7 tricks to Viral Web Marketing

Viral marketing (word-of-mouth marketing) is a really cool thing. Just think about it... instead of spending an insane amount of money on newspapers ads, TV commercials or banner ads, you spent nothing - and let your fans do all the work for you.

With viral marketing, your campaigns will suddenly get a life of its own - and start to spread like a virus. Everyone want to see it, and when they do, they all want to share it.

It is immensely powerful, usually having 500-1000 times greater impact than what you get from regular advertisements.

But how?

There are a lot of tricks to viral marketing. Here are 7 important ones:

1: Make people feel something

The most important trick of all is to create a very strong emotion. You need to have an opinion, to express an idea with commitment and dedication. You want people to:

• be filled with love or hate.
• be very happy or insanely angry
• be an idiot or a genius
• be deeply compassionate or an egoistic bitch

You want people's blood to be pumping of excitement.

Forget neutral, trying to please everyone, supporting several target groups or any of the many ways to be unbiased. Viral marketing is 100% about emotions.

2: Do something unexpected

This one explains itself. If you want people to notice you campaign, you have to do something different - something unexpected. Forget about trying to promote your products as just being great - everybody does that. Forget about trying to make it look cool - everyone else has "been there, done that".

Remember the bear being attacked by a man? That was unexpected - and it is one the most effective viral advertisements ever.

...and above all - never be a copycat.

3: Do not try to make advertisements (that sucks)

One of the biggest mistake companies make is when they think viral marketing is just advertisements that people share - it is not. Traditional marketing is about promoting your product, showing how good it is, giving it center stage - and generally being incredibly selfish (and possibly using supermodels or movie stars). But guess what, nobody cares about you!

Viral marketing is all about a good story. When BMW put out BMW Films, the main ingredient was not the cars, but the story. Replace the car with another one, and it would still be great. When Sony made their Bravia TV ads, the product was not even seen - yet everyone remembers it.

Forget about you, your product or your company. Focus exclusively in creating a good and interesting story. Sure, you can add you product into the mix, but it must not be the most important thing.

4: Make sequels

People have just seen your campaign. They think it was interesting, unexpected and their emotions has reached a high level - you have their complete attention.

Now what do you do?

If you do like most companies you will simply do nothing... and that is a big mistake. When you got people's attention you need to act, and one the best ways of doing that is to give them more - make sequels. This can be many things;

• It can be extra movies similar in concept to the first one - like BMW Films and Nissan did.
• It can be a behind the scenes look
• Bloopers
• A blog about the process (like Nissan did)
• Extra material, goodies etc.
• ...or all of the above

Never leave people standing with nothing.

BTW: Forget about countdown releases - i.e. releasing a new episode every 2 weeks. People's attention span does not last that long. Give them everything now!

5: Allow Sharing, downloading and embedding´

Sharing is what viral marketing is all about. Everything you do to make that easier is going to improve your campaign. That means that you need allow people to:

• Download the content, in a usable format (videos in MPG, pictures in JPG etc.)
• Allowing them to easily embed the content on their own sites (Note: remember bandwidth issues)
• Sending it to friends, either using a link or by sending the content directly.
• Publishing it on varies social networks - Digg, YouTube etc.
• Allow people to add it the bookmarking sites

Note: This also easily be overdone. You do not want to clutter up your page with a zillion "share me, dig this etc." icons.

6: Connect with comments

Another important element is to connect with your audience. Remember you got their attention, they are excited and now they want talk. Comments is one of the most effective ways to do this.

Keep in mind that the best viral marketing campaign is one that creates a strong emotion. This means some people will really like it - while others will get very angry. You have to accept both in your comments, and you have to welcome both opinions. But, at the same time you must prevent individuals to wage war against each other.

It is not a sin to delete comments from people who attack another person, or if the comment is off-topic. But, it is a sin to delete comments from people who just have an negative opinion.

And, most importantly. Connecting with people through comments means talking back. Do not add comments if you do not want to participate yourself.

7: Never restrict access!

Viral marketing is also about your campaign getting a life on its own - spreading like virus. In order to do that, in order to become "viral", it needs to be free.

Never add restrictions to the mix.

• Do not require people to register
• to become members
• to download special software
• to enter "unlock" codes
• ...or to do something in order to get the right link.

