We're coming to that time of year when they start handing out awards. In the case of the Asociación Española de Anunciantes - Spanish Association of Advertisers - they've already dished them out.
The Spanish word "eficacia" can be a touch problematic. It can mean both efficiency and effectiveness. As anyone with any managerial and business experience will know, there is a difference between the two. There can be efficiency in doing things well and in an organised fashion, but the effectiveness doesn't necessarily always follow - the results, and good results at that. Let's just say, for the purpose of the association's awards, that "eficacia" is the happy combination of the two.
The awards bear the title of "Eficacia en Comunicación Comercial". They are the highest professional recognition of advertising achievement in Spain. They are the only awards that focus on the results of advertising communication. Efficient ways meet effective ends.
The gold award for "most innovative strategy" went to a tourism brand - Islas Canarias, the Canary Islands. It picked up other awards - another gold for #StopBlueMonday and a bronze for "La sonrisa del sol", the smile of the sun. Since 2015, the Canary Islands' brand has amassed more awards than any other Spanish tourist brand: over thirty national and international prizes. In the Canaries they clearly know a thing or two about efficiency and effectiveness.
A year ago I highlighted the official website for Canary Islands tourism. Hellocanaryislands, I concluded, was a superb website. Its innovation was matched by its simplicity. Contained within it was an adventure in an almost Disney style. It appealed to children and to adults. The adventure told the story of wonders to be discovered on the various islands. And it did this, moreover, in multiple languages. Not three or four, but fifteen.
Promotur, which is the tourism agency in the Canaries, has been credited by the advertisers association with having developed a tourism brand that is superior to all others. What it doesn't do is carry out one single campaign. A key reason for having gained the award is that over the course of a year there are 250 individual promotional actions, using the same fifteen languages as on the website. The effectiveness lies in the detail - the micro-segmentation of content, targeted at specific market segments. Through innovation and creativity, Promotur is delivering a brand concept which stands out from all the other advertising noise.
While the mechanics of the advertising clearly impressed the 170 or so judges, there is the fact of this brand concept. The Canaries as a single entity are in a sense easier to brand than, say, the Balearics. At a most basic level, just think about it for a moment. The chances are that you refer to the Canaries rather than specific islands, whereas you would be most unlikely to refer to the Balearics. Tenerife, Gran Canaria, Lanzarote and the others have their individual identities and images, yet it is proving and has proved possible to apply a unity. And this unity manifests itself in another way. Messages from the advertising will vary according to the time of year, but the climate in the Canaries offers a consistency to support these messages. The brand is thus seamless.
The contrast with the Balearics is great. The abandonment of attempting to convey a Balearic brand is being further advanced by the transferring of promotional responsibilities to the islands. The need for this was recognised by the previous government. The Balearics are not the Canaries. There simply isn't the same attachment in terms of consumer perception. It's Mallorca which matters, or Menorca, Ibiza and Formentera.
In the Canaries they are enhancing an already enviable brand of all-year tourism by micro-managing the tourism market with messages and images to add ever greater strength to the brand from revealing the diversity that exists on those islands. In the Balearics they are deconstructing a brand through a distancing from what has always sustained the brand, be it individual island or the Balearics as a collective. This deconstruction is based on a brand proposition of shaky attributes, those of a winter that conflicts squarely with the solid foundations of sun and beach.
This is being done, moreover, without coming close to criteria that the advertisers association appreciates about the Canaries. The brand thinking in the Balearics might be chaotic, but it's not as if there is (theoretically) any absence of technological knowhow. Biel Barceló has been celebrating the ParcBit fifteenth anniversary, the technology park once destined to be a centre of tourism technology excellence. So where is it? And where also is the social media "guru", appointed by Barceló as director-general of technology at the ministry of tourism, innovation and research? He's a mystery figure, of whom we know little and even less in terms of results.
The Balearics, we can conclude, will not be invited to the association's 2018 awards.
Showing posts with label Advertising awards. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Advertising awards. Show all posts
Saturday, November 04, 2017
Sunday, October 30, 2011
Most Efficacious In Every Case
You know that Christmas is on its way when the dicky bows and tiaras are dragged out of the wardrobe for annual awards ceremonies and the embarrassing thank-you speeches are written and even more embarrassingly delivered. And when Darren Clarke wins Sports Personality, there will be the inevitable, personal-tragedy backstory, delivered by Sue Barker in perfect, sombre-cum-celebratory tones. You don't need to watch, I can write the script for you now.
Spain has its own awards, among them the Prince of Asturias ones, handed out by Crown-Prince Felipe to worthies of the arts, sciences, sports and whatever. Leonard Cohen won the prize for literature this year; Haile Gebrselassie added the sports prize to his marathon and track titles.
Rather less grand are the prizes for "Eficacia en Comunicación Comercial", basically prizes for coming up with good adverts. At the "big night for efficacy" (not exactly a slogan that trips off the tongue), prize winners ranged from Coca-Cola and IKEA to the Archdiocese of Madrid and the town hall of A Coruña. There was not a whole load for Mallorca to celebrate, except for the bronze award in the "regional/local" category that went to Barceló Hotels & Resorts, beaten into third place by the publicity for A Coruña and its cleaning and waste services provider CESPA.
I don't know what it was that elevated the Galician city to such lofty heights in terms of advertising efficacy, but it doesn't matter anyway. Far more interesting is the fact that the award is a tad embarrassing. Workers from CESPA have recently gone to the town hall to denounce the company for a breach of employment conditions. Furthermore, back in July, five of the company's trucks had their tyres slashed. To this you can add the fact that the plant (operated by a different company) that treats waste collected by CESPA was in the midst of an indefinite strike at the time of the truck vandalism. Which all goes to show, I suppose, that efficacy of an advertising campaign is not the same as PR, and CESPA has been accused, in addition to its worker and truck problems, of providing a deficient service.
