by Carl Cardinelli (@CarlCardinelli) Award shows. Cue Simon and Garfunkel: “Hello darkness, my old friend.”
Award season is a stage shared by both the vocally victorious and the deafeningly silent defeated. Weeks of late nights followed by the furious updating of shortlist URLs, topped off by an evening plastered with illusions of grandeur, soured by morning-after tequila breath. That, and the haunting memory of when you used your Clio trophy in a less-than-savory selfie.
Let me kick off by stating that this is by no means a new topic, or argument. Yet I have always put it off in trepidation that, after this, I would never again be invited to judge an awards show. Blacklisted. Add to this the irrational fear of fanatics seeking out my agency’s name and purposefully marking down the work, due to my seemingly narcissistic martyrdom. This just in: who cares? We ad people already take life too seriously.
So am I for, or against, awards? It’s a sentiment echoed by the industry at large. The thing is, it’s not so black-and-white. My inner tug-of-war is best communicated by a succinct open letter I wrote to the awards industry about three years ago — one I still keep in my drawer — which reads like this:
Dear Awards Shows.
F*** off.
Sincerely
Everyone
PS Love you x
My epiphany
I’ll never forget a poignant discussion I had with the Droga5 team during my time there in 2014. I was waxing lyrical about the story of an agency that devoted its entire awards budget to a team skydiving experience. Fantastic, isn’t it? Rather than labour over entries and spend hundreds of thousands of hard earned smackaroos on said entries, the big cheese opted to give their team unique experiences, expanding their minds and potential for creative breakthrough. The response? “That’s shit!”
Hold up, what? Why would you say that? Awards are everything that’s wrong with the industry, right? The rebuttal changed my perception forever, creating the internal turmoil I wrestle with today. “They’re robbing their creatives, particularly the juniors, of an awarded, recognised portfolio. They’re essentially limiting their future prospects and opportunities”. Wow. Well that’s kind of true.
What’s wrong with award shows?
There are very real problems with award shows. That being said, no-one likes a whiner, so let’s examine the issues and propose plausible solutions to everything that’s wrong with them.
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The true cost of awards
Maths has little to do with the most-illustrious creative award show globally. Or does it? Consider the following. Cannes received 40133 entries in 2015. At an average of €600 per entry, that amounts to €24 079 800, or R391 684 842. Hold up, is this real life? R400m on entries alone? For just one award show? Sweet baby Jesus. But wait, there’s more. We all know how much goes into an award entry, from the 900-word rationales to the carefully crafted entry boards. Let’s just assume that each entry costs the agency 10 hours conservatively. At a global standard of R1000 per hour, that’s an extra R401 330 000. Total: Eight. Hundred. Milllion. Rand. Surely you jest?
I know that some of the entries would be duplications for the same campaign, with only the rationales and video tweaks taking place, but consider that I have omitted award-entry videos themselves, including storyboarding and production ranging between R20k and R500k. Consider the agency hours attached to those numbers. Consider music-licensing and studio time. I’ve even omitted the cost for a ticket to Cannes. How many people the world over attend this festival? Now times that by the mid-ticket price of €1495 (or R25 000). Think of flights, accommodation, and mammoth global sponsors. We’re talking way over an Uncle Bill here. Now add on the expense of a luxury yacht brimming with Bollinger and Jay Z himself, and you’re pretty much solved world hunger. Apply this formula to any of the award shows — yes, even Loeries — and you’ll find a similar outcome. Mathematical!
The solution? Simple. Making awards more cost-effective would invite all agencies to enter, encourage creativity using smaller budgets and ultimately breed innovation from the flyer to the web-banner. The smaller and/or niche agencies would probably still spend as much as possible, but would be able to enter a couple more pieces into a few more categories. This way, the awards circuit would include more entries from more regions (with poorer currencies). You’d probably make the same amount of money, but with a wider variety of agency and creativity.
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Scamming
Seriously? It’s boring now. It’s like doping but no one ever gets tested. If the creative solution were not born of a client brief, it has absolutely no place in award shows where the majority is playing by the rules (hopefully). Bottom line — when you scam, you cheat. You’re robbing deserving agencies and marketers of their victory. Anyone can come up with an idea proactively. Not everyone can answer a brief effectively. In that respect, scamming is simply an admittance of failure. And you know who you are. We know, too. You’re only fooling yourself in thinking that you got away with it. But, hey, at least your ad actually ran, right? ;)
Solution: Don’t scam, you jerk. You’re the equivalent of those people (CDs/MDs) who lift their friends (young creatives) on their shoulders at a concert. You’re ruining it for everyone. No one else can enjoy the show, yet you pretend to not hear the smaller people finding the most creative ways of saying, “Down in front”. I for one would welcome a system whereby these things are actually monitored beyond a proof.
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Blanketing
Ahh, the old spray-andpray. Blanketing well and truly screws with the rankings. It’s the kind of thinking that results in Matt Damon winning best actor in a comedy — for The Martian. Unless you’re able to blanket, or hold international seminars as to how to ‘improve’ your already-run work with Class-A CDs (ahem), you spend hours labouring over which three Cannes categories are optimal out of the 12 possible. It’s not fair to those who are only able to enter the category that they are most likely to succeed in. And award shows welcome it. Ever wonder why it feels like your piece of work is eligible in 100 categories? They’re designed to. Unfortunately, the consumer act doesn’t protect us from our own ego.