Viral marketing is never about exclusivity. It is about getting it out there for everyone to see.

---

There is a common message in all of these tricks. It is that you need to make it right - or not do it at all. Only the best viral marketing campaigns make it - the rest literally sucks.

If you have any tips of your own, I sure would like to know about them! Also, If would very like to see any cool viral advertisement that you might know.

Other cool "virals"

The Smirnoff viral

One of the first really successful viral campaigns in the "YouTube age"

Berlitz language

Not originally designed for viral, but stupid Germans and fridays quickly changed that

Some biscuit company

Again, not designed for viral, but the unexpected elements made people share it

Dove Evolution

A true viral campaign, showing artificial beauty - and it worked!

The Escalator

Another true viral campaign. worked too!

Copy Goes Here

A very funny movie by Coudal Partners, making fun of advertising companies.

BaekdalMONKEYS

A movie I made to promote my report on "Actual Browser Sizes". It was seen by about 800 people within the first few days - but with only limited viral effect.

.

HP FingerSkilz

Viral campaign from HP

VIA

Differentiating in increasingly undifferentiated markets

In the increasingly cluttered world of branded packaged goods it is quite common for brand managers to say in frustration that a category has become commoditised and that there is absolutely no possibility of creating a sustainable functional brand differentiator. 

But here are 2 examples which show that that need not be so. 

As we all know the starting point for functional differentiation is to offer some product attribute that meets a consumer need. However, to expect research to discover any substantial unmet needs nowadays is often too ambitious - in fact much research on cluttered categories comes to no other real conclusion than that all the consumer needs is a better product at a lower price. 

Hence it is more realistic to set out with the declared objective for your research to search for any insight on a new facet or extra dimension to a consumer need to help your brand stand apart.

To illustrate this, recent research conducted on the crowded toothpastes market revealed that consumers had no real unmet need - and that the only call from consumers was the old story that the benefit of brushing one's teeth should simply last longer.

More exploratory work on this theme led to the insight that consumers believed that toothpastes work best during the process of brushing and immediately afterwards - but that the benefit of the toothpaste vanishes immediately the user consumes the first morsel of food/drink thereafter.

This insight led to the creation of a "brush brush" audio mnemonic (i.e. the sound of brushing every time users in the ad opened their mouths ) that told the consumer that this toothpaste continues working for a full 12 hours regardless of whether the user is eating, drinking or sleeping. Evaluation of this as an ad concept revealed that consumers did indeed believe because of the "brush brush" mnemonic that the therapeutic effect of this brand of toothpaste continued working even after eating/drinking.

This produced one of the most memorable ad campaigns ever in the category - and subsequent brand tracking revealed high identification with this benefit, and an increased brand share.

Our second example comes from a category that you might expect would be an even greater challenge - the household insecticide market.

Advertising for mosquito coils typically talks of increased efficacy and lasting longer - and every brand in the market says the same things. However, a stray consumer comment in research, that smoke from the coil does not penetrate curtains (where mosquitoes are believed to hide) because the smoke loses its strength by the time it reaches the corners of the room, led to the development of an ad campaign that spoke about new properties in the smoke that took it to the furthest corners of the room and able to penetrate the thickest of curtains.

This attribute quickly became the acid test of efficacy for the category and single-minded communication on this property led to our brand being uniquely associated with it despite other brands trying to jump on the band wagon later.

Summing up :
• In many product categories these days all functional needs that were there to be discovered, have already been discovered

• Insights therefore are no longer so much about discovering new consumer needs...but about exploring well recognised needs to greater depths to uncover a hitherto unused facet or dimension.
This means:

• looking for a new dimension to the functional brand benefit

e.g. goes on working despite eating - as a new dimension to the works longer need;

e.g. penetrates curtains - as a new dimension to the efficacy need

• discovering an executional device like the "brush brush" mnemonic to express this new dimension of the brand benefit.

As seen by these 2 case studies the dimensions and the executional device were new - not the basic underlying consumer needs themselves.

When you have nothing new to say - as is the case in most cluttered branded packaged goods today - then say it differently. Scope for brand differentiation will rarely lie in addressing a new need, but more and more in presenting a solution to an old need from a new angle.

In other words in the world of brand differentiation today the 'How' has become more important than the 'What'.

