Where are all these ads from that India (or from any country for that matter) that have been shortlisted or won Gold at Cannes?

Have you seen them?

No? Neither have I.

Oh, the ad ran you say?

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.

Even if an ad legitimately runs on TV, if it is aired once on some obscure channel at midnight with a 0.000314 rating, what would you call this TV commercial?.

In the process a small client doing outstanding work suffers as his legitimate work too is seen as a ghost ad.

But you just can’t go wrong with the big global brands.

Ghost ads range from obvious 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

Truchos (as the Spanish call them) or “fantasmas” (as the Brazilians refer to them), are an outlet for frustrated creatives subjugated by the bean counters posing these days as advertising professionals.

You sat for a zillion hours in mind-numbing meetings all through the year, you wrote headlines dictated by the client’s wife’s third cousin, you made increased the size of logo by 5000%, you tossed screaming starbursts around your layouts like confetti.

So they throw a bone. Cook up a scam ad for Cannes. (A business that generates millions of dollars in profits. More than the billings of a mid-size agency.)

I would even go so far as to say it is okay to indulge in this huge self-congratulatory exercise

Nobody is perfect. Let him cast the first stone he who has not sinned. There are shades gray and all that.

However, don’t delude yourself into believing you are doing truly outstanding work. Please spare us all the interviews galore in the media. As the Bard said, to thine own self be true.

When the Roman Empire was in its decline, the power-crazed senators had the gladiators fight at the Coliseum to distract the people from the ills that plagued the government.

Cannes is advertising’s Coliseum. All of us need to be like Spartacus, who famously led a slave revolt and refused to fight for the powers that be.

Or we can go about our old ways and like the gladiators say,” Ave Caesar, Morituri Te Salutant (Ave Caesar, Those About To Die Salute You).”

Sunil Shibad. All Lefts Reserved.