media-Communication-Advertising crowd and the aspiring students and young professionals.
Moreover, the profile of the whole local Advertising industry was lifted by the showcasing of mainly local talent, while the general conception is that Foreign Talent is calling the shots in the sector.
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