Flyar | Augmented Reality Twitter Visualization Screensaver

Flyar is a screensaver, Twitter visualization application that uses Augmented Reality and gesture interaction. It enables users to see themselves in real time, inside a pc screen, surrounded by virtual birds that flutter about or fly towards them to deliver incoming tweets. Developed by YDreams. Get it at: http://ww2.ydreams.com/flyar/

Saugrippe.com::: Campaign against swine influenza.

Agency: barfuss.creative.group


A stunt campaign against swine influenca. With this promotion they pull attention to contagiosity at Oktoberfest. 

Sony Ericsson attempts online flash mob with space hoppers

LONDON - Sony Ericsson has kicked off its space hoppers marketing campaign, asking consumers to create their own hopper to take part in an online flash mob.

The Sony Ericsson campaign, which uses the theme ‘spark something', comprises an online film and space-hopper character creator athopperinvasion.com. The digital campaign will also feature hopper-themed activity on Twitter.

The global campaign, by Saatchi & Saatchi and Dare, is to promote the Yari, Aino and Satio trio of handsets.

The TV campaign asks ‘What if dreams could become reality?' and features people bouncing down the street on coloured space hoppers. The ad ends with the words ‘We're here to make it happen. Make.believe.'

============

Hopper Invasion by Sony Ericsson

Sony Ericsson has been recruiting a new generation of followers with the Hopper Invasion, an interactive campaign launched with a flash mob of hoppers in Barcelona. The YouTube video points viewers to the Hopper Invasion site where they are encouraged to create their own customized hopper and sign up for updates from Sony Ericsson. It’s all part of the Entertainment Unlimited and Make.Believe branding behind three new phones, the Yari, Aino and Satio, and part of the lead up to the November 3 launch of Rachel, Sony’s first Android phone, the Xperia X10.

Mayhem. Madness. Hundreds of people. Hundreds of hoppers. Get ready for a sneak preview of what happened when Sony let a load of hoppers loose on the streets of Barcelona.

Visitors are invited to create their own hopper -- specifying eyes, nose, gaping mouth, even tattoos -- before giving it a name and entering their email address. As with all flash mobs, the time and place are being kept top secret at present; however, all participants will be informed of the exact time and place of the online invasion in which they can spot their own bouncing character.

Ericsson Globe

A video shot with Satio showing the chief hopper projection on the Ericsson Globe in Stockholm on the night of 20th of October 2009. 

Credits

The Hopper Invasion campaign was developed at Saatchi & Saatchi, London, by executive creative director Richard Copping and art director Eddie Wong.

Media was handled by MEC.

Filming was shot by Rockhard Films director Tony Petrossian via Play Films. Post production was done atBlackmagic Design, Singapore. Sound and music were produced at Song Zu, Singapore

Johnnie Walker | Walk Away (Monsters)

Sydney Dust Advertising Storm

Major brands, like Telstra, Visa, Bankwest, Subaru, and cleaning products like Omo, NapiSan, Windex and Viva, seized this unique tactical opportunity to promote their product in context of a one-in-a-lifetime event.

Most of the ads ran the day after storm, in context of editorial that illustrated the one-off weather occurrence. In Queensland, press ads also ran in the weekend; the Queensland Government alerted the public to special clean up provisions while  BP took advantage of a flood of consumers with unusually dirty cars.

These ads are a perfect example of how newspapers stand out as the best medium for advertisers to leverage their brand upon major news events to deliver smart, relevant messages that can be turned around literally overnight.

Sydney residents, and visitors like me, were treated to a change in atmosphere colour on Tuesday September 22, as a dust storm swept in from Australia’s inland. Dust particles transformed dawn skies into shades of red, orange and yellow, turning the sun blue. Wednesday’s newspapers, not surprisingly, were full of both photographs and print advertisements capitalizing on the public need to reflect on the previous day’s events. Visa’s “Go” campaign, for example, was translated into the way residents would be paying for their car wash.

Subaru presented the new Subaru Outback with Symmetrical All Wheel Drive as the vehicle for all conditions, the snow, the coast, or even a Sydney dust storm

Telstra provided a reference to the “Time to call your Mum” campaign with the question, “How do you get red dust out of white pants?”

BankWest picked up the Orange angle in their print advertisement.

NapiSan ran its campaign with the headline, “Great for stains. And dust storms”.

Viva cleaning fluids are presented as the way to “get to dust”.

