Firm Missteps With Award Winning Dance Studio Ad

Laure Haile knows a thing or two about dancing. In fact, she wrote the book on it--”The Arthur Murray Dance Notebook.” She’s danced in dozens of movies. And she’s won enough ballroom dancing trophies to fill--well--a ballroom.

When it comes to advertising, however, the 75-year-old Burbank dance instructor admits she doesn’t know diddley.

Oh sure, she runs a small advertisement in the Burbank yellow pages. And occasionally, she places an ad in a pamphlet published by the city’s parks and recreation department. But the $200 or so that she spends annually for advertising, big companies like Procter & Gamble or General Motors spend in a nanosecond.

Then the calls started. Advertising Age, Adweek, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times. Everybody wanted to know about those ads--and not the ones in the park directory.

Done as a Showcase

Everybody was asking about the ads that a caller from Milwaukee offered to create for her small studio in Burbank. These were ads she never approved, never paid for and ads that apparently never appeared anywhere. But when one of them won a grand prize in a regional advertising contest in the Midwest, Haile found herself in the thick of controversy about advertising prizes. It is also a controversy on the agenda of the American Advertising Federation meeting here this week.

“All I know is, I came home one day and there was a beautiful bouquet sitting at my front door,” Haile said. Attached to the bouquet was a card that simply said: “Seems we have become famous.”

Prophetic words. The flowers and congratulations were from a Milwaukee advertising agency that had telephoned her out of the blue last year. At the time, the agency said it wanted to create some ads for her dance instruction studio. “I told them I didn’t have any money to pay for the ads,” Haile recalled, “but they told me not to worry, it wouldn’t cost anything.”

“At the time, I had no idea what was going to happen with the ads,” she said, “but I wasn’t really concerned. To tell you the truth, I didn’t even stop to think about it.” She was too busy, she said, teaching dance lessons and caring for her five stray dogs, two stray cats and gobs of birds.

Hoffman York & Compton, the Milwaukee ad agency that created the ads and won the prize, failed to return repeated phone calls last week to discuss the controversy.

But, in a letter to Haile in February, an agency executive wrote, “Our producing these ads places you under no financial obligation. We’re simply doing it for the opportunity to showcase our agency’s ability to create fresh, breakthrough advertising for a variety of businesses.”

It was a radio ad for the dance studio that won the contest--a regional competition that leads up to the national Addy awards sponsored by the American Advertising Federation. The national Addys were handed out Sunday night in a posh ceremony here in Los Angeles. (See story above.)

It seems that it wasn’t until long after the contest was over that the American Advertising Federation came to the conclusion that the prize-winning radio ad never appeared anywhere. Although the rules don’t specifically say that the ads must appear somewhere, the ad group asked the Milwaukee agency for documentation.

What came back, said Addy officials, was a nasty letter withdrawing the ad from further competition, a boxful of ad trophies the agency had won at this year’s regional competition, but no documentation. The agency also vowed not to enter any other Addy contests, officials said.

The American Advertising Federation, which sponsored the contest, says the ads were created with the sole intention of winning a prize. But the controversy has raised wide-ranging questions about advertising prizes in general.

In the advertising world, ad agencies that win competitions like to promote these accolades in order to win new business. Such actions, of course, have been going on for years. This time, however, industry attention has been focused on the issue because the grand-prize winning commercial was neither paid for nor was it apparently ever broadcast. As a result of the attention this has garnered, one of the country’s biggest advertising competitions is now taking a second look at its rules.

‘Involved in Addy-Gate’

Over the next few days, a special committee of the American Advertising Federation is expected to consider revising its contest rules. Among other things, the new rules will attempt to more clearly spell out that all entries must be ads that the client paid for and that have appeared in the print or broadcast media.

“I never thought I’d be involved in an Addy-gate,” said Howard H. Bell, president of the ad group. “But ads created just to win awards are not acceptable in our contests.”

Meanwhile, the agency that created the ad has taken advantage of the national spotlight. In late March, it ran a half-page ad in the trade magazine Advertising Age under the headline: “In just 30 seconds we got the whole country talking.” In that same ad, it offered to sell tapes of the radio ad for $5.99--or send it free of charge to prospective clients.

But Warren R. Eulgen says this is no laughing matter. In fact, in an act of anger, the president of the rival Milwaukee ad firm Kocs, Wesson & Associates resigned as a board member of the Milwaukee Advertising Club. Then, he ran an advertisement in a local business journal that took Hoffman York & Compton to task. “I resigned because the board was not taking any action,” he said. “You shouldn’t go around creating things for people just so you can enter them in a contest.”

How to settle this?

Well, Haile has an idea. And it won’t require lots of committee meetings or bickering. In fact, she says, it’s as easy as a tango.

When Haile judges ballroom dance contests, she says, the rules clearly state that lifting or tossing dance partners is generally not allowed. But there is usually one special category in the competition where such moves are permitted.

“Maybe there should be a special division in these advertising contests where this sort of ad is allowed,” she said. “I don’t like to get in middle of these kinds of things,” Haile offered, reaching in a bird cage to break up a fight between two of her squabbling pets. “But I guess I’m in the middle of this one.”