Swapan Seth Equus Red Cell 
I was saddened that it actually took Trevor Beattie to shame us into realising that we had, courtesy the rush for rewards, buggered up this entire business that we are in. 
Advertising is on the fringe of relevance. 
Scams ads push it even further into the pond of pointlessness. At a recent awards show, in the print category, more than 99 per cent were scam stunts. You had the executive creative directors of the finest and most formidable agencies accept the fact that their agencies had done that scam work.  
An intellectually innocent executive director even went to the extent of saying that he encouraged the practice.  
You should have seen the scam stunts that agencies put up. One had done an advertisement for a leading Delhi based FMCG company on one of their major brands. They had the gall to not even run it past the client. I can assure you that should that piece of work ever be seen by that client, the agency would not just be sacked, it would also be sued. 
In our rush for scam tainted glory, we now give two hoots for our clients. Where did the malaise set in? I think globally, with the profusion of awards, metals have sadly become the only benchmark of brilliance. Which is fine. But what brilliance is there in doing advertising that works without a brief and is targeted to a jury that is, in any case, in a terrible hurry to award itself? And one that is morally bankrupt because it has no choice. After all, we do know that bonuses to most executive creative directors are indexed to the quantity of metal they carry back, like coal from Newcastle. 
The executive creative directors, on the other hand, have selective amnesia. Some, while professing complete knowledge and ample encouragement, wonder where the scam slipped through. One executive creative director actually sounded stupid when he said he encouraged kids to do scam ads and had, in fact, set up scam teams to do the job. Typically, these blokes wake up around the end of December and then unload their deficiencies on the pages of a low cost newspaper. In what world are we bringing up the young in this profession? We, as executive creative directors, are actually telling them there are no rules. That ethics can be dumped in the bin and the only thing that matters is winning. And do we actually share the glory (if at all we have the moral high ground to) with our scam sweatshop workers? No, we don’t. The hefty bonuses are pocketed by the top dog. All the lowly scam labourer gets is a mention in his resume. And, sadly, that is all young people want on their resumes. Not one resume stresses the harvesting of insights. Nothing on the construction of great brands. Little on leadership. All that resumes contain are details of pencils, erasers, sharpeners, lions and chimpanzees. Will it ever end? I think not, until someone has the testicles to stymie this senseless attitude. I do not for a moment blame the ad fests. They must continue. No organiser would like to have his show erected on the foundation of scam ads. But the fact is, they do not have a choice. The show must go on. It’s what gets into the show that must change. I refuse to believe that we cannot do impactful and good work for our clients. I was saddened to hear the executive creative director of an agency say that clients buy crap work. That is poor salesmanship on our part and a terrible comment on our clients. The world over, you have some lovely clients, for whom you can do some half decent work. Throwing the baby out with the bathwater is the refuge of the rascal in my book. So where do we go from here? That depends a great deal on where we want to go. We can pause and see how we can bring respect back to the entire awards game. Or we can continue living in our fairytale world and do work for clients who do not have any need for it and consumers who never see it. The choice is entirely ours. 
As in it lies the future of this once wonderful business. 
(The writer is chief executive officer of Equus Red Cell. You can write to him at swapan (at) equusads (dot) com)