Windex window cleaning products are presented as the way to work on the windows now the dust has settled.

Unilever worked with Lowe Sydney creative director Simon Cox, copywriter Matt Cramp and art director Sesh Moodley to associate Omo with the inevitable comparison of the storm with the end of the world. “A little dirt isn’t the end of the world”, the copy reads, with a photograph of the Sydney Harbour Bridge covered in red fog.

Zyrtec sponsored a Flash advertisement on the Sydney Morning Herald and News.com.auweater sites, congratulating photographers for the way they had captured the red dawn, linking to Dust Storm on Flickr and remind readers about the product’s response to hayfever and allergies.

THE GHOST ADS OF CANNES

 Something vaporous and somewhat sinister lurks behind the dazzling sunlight, tans and hot creative so de rigeur on the French Riviera during the ad industry's hottest award festival that begins next week.
The ghost ads of Cannes also haunt the Palais du Festival,

	Although it won a Chilean prize, this Suzuki ad -- showing a crowd ignoring a thrown rider to admire his toppled bike -- was never paid for by Suzuki or run anywhere.

and the Carlton and Martinez Hotels. Like it or not, fake or fudged entries have become so much a part of the awards scene at this and other festivals that the first word of Spanish many festival-going creative directors learn is "truchos," Spanish for scam ads. Brazilians, who are highly skilled practitioners, prefer to call them "fantasmas," or ghosts.
From Singapore to Sao Paulo, creative people have gone to amazing lengths to nab creative awards. Scam ads range from out-and-out fakes never approved by clients to ads that technically qualify because they ran once, sometimes at the agency's expense, simply to be eligible for ad shows.
It's prevalent enough that Cannes Jury President Bob Isherwood has already written to warn this year's Lions judges for the festival beginning June 18 that it is their duty to denounce any scam ads entered by agencies from their respective countries. Mr. Isherwood, an Australian who is the New York-based worldwide creative director at Publicis Groupe's Saatchi & Saatchi, is only too aware of the situation: Last year two Lion statuettes were sent back from his native country because the winning ads had never run and a third dubious winner was investigated by the festival. 
Although ad industry executives privately grumble that festivals like Cannes don't do all they can to weed out scam ads for fear of turning away entry fees, festival organizers have been shocked enough by last year's events to take some new measures.
Cannes festival Chairman Roger Hatchuel says it's now mandatory for the first time that a senior agency executive sign off on each entry, although no definition of senior executive is given, and no proof is necessary that an entry actually ran.
Favorite tricks 
Proof isn't foolproof, however. A favorite trick is for the agency, rather than client, to pay for an inexpensive media buy simply to qualify. "Sometimes an ad may have run in one medium on a very limited scale and it doesn't necessarily mean it's not a scam ad," says Romain Hatchuel, the festival's CEO and Roger Hatchuel's son. "A media invoice is not enough if the letter but not the spirit of the rule is complied with."
So this year, the Hatchuels made a last-minute decision to send all judges, in advance, a list of the Cannes entries from their respective countries and ask them to review the print and TV work. Roger Hatchuel says he hopes they will then consult the ad community in their own countries and give Mr. Isherwood a list of dubious ads when they arrive.
He admits it's not a perfect solution. "It's happened before that a [Cannes] judge will say 'I'm not a cop.' My answer to that is it's not playing cop for us. It's trying to 
