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Industry awards create the healthy desire to do better

Platform: Internet | Author: Mark Cridge is CEO of digital creative agency Glue London | Source: NMA magazine | Published: 26.06.08

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There are two reactions in relation to whether or not awards matter, and they're most eloquently expressed either immediately after winning one or immediately after missing out on one.

In this busiest of awards seasons, and having experienced both sides on numerous occasions, it's worth looking at why awards create the reactions that they do and what they're really useful for.

In many ways, awards sum up the advertising industry in all its myriad forms: the excitement, the passion,...

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... the bitchiness, the manipulation, the intrigue, the controversy and the downright disbelief that the pitiful entry from so-and-so picked up a gong.

With the sheer scale of some of today's digital awards schemes - the Cyber Lions at last week's Cannes International Advertising festival had some 2,750 entries looked at by 25 jury members in one week - it's doubtless that much deserved work gets passed by in the scrum to make it onto the shortlist. In any awards show that I've been involved in, there has always been grumbling about unfairness, but to focus on these complaints would be to miss the point of awards in themselves.

For all their numerous faults, of which there are many, awards satisfy a basic requirement of our industry: the need to push things on, to stir up the emotions, to drive competition, to generate the hunger, to participate in the ebb and flow of creative success.

Some agencies have actively chosen to avoid awards, notably St Luke's a few years ago, as they believed they sullied the real reason that we do all of this, which is to harness the power of creativity for the benefit of our clients.

But to not participate would be to miss out on the pain and despair of not winning again this year. For it's that hunger which drives you forward to do better next year, to turn around that disappointment into a success.

Creating work just to win awards or manipulating entries to do that little bit better seems an attractive route forward, especially when you think to yourself that it must be what everyone else is doing. When you consider just how much it costs to enter multiple awards with multiple entries, it would be ridiculous not to give yourself the best chance possible, wouldn't it? But as my mum used to say, you're only cheating yourself if you go down that route.

At their best, awards set the standard for the industry to follow. They help attract talent into our discipline and provide a reward for all the time spent on those ads that didn't quite make it.

They may be a flawed currency for the measurement and comparison of creative success, and they're pretty useless for comparing work across different disciplines (whichever idiot said its 100 times harder to win a film Cannes Lion than a Cyber Lion was missing the point), but they're the best thing we have and in my opinion their benefits vastly outweigh any negatives.

Anything that can help drive forward that creativity is a potent tool towards business success and has to be a good thing. Assuming we at least go into these things with our eyes wide open, then even at their often vastly inflated cost, they can only be a good thing.

So best of luck with your future entries and I hope to see you on the next shortlist.