No such embarrassments existed for Barceló. Members of staff beamed for the cameras in front of the "big night" poster, happy in the knowledge that Barceló had become the first Mallorcan hotel chain to be honoured for its efficaciousness.
What secured the bronze gong for Barceló was a campaign called "SuperSummer Azul". Brainchild of a Mallorcan agency called The Atomic Idea, it borrowed from a TV comedy show "Verano Azul" that aired thirty years ago and featured one of the actors, then an eleven-year-old and now most definitely not. Miguel Ángel Valero has a touch of the Ray Winstones about him but with less Cockney.
Valero's an extraordinary bloke. He turned his back on acting and became a telecommunications engineer and academic, penning the snappily-entitled thesis "model of the provision of interactive services for telemedicine in the home via broadband networks". Most efficacious in every case. He invented telemedicinal compound.
What is significant about the award for Barceló is not so much that it won an award but that it is promoting itself. The campaign was for Spanish television and clearly wouldn't work elsewhere as no one would have a clue as to the association or who Valeró was. But it marks a distinct shift in emphasis in tourism marketing.
Hotels have previously left promotion to others - to tour operators and to travel agencies - but now they are going direct. Iberostar has been doing this, as with its advertising via the BBC website. At the recent ABTA convention, it was made clear that hotels were becoming more active and direct in their promotions.
This is important because the chains with the financial and global clout, such as Barceló and Iberostar, are seeking to make themselves recognisable brands, and what this means is that they wish to attract a loyal customer base that opts for a Barceló or an Iberostar hotel and therefore holiday, regardless of location. As the brand takes over in the minds of the consuming tourist, the specific destination, for example Mallorca, becomes secondary.
It is potentially a most efficacious strategy for the likes of Barceló, but not necessarily for Mallorca, as hotel chains that became global on the back of the island's home market seek customers for their resorts many miles away from Mallorca. So maybe the island should grab for itself the "most efficacious in every case" line. It does, after all, have many a medicinal compound: "drink a drink a drink...".
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
Spain has its own awards, among them the Prince of Asturias ones, handed out by Crown-Prince Felipe to worthies of the arts, sciences, sports and whatever. Leonard Cohen won the prize for literature this year; Haile Gebrselassie added the sports prize to his marathon and track titles.
Rather less grand are the prizes for "Eficacia en Comunicación Comercial", basically prizes for coming up with good adverts. At the "big night for efficacy" (not exactly a slogan that trips off the tongue), prize winners ranged from Coca-Cola and IKEA to the Archdiocese of Madrid and the town hall of A Coruña. There was not a whole load for Mallorca to celebrate, except for the bronze award in the "regional/local" category that went to Barceló Hotels & Resorts, beaten into third place by the publicity for A Coruña and its cleaning and waste services provider CESPA.
I don't know what it was that elevated the Galician city to such lofty heights in terms of advertising efficacy, but it doesn't matter anyway. Far more interesting is the fact that the award is a tad embarrassing. Workers from CESPA have recently gone to the town hall to denounce the company for a breach of employment conditions. Furthermore, back in July, five of the company's trucks had their tyres slashed. To this you can add the fact that the plant (operated by a different company) that treats waste collected by CESPA was in the midst of an indefinite strike at the time of the truck vandalism. Which all goes to show, I suppose, that efficacy of an advertising campaign is not the same as PR, and CESPA has been accused, in addition to its worker and truck problems, of providing a deficient service.
No such embarrassments existed for Barceló. Members of staff beamed for the cameras in front of the "big night" poster, happy in the knowledge that Barceló had become the first Mallorcan hotel chain to be honoured for its efficaciousness.
What secured the bronze gong for Barceló was a campaign called "SuperSummer Azul". Brainchild of a Mallorcan agency called The Atomic Idea, it borrowed from a TV comedy show "Verano Azul" that aired thirty years ago and featured one of the actors, then an eleven-year-old and now most definitely not. Miguel Ángel Valero has a touch of the Ray Winstones about him but with less Cockney.
Valero's an extraordinary bloke. He turned his back on acting and became a telecommunications engineer and academic, penning the snappily-entitled thesis "model of the provision of interactive services for telemedicine in the home via broadband networks". Most efficacious in every case. He invented telemedicinal compound.
What is significant about the award for Barceló is not so much that it won an award but that it is promoting itself. The campaign was for Spanish television and clearly wouldn't work elsewhere as no one would have a clue as to the association or who Valeró was. But it marks a distinct shift in emphasis in tourism marketing.
Hotels have previously left promotion to others - to tour operators and to travel agencies - but now they are going direct. Iberostar has been doing this, as with its advertising via the BBC website. At the recent ABTA convention, it was made clear that hotels were becoming more active and direct in their promotions.
This is important because the chains with the financial and global clout, such as Barceló and Iberostar, are seeking to make themselves recognisable brands, and what this means is that they wish to attract a loyal customer base that opts for a Barceló or an Iberostar hotel and therefore holiday, regardless of location. As the brand takes over in the minds of the consuming tourist, the specific destination, for example Mallorca, becomes secondary.
It is potentially a most efficacious strategy for the likes of Barceló, but not necessarily for Mallorca, as hotel chains that became global on the back of the island's home market seek customers for their resorts many miles away from Mallorca. So maybe the island should grab for itself the "most efficacious in every case" line. It does, after all, have many a medicinal compound: "drink a drink a drink...".
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
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