Judgment in Ikon court victory says TV ads’ effectiveness is ‘subjective opinion’
The judge who ruled in favour of Ikon Communications in its legal battle with former client, Advangen, rejected complaints about the agency’s TV ads because they are a matter of “subjective opinion” with no industry standard by which to measure their quality or effectiveness.
In his 44-page judgment handed down on Friday, Justice Michael Ball absolved the agency of any blame for the perceived failure of a marketing campaign for hair thinning product Evolis in 2015.
Love the irony of the presiding judge being named Michael Ball, the same name as the founder of advertising agency the Ball Partnership and former right hand man to David Ogilvy.
That is very funny and rather ironic that the judge’s name is Michael Ball.
This judge has grasped some media buying concepts in a few weeks that many clients haven’t grasped in 20 years
It was never going to go any other way.
The judgment is available here:
http://www.austlii.edu.au/cgi-...../1650.html
That’s called a coincidence.
I used to look up to Jane Caro but with her stance on this case I feel she has become a bit much in awe of her own image. From when I started to follow the case, my impression was that here was a client who resisted giving any real input to the marketing communication when it was sought and then wanted to blame anyone else – and not pay for commitments – when personal sales targets weren’t achieved. Any marketing professional knows that an ad campaign can only ever address a “communications objective” not a “sales target”, unless it is a direct marketing campaign, which will then require a lot more input and delivery guarantees from the client than this one’s case showed it ever contributed.
Agree with the outcome, but not the comment that a Creative Brief wouldn’t have changed the outcome.
Seeing Caro’s opinion in this case just ads further evidence to my thought that anyone who appears regularly on morning TV is to be entirely distrusted.
Proving why one should, if given the option, politely decline to be an expert witness in proceedings.