This is the kind of rant where I tell you one kind of awards are better than the other. You may feel that there’s a double standard here. A part of me feels that too. But I know that part of me is misguided.
Last night, I considered not writing this.
“Fuck it. I’m going to rant. All 35 of my readers deserve nothing but the real hardcore stuff”, I thought as I woke up a short while back.
I’m going to start with a vague assurance of my impartiality, while being slightly biased.
Now, I’m not anti-award. I’m pro-truth. I understand that there are awards that are given based on clearly demarcated metrics. I know that when it comes to my line of work there is a strong correlation between creatively awarded campaigns and their effectiveness.
For example, it is easy to understand what went into awarding a brand the ‘Most Valuable Brand’ in a category, judging by the title. i.e., Possibly data about awareness, increasing purchase intent, greater price elasticity, penetration, frequency of purchase.
But, what the fuck goes into measuring the most loved brand of the year?
What is love?
noun
an intense feeling of deep affection.
"babies fill parents with feelings of love"
Similar:
deep affection
a great interest and pleasure in something.
"his love for football"
First off, I don’t know who the awarding body is. That alone should warn you of the perils of believing this garbage. But, I have interacted with most of the brands on this list.
I don’t love them. I don’t feel the same way a young basketball player might feel about owning a pair of Air Jordans, when I’m getting a new internet connection. I don’t lust after my Samsung. I have no special attachments to my Gilette. I think about McDonald’s, if I’m hungover.
“Okay, maybe you’re right about brand ‘love’. But you can’t refute the data about what brands people choose”
Let me answer that with an analogy.
In school, all the girls want to date the good looking guy. Plus points if your parents have money. But it doesn’t matter if the good looking guy can’t get an erection or is a violent drunk. Sure, he’s prom king. But people with all the information might not choose him.
And now, the theory.
This is the neurobiological framework presented by Antonio Rangeland and his colleagues of the Neuroscience department of Caltech.
People form representations of the choice they have (i.e., “What can I choose from”) based on internal (e.g., “I’m thirsty”) and external factors (e.g., “My friend bought a coke”).
If you read the piece on masturbation last week, you will know how the brand’s distinctiveness and how well they create / change our perception of external factors will eventually lead to these brands being ‘chosen’ more.
A value is assigned to each choice based on the internal and external states (in Pavlovian and Habitual systems) or the expected outcome (in goal-oriented systems). Based on the this value assignment, we choose.
So far so good.
After we purchase, we either go into post-purchase dissonance or are instantaneously gratified about the choice made.
With time, we gather more experiential evidence about the purchase. And this influences the choice of re-purchase.
For FMCG, this effect is easy to measure over a period of one year (i.e., you run out of biscuits, you get more biscuits). For an airline, during COVID, in a third-world nation, not so much.
So, we are not awarding people’s choice if we don’t consider the experience the brand delivered upon purchase. We need to consider the delta between what’s promised and what’s given, and how that has impacted the initial choice. And even then, it shouldn’t be because everyone in the category is equally shit and there is no clear alternative.
We are awarding a company’s ability to spend money on media. It’s not a bad thing to have money. It is actually crucial. But it is also why awards for brand value / brand performance exists.
here’s an example:
The awards.
Reality:
In the few days of lockdown (third wave), more and more people have criticized the Telco market leader in Sri Lanka.
But Axiata’s problem isn’t specific to the lockdown. When I was working with them in 2017-18, it was still their number 1 problem (although at the time, their solution was to hide comments). They’ve been onboarding more customers without increasing their capacity for years.
They have been patching up the symptoms while being too stingy to fix the cause. Contradictory of a brand who claims to bring the future, today.
The conclusion
People’s choice, brand love, best of the best, and most other gangrenous plagues are used by the big bullies of the corporate world to create an illusion of choice where there is none.
These are merely PR stunts. Because people rarely have ‘choice’, they imitate others. People don’t have a need to feel affectionate towards a brand. and PR stunts help create the illusion that ‘others’ are picking and loving, and fucking these brands.
While this mimetic theory keeps the advertising industry alive. Awards are meant to recognize those who prove themselves through action.
If the intention is to award the guy who everyone wants to sleep with, judge the winner not by size of his penis but at least by his ability to hold an erection.
P.S. I would’ve wrote this faster. But Dialog wouldn’t let me.
-End of rant-
Do you agree? Drop me a line.
Do you think its garbage? Drop me a line.
I’m surprised, I’ve been in this “magnificent” country for 9 years fully and never met anyone with intelligence….kudos buddy …. Someone finally spoke up with some intellect on a subject matter.
Write more, I’ll follow.
Excellent anology