self-discipline everyone for the sake of the industry. It's not 100%, but it's going in the right direction."
A scam category 
In Chile, the attitude is a lot more resigned toward bogus entrants. There, Sergio Rosenbaum O'Brien, president of the Chilean Association of Advertising Agencies, and his fellow compatriots have hit upon an innovative solution to the widespread problem of agencies crafting ads just to enter in award shows. Rather than asking judges to turn in their peers, which they are often reluctant to do, the Chileans added a category for scam ads to their national awards show last December, so agencies can openly and proudly enter their fake work. The category is called simply "Free Expression," says Mr. Rosenbaum, who is also general manager of WPP Group's J. Walter Thompson Chilena in Santiago.
"It was a very emotional and tense issue," he says. "Rather than have every category invaded by truchos, we created a new category. You shouldn't have clients and their budgets competing with ads with no client or budget. We're trying to be fair."
The genius of the Chilean approach was to also have an eight-person committee examine entries in all the other categories before the judging. Then the agency association writes polite letters informing entrants of suspect ads that their work would be reclassified into the Free Expression category unless they provided proof it had run. Lots of work abruptly switched categories, Mr. Rosenbaum says. Of 797 entries, 96 were in the Free Expression category.
In one of Omnicom Group's DDB Worldwide's less-publicized creative victories, Zegers DDB in Santiago picked up the Gold in the Free Expression category, for a print ad that was never run or approved by Suzuki. At the scene of an apparent accident, a group of onlookers cluster anxiously around a fallen Suzuki motorcyle, while everyone ignores the cyclist's prone body nearby.
Also vying for best fake ad, Omnicom's BBDO de Chile won a Silver award for a print ad featuring Whiskas, made by real-life client Mars' Effem pet-food division. Two gleaming lids from Whiskas cans look eerily like cats' eyes.
Started with nuns 
Ask creatives how the scam-ad debate began, and many cite the tale of nuns giving an unforgettable product demonstration that swept the Cannes' Grand Prix in 1992. In the sweetly innocent spot, two nuns in a convent notice that their stone cherub's tiny penis has broken off. The reverend mother solemnly glues it back on -- upside down. Later, a younger and more worldly nun reattaches it correctly.
The commercial, supposedly for a Dutch brand of rubber cement called Talens, won for then-independent Casadevall Pedreno & SPR, a young and trendy Barcelona hot shop since bought by Publicis Groupe. Casadevall hastily assembled the whole agency in Cannes to celebrate with an all-night party. But the victory was not without controversy.
"There was a lot of discussion about whether it was real," recalls John Fawcett, a Cannes judge that year and now worldwide creative director at Cordiant Communications Group's Bates Worldwide, New York. "It seemed too pat, no one had heard of the brand, and the product didn't appear. There were two Spaniards on the jury. I was disappointed they didn't say anything."
Mr. Fawcett says that he wrote afterward to the jury president about jurors' misgivings at awarding the ultimate prize to an ad they feared was a scam. "He and the festival said they'd look into it," Mr. Fawcett says.
He didn't hear anything more. The agency was apparently able to prove the spot aired somewhere, but the product has never been heard of again. In festival lore, the Talens ad figures as a famous fake. "It's pretty much agreed it was a scam ad," he says.
Casadevall could not be reached for this article, but the agency has maintained over the years that the ad is legitimate.

