Creative awards schemes should stand for creativity as an end in itself. But the bigger industry players prefer a purpose narrative that keeps them on top.
We were looking at the Design Week results yesterday and thinking about this (and, naturally, anticipating your take). Everything that did well is for a "good cause" of some kind. I think good causes carried some fairly weak work too, although that's very subjective.
I surprised myself by preferring your second speech. Not because this situation is ideal, but because it's pragmatic and (more) honest. I don't think we're every going to stop people judging work based on their own moral compass, however much we might want them to. Asking them to "push in that direction" leaves it open to each judge to decide how far. Creative awards are always going to be a crapshoot; pretending that you can isolate the craft or the creativity feels disingenuous to me.
Thanks Sam – fascinating. I think the second speech is entirely valid as long as a) the same message is made clear to entrants, and b) the awards are described as the 'creativity for good' awards. The perfect can't be the enemy of the good – it should be totally possible for jurors to try their best to judge based on creativity.
Thanks Nick. Agree with all of that really! I suppose my challenge is – is it silly to push perfect when you know the very best you're going to get is good? (I may have pushed the phrase too far...)
I think, probably, the devil is in the detail, and I certainly support being clearer about the judging criteria – to entrants, to judges, and to the wider community.
Yes we can definitely agree on that last bit. I do think there are so many areas in life where we push for perfect in the hope of arriving at good enough (the criminal jury system being one example). The silly thing is to stop trying! I've heard stories of judges saying perfectly cheerfully and openly that (e.g.) they don't really approve of luxury brands, so it doesn't matter how good the logo or ad is. You can't thought-police the inner workings of all judges' minds, but you can at least create a climate where those kind of statements elicit a frown rather than a round of applause.
I worked at one of these awards shows for a long time in the awards and judging teams.
We never talked about purpose to the jury, we explained the judging process and asked them to find the best work.
What often happened afterwards was the jury president making a case for 'finding the best work that contributed to society. Creativity is at it's best when it has an impact on society and the world at large etc.'
Most fellow jurors chime in.
The results/ awards are a reflection of the industry leaders more than anything else. As you say, Nick, this suits their careers, companies and clients.
For next year, as soon as the juries are announced, send these two speeches to them and hopefully we'll make 'em lean on creativity
Thanks Nicolas. I'm sure most awards organisers would defend themselves by saying "We just appoint the judges and don't steer them in any direction". But I don't see that being sustainable for long. Awards organisers have a responsibility to the people who enter – at the very least, judges should be steered to follow the entry criteria and not make up their own.
The “cuckoo” analogy is so apt - wish I’d thought of it! It will be interesting to see how things go next year with inflation and the cost-of-living crisis hits in and people’s priorities change. I agree that the Apple Underdogs winning is cheering - especially as this is part of a longer-running campaign rather than a one-off.
Thanks Sue. Agree about the next year, but wish it didn't take that to make people rethink.
I enjoyed the Apple one and am delighted it did well. Did wonder if it's too long to sustain attention – but that's exactly the kind of *creative* discussion that it's really interesting to have with other jurors. How long is too long? Is the comic timing just right? Is the dialogue well written? etc. etc. If a juror announces we need degrowth and they can't support selling more Apple stuff, they're just abdicating their duty – go judge some other awards.
... or - ahem - get out of the industry altogether. If you’re not in advertising or marketing to help brands grow, what are you there for? Most people want good products at affordable prices as fair as possible to people and planet. I do agree that these awards seem to be a self-perpetuating system at the moment with the “cuckoo” calling the tune - a bit like literary awards.
You rightly point out that those who do "purely creative and commercial work" are aggrieved that their work is being ignored.
It's no wonder.
Just compare the effort and expertise that goes into creating an award winning piece of work with a) commercial purpose and b) social purpose.
a) Commercial Purpose: Take the marketing problem brief from the client ... write a consumer facing brief with a clear proposition that encapusalates the benefit to be derived from the brand/product/service and why the prospect would want it in their lives ... get the client to understand the significance of that proposition and sign it off ... get the creatives to stick to that brief and come up with an idea that, within budget, dramatises/demonstrates the proposition ... sell that idea to what is often a risk averse and conservative client ... help them sell the idea upwards within their organisation ... protect the integrity of the idea through all the stages of production and deliver it on budget until it finally appears in front of the prospect - as originally envisaged by the agency team.
b) Social Purpose: Find a trending issue and attach your brand to that issue.
That's it.
You don't even have to struggle to ensure that the issue is in any way related to the brand you are promoting. Any issue will do. It does, however, help if you have tons of money to throw at the project. Need an example? The Sheba Hope work. Do you see much evidence of a creative team's involvement? Nope, me neither.
