AAG holds Gong Gong Awards
Barring any last-minute hitch, the Banquet Hall of the State House will be bubbling with the rebirth of Gong Gong Awards that celebrates advertising excellence in Ghana on December 5, 2014.
This year’s event, the eighth since its inception, received entries from July 23 to August 22 and cover works from 2008 to 2012 for the Sankora Awards in one category and only 2013 adverts in another category.
Award categories
The awards to be contested for are in categories including alcoholic and non-alcoholic beverages, food and confectionery, corporate services, insurance and financial services, textile and fashion/accessories, health and personal care.
The rest are telecommunications, transport, aviation, hospitality, household and industrial appliances, sports and estate development.
The awards, event which has been on hold for some years now, bounces back after a four-year break.
According to a breakdown of the 180 entries received by the awards committee, television leads the pack with 78, followed by radio, 48; print/press,35; outdoor, 28, activations, one; and digital, four.
This year’s awards would be held on the theme; “Creating Advertising: Catalyst for Economic Growth.”
The event will also see the recognition of people who have contributed to the growth of the advertising industry in Ghana in the Lifetime Achievement, Special Recognition and Distinguished Personality categories.
AAG Executive Director on the awards
The Executive Director of the AAG, Mr Francis Dadzie, told the Daily Graphic that all was set for a memorable evening on the night of Farmers Day when the nation’s best in farming would also be honoured.
According to him, the awards had helped bring out peer evaluation.
“It is not about a group of people sitting somewhere and judging the entries. It requires that the agency themselves who presented entries, have a right to nominate one Creative director to the pool of judges.”
“However, if the agency’s entry comes up, that person would have to excuse himself. When you receive your award, you’re receiving it from your peers who recognised that the advert you produced met the requirement of excellence and creativity.”
Entries then go through a secret voting where the results are collated by KPMG, the event statisticians.
Mr Dadzie said the awards event had contributed to improving standards in the industry.
“Anybody who has watched the awards closely will realise that agencies that won awards in the past have businesses coming to them. People take it seriously. Their names resonate in the minds of people and everybody wants to do business with them.”
“It inspires them to be creative all the time and go beyond the normal. There is a lot of clutter now because of all manner of adverts, some of which are poorly produced. This provides the platform to separate the professionals from the non-professionals.”
Concern about poorly produced adverts
He expressed concern about what he described as adverts that lacked creativity.
“The adverts have nothing intriguing to keep the audience watching. It is because they do not engage. People are not able to distinguish between the professional work and the non- professional ones. They see the good ones and the bad ones, and they assume that the good, the bad and the ugly are all from us.”
He was, however, optimistic that the passage of the Advertising Bill would sanitise the industry.
Mr Dadzie urged young people entering the industry to aspire to greater heights and think out of the box and come up with adverts that would engage the viewer.
