I love this statement from David Droga as he accepted Lifetime Achievement recognition at the Cannes Lions Festival of Creativity a week or so ago:
“I used to try to sell things just on the creativity of something, and I’d be furious if they didn’t see the genius I saw. Now if I was a client, I wouldn’t want to buy something just because it’s creative … They should buy something because it’s right, and good for their business, and answering their needs.”
Even though he said this while accepting an advertising award, I love that David reminds everyone to keep the focus on the real work, which goes beyond what ad awards typically celebrate.
In the world of advertising, there’s a tremendous amount of emphasis on awards — the Lion, the Clio, the Effie, the D&AD, the One Show, the ADDY, and on and on. There’s even a company founded just to keep track of the deadlines for 700 award shows held annually around the world. That’s nearly two award shows every day. Collectively, that’s a ridiculous number of opportunities for advertisers to pat themselves on the back each year.
The mother-of-all awards shows, the Cannes Lions, finished recently and announced that it is doing some soul-searching. The week of the Cannes Lion, Publicis announced that it was pulling out of award shows all together for the next year. Other agencies like WPP echoed the criticism. The stock of the parent company of the Cannes Lion, Ascential, took a hit in response.
Award shows can help raise the collective game of advertising by highlighting the most inspiring work. But award shows can also become marketing echo chambers. Focusing too much on awards can distract from focusing on the customer. With some exceptions, most ad award shows don’t really celebrate effectiveness.
The magic of advertising isn’t really found in the glitter of the award stage. It’s in the day-to-day real-world trenches of bringing the work to life.
Here are a couple related cartoons I’ve drawn over the years.
“How to Give Creative Feedback to the Agency“, February 2003
“Make the Logo Bigger“, October 2010
“How a Brief Becomes an Ad“, June 2014
“Is it On Brand?“, January 2016
GK says
July 3, 2017 at 6:08 amDavid Ogilivy had little nice to say about awards. His council was to look at the lobby of the agency, and if they had a lot of awards, you might want to leave. It could be a sign they are more interested in winning awards than in helping your business.
Gary Hudman says
July 3, 2017 at 7:52 amDavid Olgivy mus be spinning based on the following:
Ogilvy Celebrates 140 Awards at the 64th Cannes Lions Festival of Creativity
Cannes, France. 24 June 2017. Tonight, on the final evening of the 2017 Cannes Lions Festival of Creativity, Ogilvy has added Titanium and Grand Prix for Good honours for The Refugee Nation to its range of awards. This brings the total to 140 awards across 23 countries, including; 4 Grand Prix, 33 Gold, 33 Silver and 69 Bronze.
Dan Greenberg says
July 3, 2017 at 6:57 amWe provide a technology base to do some incredibly creative things, and we’ve enabled dozens and dozens of campaigns from multitude agencies. Success of the campaigns in winning awards is poorly correlated with success of the campaigns measured in traffic, conversions, etc. While the former is driven by creativity and inter-agency politics, the latter is driven by execution, including execution of supporting promotion. Smart clients know which is important.
PS Love the David Ogilvy council elsewhere in the comments.
BC says
July 3, 2017 at 9:04 amIn my agency life, I used to try to get the creative folks to understand that
“creativity in the absence of strategy was just art — if you want to be artists, by all means pursue your passion… BUT… creative HERE is about helping our clients make money.”
For the record, not saying that successful marketing and unique creativity are mutually exclusive! But the development and evaluation of creative in a marketing context needs to connect with the business objectives.