Why Advertising Awards Are Retarded*
This post is not intended to be an attack on Carousel, Philips or DDB Amsterdam. I have simply picked Carousel as an example as it’s topical. My point is about advertising industry awards – not about an individual film or campaign. Carousel could easily be replaced with any number of pieces from the last few years (including some of my own work), but I figure it best to pick one – and it’s the one that’s winning awards right now. Also, I am sticking my neck out a bit because I don’t actually have any figures, but logic (and a little research) suggests my claims to be true. So, Carousel, a very good (well executed )’digital’ film has won/will win almost any advertising award ‘worth’ winning. It’s been a complete industry success story – but I have to ask the question: Has it sold many televisions?
Perhaps not.
But carousel has been canonized and is winning awards left right and center. ‘They are creative awards!’ I hear you cry. Rubbish. What business in their right mind would hire a company to simply be creative and win awards? This is about selling stuff – that’s our job – we sell stuff. We are employed purely for this purpose – that’s it. We are not film-makers, artists or poets – we are marketing people. Our industry sometimes forgets this, often celebrating these much coveted qualities. That can often be work that actually fails the people who employ us to do it? On top of that some marketing people still engage agencies based on the amount of awards they’ve won not selling other peoples stuff.
It doesn’t make much sense.
It’s like going to The British Insurance Awards and the ‘Broker Grand Prix’ going to a someone wearing a nice suit who hasn’t sold any policies..?
Maybe it’s time for change?
Oh, and before you ask – yes I have won awards and no I’m not bitter. I just think that times are changing and we all need to move on. Internet culture is exposing the frailty of some communications models and systems. My worry is that it won’t be long before companies ask themselves why they employ a marketing department and agency that could easily be mistaken as caring more about things looking pretty, and winning awards, than they do about actually selling stuff.
Which ironically I think we mostly all do (care about selling stuff) – and that, of course, includes DDB.
*Awards based on effectiveness may be exempt from my rant.
Comments
10 Responses to “Why Advertising Awards Are Retarded*”
Leave a Reply
“..We all know Carousel, a well executed piece of film based on a clever technique..”
..and based on award winning AKQA work from a few years before:
http://awards.sf.akqa.com/creative/2007/halo3/believe/
Totally agree, at the end of the day we are a service and we should always offer ROI on the campaigns that we produce, otherwise why employ a creative agency in the first place.
Good rant Mr Cooper
Will come to with the results. Although the client does seem happy.
Some really well observed points – the self masturbation of ad awards shows in particular. how many industries are as self centered as adland?
however to be fair – is it any less of an effective campaign than the multitude of banner campaigns that 0.01% of visitors click on or the obligatory facebook apps that no one uses? At least 21:9 is a nicely crafted piece of work and does what it sets out to do pretty well.
But ja, it ain’t Bravia with digital Balls.
I think this could well be advertising piffle; however it is worth pointing out that the characteristics that make an ad good to an awards jury and good as in effective are often the same, different, distinct, original, well branded, as in the idea is about the brand, relevant to the audience and resonant. Have a look at the IPA effectiveness awards and say D&AD and you’ll find a reasonable amount of match ups.
I imagine the client is as much to blame as the agency. Great rant dude.
Zac, thank you and yes I agree. I am preparing another about just that. But it’s a little bit more sensitive as you’d imagine.
Pretty much spot on, Darren said it best “at the end of the day we are a service and we should always offer ROI on the campaigns that we produce”.
By now we all must have realised that awards help attract creatively minded people to the industry, while providing for inter-agency one-up-man-ship and thats pretty much all there good for.
Great rant, keep em up.
Welcome to my world dude.
You’ll like it here, it’s like being a sane person locked in an asylum.
I don’t have any figures for the sales i’m afraid so can’t help you with that.. I would say though, and I think you know me well enough to know this already, we didn’t do carousel just to win awards, which i think is what you’re really complaining about. We went to the client with a full retail toolkit showing how we’d use the content at the point where consumers were considering purchase (online retailers).. and there was a solid strategy behind it, regarding how it positioned the client in the market.
of course none of that stuff goes into the award entry.. because no-one cares about it, which is why we both agree awards are bollocks.
only good thing i can think of is they give us something to talk about. imagine how shit our jobs would be if all we could talk about was conversion rates and IPSOS tracking.