I don’t know why I am writing this right after having an award show win (four national ADDYs), but I am. I have no doubt it will curse us. So I am knocking on wood right now. To this point, the knocking-on-wood process has kept my planes from crashing, so it must be good for stuff like this too.
I hate award shows because of the mystery. The fact that I have been a judge in award shows and have seen what happens during the process makes it even worse. Judges will dismiss things that took months to produce in a matter of seconds. They say the work is derivative. They say it didn’t grab them. They say that it wasn’t polished. They want to award things with nice varnish over ideas because they know about different varnishes. They could see the strategy too much. The strategy was oozing from the work and obscuring anything that could possibly be of any value. It didn’t connect with them on an emotional level. It sucked.
Once a judge said to me that if it didn’t grab her, she immediately gave it a 0. Which means there weren’t any points for effort. I always give points for effort. I also know that giving points for effort will curse me someday. Knock on wood.
Here is what goes through my mind –
A spicy Thai salad can easily distract someone from judging excellent creative work. Admit it. Just the picture of one is almost luring you away from reading the rest of this post.
“Did they just take our money and the work never made it to the show? Did our DVD or Quicktime function properly? I know that they will try really hard to get it working, but that will frustrate the judges as well. A frustrated judge will not like our subtle genius. Is our work canceling our other work out? (That work can’t possibly be good because they also did that other awful work.) Did they see our work just before lunch when they were super hungry and thinking about a delicious Thai BBQ salad at spice level #7? I know it would be hard for me to concentrate while thinking about a delicious Thai salad at spice level #7. They all know each other. Are they just looking at each other’s work right there in the judging and slapping each other on the back and giving each other 100s? Why don’t I try and talk to more of them when I am at events? I can be social if I try really hard. They might like me. Of course that one magazine editor really doesn’t like me at all. Is she secretly running everything? Is it a conspiracy? Or is the work just derivative.”
Then I come back to my senses and realize that there is really good work out there and we do really good work ourselves. And judging isn’t an exact science. And maybe we should limit our entries. And that editor doesn’t hate me. She doesn’t necessarily like me either. She hasn’t taken out a restraining order and that is good.
But that’s what the mystery of award shows does to you. If I could watch and make sure the judges were looking at the work, I would feel better. I would also pick up some tips for next time. Maybe I would infuse some donut smell in the print pieces or subliminal pictures of kittens in the TV. Then, of course, I think, “Ad people don’t like kittens.”
And oh, I probably shouldn’t say anything about anyone else’s work on Twitter. Knock on wood.
We are competitive here. We want to win for our clients. We want to win for our agency. We want to win. And agencies that do well in award shows are doing great work. I have to like them.
We have done well this year. And I think one of the reasons is we don’t really just think advertising. Like any good agency, we think of work that will get attention by the way we run media, the PR factor and results. Vegas Bound, the program where we brought a small town in Texas to Vegas, has won a number of PR, media and interactive awards including the Gold Sabre and OMMA. We also won Mediaweek’s Media Plan of the Year for our Wynn client. And we’ve gotten a lot of recognition for our creative work as well, especially on our biggest client, LVCVA. So I am not unhappy. I just always feel like we should do much better.
I can’t tell you the perfect way to enter these award shows. I don’t know it. What I can tell you is that great work does win. And if you do great work, it won’t get past the judges. Unless, of course, they see it right before a really spicy Thai salad.
