…however, it is unacceptable to shoot.
In the photo archive of this blog I have placed several graphics showing ads published at the end of last September, many of them in Al Día, which I have called “truchiles” because of their double condition.
I understand that they were mostly published by Garnier BBDO, and that they correspond to initiatives of the agency for contests, so we assume that their publication was not paid by the client nor are part of their communication campaigns.
This so called trucho or semi-trucho, is a topic of open and festering discussion every year, since there are those who are strongly opposed to truchos, and there are those who sponsor it with their thousands of dollars of backing. And others who like me, have ambivalent, mixed, mixed and combined feelings about trucho. I go back and forth on this subject, but without a doubt, I feel much better without trucho, and for this reason, at a gut level I have the conviction that if I really want to be proud of an award, I’d better earn it the hard way: with the client’s approval, with his normal guideline, with his dollars behind it.
In our network, for example, I know of many international awards won with cheats that are celebrated without any shame. All networks have done it, and there are many local agencies that have done it not once, but many times. Whether it is right, ethical or not, is a matter of discussion and I am not the one to state a position.
However, what does not cause me the slightest doubt is the rifle. We use this expression to refer to copying without penalty, plagiarism, plagiarized, pirated or falsified. And for this reason, with the examples placed in the section of this blog called “Creative Coincidences?”, I do not want to pass up the opportunity for discussion, although it is a very debatable topic.
In a class on business ethics I took at INCAE, we went through many possible ethical situations totally relative to the country, the culture, the circumstance. In fact, and to my surprise, I found myself with the relativity of morals and ethics, after being trapped by the professor, as well as my classmates, to later discover how in fact, almost everything depends on a thousand variables, culture and values.
If you are at war it may be ethical to kill, as it is to kill in self-defense of your life. If your child is starving, it might be ethical to steal a loaf of bread, just as I suppose it is ethical to eat your neighbor if your society is cannibalistic. I understand that it is also true that in one culture it is ethical to bargain at 30% on the first offer, as in others to do so might be a personal offense.
What is unethical, however, almost universally, is not to give one’s best. It is neither ethical nor moral to have 100% and settle for giving 60%. It is unethical to take an easy shortcut to achieve a prize, it is not a good example and does not inspire others to give the maximum possible of your individual or collective potential. The easy way, the one of minimum effort, the one that settles for a fast track, the one of the free lunch or the trip without paying, is a way that may work for an instant, as a deception, but it cannot be sustained in the long term.
Today in Tribu we watched the interview with Marcelo Serpa, from Almap BBDO, included in the latest LatinSpots DVD. No one should miss it, because it brings a lot of important opinions and advice. What I don’t know completely is if among his 68 lions in Cannes there is any trucho, I guess so, but I would bet that there is not a single rifle.