	Kibon ice cream said it never authorized this Young & Rubicam Brazil ad showing sperm-like spoons chasing an egg-like scoop of product.

Bogus ice cream ad
Some ads are easy to spot as fakes. For instance, it's a giveaway when the product is barely mentioned. Another clue is portraying the brand in a way that a client would be unlikely to approve. A Cannes jury a few years ago questioned a print ad by Young & Rubicam in Brazil for Unilever's Kibon ice cream in which lots of little spoons are in hot pursuit of a ball of ice cream. Legitimate enough -- except that the spoons look like sperm swimming to fertilize an ice cream ovule. To jury members, it just didn't look like food advertising, and it appears their instincts were right: Later, in the local trade press, the client denied approving the ad.
Marcello Serpa, the president of last year's Cannes jury and co-CEO, creative director at Omnicom's Almap/BBDO, Sao Paulo, says he was surprised when the disturbed festival chairman told him there was a problem with a print ad for Taronga Zoo, which had scored a Bronze Lion two days earlier. The ad, by Interpublic Group of Cos.' Lowe Lintas & Partners Worldwide, Sydney, looked genuine. But the Taronga Zoo raised an alarm, revealing the ad had been rejected because it portrayed animals in a manner contrary to the zoo's philosophy.
A pattern of fraud 
Lowe Lintas and Lionel Hunt, executive chairman of Lowe Lintas Oceania, the regional division to which Sydney reports, immediately started an investigation that uncovered a pattern of fraud and ended with the firing of the Australian creative director, Mark Shattner. The agency quickly returned a second Bronze Lion, for a TV spot for Artel Australia's plastic containers, and identified a scam poster at the New York Festivals. To be on the safe side, Mr. Hunt withdrew all the agency's entries in Australian ad shows.
Mr. Hunt said at the time that the ad that started it all "was clearly ineligible on all possible grounds. The Taronga Zoo was not a client of Lowe Lintas Sydney, the advertisement had never run, and obviously the Taronga Zoo had not given its permission for the entry." This year, Mr. Hunt personally scrutinized the agency's half-dozen Cannes entries. As further penance, his agency is doing an anti-scam ad campaign for the Australian Association of National Advertisers and the Advertising Federation of Australia.
Whistleblowers or accomplices? 
Although festivalgoers often say half-heartedly that award shows should do more to police the authenticity of awards, there seems to be little real pressure on them to do so. Some offenders are caught when advertisers speak up, but when it comes to scam ads, clients can be whistleblowers or accomplices.
For example, Grey Worldwide's Shanghai office was allowed to keep a Bronze Lion that came under investigation last year, for an Electrolux vacuum cleaner print ad. Cathy Chen, Electrolux's national marketing manager for Greater China, wrote to Romain Hatchuel and confirmed approving the ad. Except Ms. Chen's real ad agency isn't the Grey Global Group shop, but Publicis' Saatchi in Shanghai.
The unusual tale of a scam agency rather than a scam ad came about after Grey hired a Saatchi creative, Bok Chek Kiong. He arrived with an idea for an ad showing an empty turtle shell, implying the powerful vacuum sucked the turtle from the shell. Larry Ong, Grey Shanghai's creative director, admitted the ad only ran once, to qualify for the Cannes festival. But the client's approval of the ad, even though it was clearly created for jurors rather than consumers, along with the fact that it did run once, legitimized the entry.
"Scam ads cover a multitude of sins," says Bates' Mr. Fawcett. "There are very fine lines."
Gray areas 
And huge gray areas. One of the biggest issues is whether it's acceptable to create an ad and run it once, as cheaply as possible, to make it eligible for a festival.
"I believe that even if an ad legitimately runs on TV and therefore meets the strict criteria, if it is a washing machine ad running once on a children's channel at 4 a.m. with a 0.000001 rating, then clearly it's a scam," says Ian Thubron, CEO of M&C Saatchi, Hong Kong. "I believe it is up to juries or the awards committee to ascertain what is and what isn't legitimate and award accordingly."

	'Tongue' is often cited as an example of a ghost ad.

