Yes, it's time to talk about scam ads again. The issue reared its ugly head again this week, with some 'unsanctioned' work for Ford out of JWT India depicting bound and gagged women going viral, and unsurprisingly, offending just about everyone.
The ads depicted women, including celebrities Paris Hilton and Kim Kardashian, held captive in the boot of a Ford Figo hatchback with the tagline, 'Leave your worries behind with Figo's extra large boot'. A Ford spokesperson told AdAge the company had no knowledge of the ads.
On the 'too soon' scale, it was practically off the charts. Stories have been flowing out of India seemingly every few days around the mistreatment of women. JWT India has reportedly fired the creative team responsible, but WPP's global alignment with Ford remains unaffected by the controversy.
One senior local creative, who did not wish to be named “because in this fucking game, what goes around, comes around”, said this was an extreme example of how scam ads – created solely to enter into awards and widely considered 'cheating' – can backfire.
“The only reason you're here is for the client. Not getting client sign-off before airing an ad in any way, shape or form is just the cardinal sin,” he said. “Especially in this day and age when things have the potential to go viral, going off on tangents like this is totally against the whole point of the exercise.”
In a statement WPP said: "We deeply regret the publishing of posters that were distasteful and contrary to the standards of professionalism and decency at JWT. These were never intended for paid publication, were never requested by our Ford client and should never have been created, let alone uploaded to the internet.
"These posters were created by individuals within the agency and did not go through the normal review and oversight process. After a thorough internal review, we have taken appropriate disciplinary action with those involved, which included the exit of employees at JWT."
However, another senior creative, who also wished to remain anonymous, said there was “no way” the agency didn't know what was going on. “It's a finished piece of work that would have probably taken six weeks to go through the system. It's been laid out in the studio, it would have been on every monitor in the agency for weeks,” he said.
“It's a shame the creative team has been fired, because clearly the directive for this work has come from higher up. Walls will be put up, the agency will deny it and say this was a rogue team – which may have been true, but obviously you have a culture that encourages this kind of behaviour.”
Indeed, it has now emerged that the ads were entered into India's Goafest Abby awards show by JWT India, but withdrawn after the controversy erupted.
He added: “Clearly this is work the client hasn't even seen, and that's really the ultimate sting. Any agency that tries to run work and enter it [into awards] without the client's permission deserves to be fired.”
However, Paul Swann, creative partner at The Works, said the whole notion of scam ads could get a bit blurry. “There's often work agencies do that's maybe pro bono or for smaller clients, which they take on because they have a bit more creative freedom,” he said.
“In those cases I think there's legitimacy if you're running a creative department and you want to give your team the opportunity to do work where they can be a bit more creative.”
On the Ford ads, Swann said: “There's almost these moments, these conniptions agencies have, where they just make a really bad call, or it happens in the absence of the right people seeing it. Agencies are putting out so much work that the drive to do something attention-grabbing can lead to something like this.”
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