Sunday 3 March 2013

the difficult first post

image via here
hello..

I've been thinking about writing this blog for a long time. I registered Idea Provocateur on blogger about 12 months ago but have been a bit too chicken to commit my thoughts to the bloggersphere.

But, here goes.

This difficult first post is about awards. We are obsessed with awards in the advertising industry (as are most industries, I know). I understand why... celebrate great work and the people behind the great work to push us collective bunch of thinkers to be better and to achieve more.

To clarify, I'm not saying that we shouldn't celebrate great work in an awards-y fashion, but I think we need to address a couple of things.

we're all award snobs anyway 
There are so many award shows now that we are all becoming award snobs, aren't we? It's a lucrative business (for the awards peeps) with entries costing $300USD upwards. Throw in the cost of design and production of supporting materials, agencies are spending upwards of thousands of dollars on entering awards each year.

As agencies profit margins shrink, there becomes a natural hierarchy and we are left with a choice architecture... asking ourselves which awards will deliver the best return? Which will attract the best people and the best clients?

If we are honest with ourselves there are only really a few handful of accolades that we would want to add to the company email signature.

same old, same old
While our industry leaps in multiple directions at an unprecedented pace; the award categories and voting processes are an outdated vintage.

Agencies strive to attract the best, the freshest and the most curious talent through their doors to create and (re)define the advertising and communications industry of the future. But we are victim to letting the old schoolers critique and award work. I am not being an ageist - anything but! I just think we should have more diversity in who judges against the criteria. And in diversity I also mean people not directly involved with the industry.

On the subject of categories, it really annoys me that we have "new" categories like "effectiveness".... shouldn't all campaigns be effective? So why do we single out specific case studies that can demonstrate effectiveness?

those that PR themselves best, win
Often it is the campaigns that have been well PRd by the agency that win. It is a sound strategy... Building memory structures around your campaign so that when awards season comes around and the judges look at your entry and think "ah, i remember seeing/hearing that" is of course a genius thing to do.

But, I think we see too many well PRd campaigns winning awards based on their familiarity over effectiveness.

This is not an exhaustive list, but my starter for ten. Would love to know your thoughts too.

*sigh* difficult first post complete

1 comment:

  1. Congrats on your first post Nic! Winning awards is definitely one of those shiny things (like innovation) that agencies and clients like to add to their lobby shelf -stacking it higher the better almost to make any prospective client when they first walk into that lobby feel so overwhelmed and excited that it could be them too. Remember back in uni days our lecturers always warned us of this agency land awards grabbing behaviour and how they often innovate or do outside the box ideas not because its right for the client but rather because it is shiny and it is PR-able (for themselves, less so for the client). For awards to evolve there needs to be a council of some sort a bit like the knights of the round table to collectively decide as an industry what we should really be celebrating or is it just another excuse to get pissed and dance. (may not be the right answer...)

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