Stuart Feigley's Blog

Awards And Advertising

Hi all. It’s been 20 days since my last post. Not doing to well on the blog thing obviously. But, as the ol’ saying goes, better late than never.

Recently, Jeff Goodby commented in Ad Age on how agencies are becoming “irrelevant award-chasers.” If you want to read the entire article (and the interesting replies), here’s the link: http://adage.com/cannes09/article?article_id=137525.

His point was that, all too often, creative work is done for fake or really small clients that no one has heard of. Because of this, it’s easier to get creative work through which, in turn, gives that sort of work an unfair advantage in the awards shows. As a result, more agencies are going this route to win awards rather than what his agency does: produce great work for big clients.

His solution is that “awards judges take into account the sheer “famousness” of a piece of work when they make their determinations.

I most certainly don’t agree with his take. To me, using the “famousness” of a campaign as some sort of juging criteria favors big shops with big clients. It should solely be the power of the idea that prevails, not the fact that it also ran on national TV or was featured prominantly in the top trade mags (which the judges read).

But offering a counter to Goodby’s position is, surprisingly, not the point of this post.

Throughout my career, I’ve come across people who’ve questioned the motives of creatives. “They’re only interested in winning awards.” they would say.

Au contraire. Our jobs as creatives is to motivate prospects to take action. Before we can do that, we have to get their attention … a difficult task with all the messages out there and the shrinking attention span of most people. Creativity is how we get people’s attention.  Because of that, I will always push myself and my team to find interesting creative solutions. Don’t settle for good. Insist on great. Sometimes we’ll get there. Sometimes not. But the bar should always be high.

Back to Jeff Goodby’s comments. I do agree with his basic premise that we should do great work for paying clients. At the end of my career, I don’t want my portfolio to simply be filled with a bunch of cool ads that won awards. I want the work in there to have moved the needle for clients. Gotten results. And if it was also recognized for it’s creativity, that’s icing on the cake.

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