Here's what went on behind the scenes with one Gold Lion winner: DM9 DDB, Sao Paulo, entered a print ad called "Tongue" in 1999 for Parmalat ketchup. The thick, red ketchup looks like a tongue protruding from a mouth as it oozes thickly from the lip of the bottle. After the ad won a Gold, rumors circulated that it hadn't really run anywhere. Although it's never been proved, two years later, "Tongue" is often cited as an example of a ghost ad.
After repeated calls by Advertising Age to the agency asking when and where the ad ran, a representative said the ad ran in June 1999 in an unnamed magazine published by a company called Sisal. The deadline for Cannes entries is two months earlier, in April, implying the ad only ran after it was awarded. And Sisal, a call to the company revealed, publishes car magazines, an improbable media choice for a ketchup ad.
Finger-pointing 
Which nationalities are most prone to try to scam festivals is a delicate issue, with much anonymous finger-pointing and indignant denials. "Asia is traditionally a habitual transgressor," says Mr. Fawcett. His agency, Bates, caused an uproar by refusing to participate in Singapore's Creative Circle Awards last fall in protest. Bates Asia President Jeffrey Yu, who also chairs Hong Kong's Association of Accredited Advertising Agents, accuses Singapore agencies of not weeding out scam ads. The agencies, in turn, complain that Mr. Yu is badgering them.
One local creative director justifies it this way: The Singapore ad industry is small, feels disadvantaged because of its size, and therefore is entitled to try to even the imbalance with scam ads.
Other countries are also singled out. "Brazilians are pretty bad," says another worldwide creative director. "Awards are so vastly more important for their new-business performance than anywhere else in the world. It's a country that treats advertising the way Americans treat Hollywood. Advertising people are celebrities. It encourages people to take risks."
Europeans are not immune, either. One former Cannes jury president cites -- somewhat jokes -- they are rarely caught because they almost never win anything.
The trick in the U.S., most agree, is to enter a "director's cut" rather than the final version of the commercial signed off by the client. "Production companies are more prone to do it [than agencies]," Mr. Fawcett says. "They'll enter a 60-second spot when only a 30 ran, or take out the demo shot the client wanted of pouring caramel over the peanuts."
"Nothing that hasn't run is legitimate," says Marcio Moreira, vice chairman and chief creative officer of Interpublic's McCann-Erickson WorldGroup. "But if something's very similar, how can you tell?"
Not unusual 
In some countries, it's not unusual or considered wrong to enter ads -- often with the client's permission -- that haven't run yet but might run later.
This year, for example, Interpublic's Lowe Loducca in Sao Paulo had already put the finishing touches on three print ads for Coca-Cola's Schweppes when Coke decided to tweak packaging and distribution, delaying the campaign until the second half of 2001. (Coke markets Schweppes outside the U.S.) Lowe Loducca went ahead and entered the ads, which the client had already approved, in several ad shows including the 2001 Cannes festival. In the ads, different body parts such as hands and arms each resemble a mouth, with the tagline "Your whole body asks for it."
It's also not unusual for festivals like Cannes to function almost as a test market, although that is outside the bounds of the official rules. "If the client is going to run it after the festival, the ad is extremely legitimate and not a ghost," claims Silvio Matos, president of Cordiant's Newcomm Bates, Sao Paulo, and one of the Brazilian judges at this year's festival. "To help make the decision, the client just wants the opinion of a group of professionals [on the jury] with high standards."
Especially in Latin America, entering work in a festival to convince a client it deserves to run is considered part of a laudable passion for good advertising. Eduardo Fernandez, president of Omnicom's DDB Latin America, describes a Volkswagen ad for the new Beetle done by DDB in his native Uruguay as a "semi-trucho." The client liked the "Born out of Love" spot, which showed two Volkswagens making love to create the car. But the spot was turned down for budget reasons. Mr. Fernandez says DDB's belief in the ad was so strong that the Montevideo-based agency paid to make the commercial and air it once.
The gamble paid off. When "Born out of Love" brought home Uruguay's first-ever Lion from Cannes in 1999, the marketer was so delighted that it reimbursed the production costs and paid to air the spot for two months.
Subtle differences 
"Between a trucho and a semi-trucho, there's a subtle difference" Mr. Fernandez explains. "It's fighting for an idea because you're convinced it's good. I think the trucho culture is disappearing, but it helped raise the level of advertising."
Still, he condemns outright fakes. "There are commercials for products that don't even exist," he adds. "Now that's a trucho."
But even after all the evasion and justification, it's not clear whether awards for scam ads pull in new business. "[Agencies] believe that clients will see their bulging mantelpieces and think they're brilliant and award them their business," says M&C Saatchi's Mr. Thubron. "Personally, I don't think clients choose agencies in this way. They are far more interested in what insightful creative thinking and work has achieved in terms of business success rather than creative awards, which are only internal industry recognition after all."
In some cases, ads that bend the rules do raise the creative profile of an agency. David Droga, an outgoing young Australian who is now Saatchi's creative director in London, made his name in Singapore, where he took the agency from obscurity to a top award-winner in two years.
Mr. Droga prefers to call them "initiative" ads, like the beautiful award-winning print work for the Royal Peacock bordello-turned-hotel. "We try to be more proactive," he said. "We'd go to the client first but we didn't do ads for free or scam ads for clients that don't exist."
Who should be responsible? 
One recurring question is whether the responsibility for preventing or detecting scam ads lies primarily with the awards shows, jurors, clients or agencies. "The festival always claims innocence," says McCann's Mr. Moreira. "But they could do more."
Not all jurors are keen on the task of monitoring their peers' honesty along with their creative talent. Cannes juror and Brazilian Mr. Matos doesn't relish the prospect.
"There are zillions of magazines throughout Brazil," he says. "And countless TV channels and cable and Internet. It's literally impossible to demand that everyone have seen everything that's run."
But there's clearly a fairness issue here. "You're actually stealing someone else's award in the category," says Donald Gunn, who runs the Gunn Report, an annual ranking of agencies, advertisers and production companies by creative awards won. "Someone else has worked hard to get the ad past the creative director and the client, only to be pipped at the post by someone who hasn't."
Many, including Mr. Gunn, believe scam ads will become less common and much less tolerated. "There's an encouraging shift in opinion that it's not fair," he says. "It used to be wink, wink, you're a clever chap. Now, it's you're a bit of a cheater, aren't you? You don't admire an agency for doing that.