Solution: I reckon that there should be an overall limit to the number of entries that agencies can enter. Furthermore, categories should be carefully monitored according to brief and deliverables. If the campaign was aimed at creating a PR storm, it belongs in PR. If a R50m campaign was aimed at a series of online webisodes that resulted in a PR storm, it doesn’t.
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Awards are often bought, not earned
The truth is, when working with smaller budgets, you are at a direct disadvantage. “But low-costing campaigns win all the time; they’re the best!” Bollocks, homegirl. It’s 100 times harder in every aspect, from ideation to production, media spend to agency hours, awards budget to casting. They may be more memorable, but are a minute percentage of what wins. You’re basically awarding those with the fattest wallet. An idea can be amazing, but with a media spend equivalent to one banner ad, and results (reach and impressions) making up a large percentage of the overall score, you’re pretty much doomed to fail. Good times.
Solution: When considering ROI, are the size of the budgets considered too? If Coca-Cola gets 786 quintillion impressions on a US$100m dollar campaign, is it awarded the same respect as a R5m campaign that earned 20 million impressions with users generating 70% of the content? I don’t think so, so perhaps a monitored ROI summary would be most effective. 50:1 vs 1000:1. It should at least be a significant percentage of the overall score. Thankfully, some awards have already implemented this, although I have yet to see it in some of the winning work. A category titled ‘Low Cost Campaign’ is not enough.
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Winning vs succeeding
The US$800m question — did it sell more product? Did it raise awareness? Did it create a sense of brand love? Or did it win Gold? It’s funny how the two rarely go hand in hand. Nailing the sweet-spot of answering the brief in a refreshing, goose-bumpy way, truly worthy of the Gold, is near impossible. But when it happens, everyone knows it, and it’s the one time when cynical marketers bite their tongues and whisper to themselves “Wish I’d done that”. The reality is that a cleverly targeted online campaign that increases website traffic by 2000%, ultimately leaving its mark on the bottom line, is far less likely to win against the world’s first show tune-singing QR code that dubs Christopher Walken’s voice over your dog’s mug. You tell your creatives “Never mind you weren’t shortlisted, the client is thrilled! You smashed that brief. You’re making them rich, well done, peeps!” They smile, the seeping depression evident in their big, sad eyes.
Solution: This is a toughie. I understand that award shows have included create effectiveness, some even born of it. But it’s still not featuring at the forefront of the largest shows, no matter how many sales and ROI stats hold a red asterisk. Maybe we could put it into a brief and hand it over the next time the Class-A CDs meet for their annual chat?
So, what’s right with award shows?
1-10. “OWMAGAWD I WON I WON I LOVE AWARDS I LOVE LIFE THIS IS THE BEST FEELING I AM GOOD I KNEW IT THANKS MA F*** YOU HATERS OWMAGAWWWD”
And I think that’s good enough.
To sum it up, we’re pouring billions of rands globally every year, both in agency hours and hard earned cash. And where the heck does all that money go? A week of seminars topped off by an event? Trophies? Wait, it can’t be trophies; you need to foot the R12k to get an extra one. We put ourselves, and our young creatives, up for subjective criticism. For what? The loose promise that a full cabinet will lure larger clients through our doors. Let me ask you this. When was the last time a client hired you, based on your awards alone? When was the last time a client cared more about your creative ability than the likelihood of effective communications? Here’s a doozy. When was the last time one of your large clients approved a campaign much like the one that got you onto the pitch list in the first place?
So the real question is: do awards exist to aid new business, push the boundaries of creativity or serve to be the most incredibly exorbitant pat on the back?
Every single award show, local and international, closes with the same line. “It’s nights like these that showcase creativity at its highest calibre. It’s award shows like this one that truly push our industry to the next level of creative excellence.” Hmm. Sure, it pushes the standards of creativity. Yes, it boosts the portfolios of young creatives (and small/niche agencies). But the above sentiment is only true if it were the real, honest reason for their existence. If (better) solutions were created to combat the above points.
Final thought
When your CDs use the old chestnut of “The brief is to win a Gold at Cannes” tell them to shut it (note — inside voice). Re-brief yourself. The brief is to inspire, motivating either love, a switch or a purchase. When they tell you to bend the truth in order to make the ad more award-worthy, tell them to bend themselves and find new uses for those Pencils. Creative licence is magic. Finding creative ways of bullshitting the consumer is cheap.
So here’s my advice. Love them and hate them. Push yourself, hard, and create work that you’re proud of. Scare yourself, and the pants off your CDs, and leave safe in your first review. Judges reward bravery and the result it yields. Do this, and the awards will come, on your terms.
PS Love you x
Carl Cardinelli (@CarlCardinelli) began his career in branding and communications in 2003, spending the better part of six years establishing himself in London. Upon his return to South Africa in 2012, he was selected to lead Utopia, the “screw-the-line” agency based in Cape Town. When not heading up a team of unruly young admen, he can be found brewing his own beer, picking out a new pair of sneakers or travelling the globe in search of live music. Carl contributes the monthly “The Adtagonist” column, in which he challenges perceptions of the advertising industry and its practices for the next generation of marketers, to MarkLives.com
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