Steve – you're right, that's a whole dimension of the argument I didn't even get into. Generally a social purpose is an easy way to win over creative jurors: if it's sufficiently righteous, it feels churlish to start criticising the typography.
Then again, if you had an *actual* purpose awards scheme, with judges who are experts in the slow and unglamorous business of social change, I'm sure the results would be very different.
Interesting that the purely creative exceptions usually involve humour – it seems to be the one way to cut through the purpose blob.
As Paul Feldwick reminds us, the most effective creative works on an emotional level (often, as you say, involving humour)
But to do that from scratch with a purely creative and commercial brief is damned difficult. So the lazy, short cut to an emotional response is to piggyback your brand to an emotive issue.
The public, however, are not convinced.
As Yael Casarkis, VP Executive Stratgey Director R/GA, explained in a refreshigly dissenting presentation at Cannes last week: "The reality is, most brands don't have the stature and credibility to be successful this way. The result is lots of fluff, because these claims of “purpose” are not directly attached to product benefits, features, or facts. At a moment where the value of Truth has been eroding and sense of Reality is fickle, a generation of savvy media consumers calls for a different approach".
And now look where we are – this just out today. https://www.marketingweek.com/government-campaign-slash-prices-cut-marketing/ Right after Cannes and D&AD, the government launches a scheme urging brands to cut marketing spend in order to lower prices for consumers. Seems the industry isn't doing a great job of explaining its value.
Thanks Nick, a good read and I agree with much of it; the exasperating moral self-flattery, its arbitrary nature, the sense that anyone who hasn't got the purpose memo and isn't loudly cheering for the new orthodoxy is by default a reactionary. Yet I found myself voting for the speech which I see put me in a small minority.
There's a couple of things I tripped up on, & a general sense of wondering when the tangible results of all the creativity might be scrutinized. We live in a democracy, if a campaign for a gun manufacturer is 'creative' and backed up with results then why shouldn't they win an award for it?
On the other hand, when I read, "If you’re entering a campaign for a discount fashion chain, be aware that essentially juries might not want to encourage your kind of work," my instinctive reaction was, "good!". And that's specifically because of the proven systemic environmental damage of the entire business model. So then I was thinking, unless the fashion chain could prove their creativity on a measure of customer satisfaction per unit of environmental impact, and beat everyone else on score.
Similarly with the crypto Superbowl ads, tbh honest I was nauseated by the agency self-congratulation for something that's obviously a Ponzi scheme for unregulated securities, that from reports I've seen over-indexed in poorer, less educated communities.
So I don't quite know where I'm netting out, perhaps I'm more ambivalent in part because I really do think there is a evidence based fundamental problem with how markets are operating and we must take some responsibility for that, which for me means it can't just revert back to judging creativity 'neutrally'. But, it's above my pay grade!
I don’t think it’s above your pay grade – definitely need more thoughtful people like you chipping in!
I think it’s fine to have a creative awards scheme that explicitly favours ‘creativity for good’ and makes that part of the criteria. Then people can decide for themselves whether to enter or not – and huge swathes will probably steer clear, from discount fashion chains to crypto companies. Rather than the winners calling themselves ‘creative agency of the year’ and using that status to win lucrative work for giant corporations, they would only get to call themselves ‘creativity for good agency of the year’ and see how much work they get. The difference matters – there’s a reputation-laundering dynamic at work in the whole thing.
Of course, I would still be sceptical of a ‘creativity for good’ awards scheme because the industry has such naive ideas about what counts as ‘for good’ these days. But I can still imagine supporting it. Properly run, with a VERY different judging process, it would be interesting and worthwhile.
Fundamentally, if awards want to pass ethical judgment on the industry, they should make sure they’re on a strong ethical footing first. It can never be perfect, but it can surely be a lot better than it is.
Thanks! One of the things that's particularly struck me in the last couple of years comparing how things were in '92 when I started out and where things are today, is how incredibly techno-bureaucratic the strategy-to-creative process has become, the sense that functional managerialism has taken over, that there is no real depth of understanding, curiosity, thought into what it is we are all doing, whereas when I read e.g. Dichter, there's a palpable sense that he and others were "on a mission", in his words to liberate America from frugality, repression and puritanism, which lets face it has had mixed results! The thing with purpose, which tbh when I hear it is like nails on a chalkboard, it seems entirely absent of affect*, yet very slickly produced, but really just incredibly shallow. I don't know how to describe it, I mean I just randomly thought of doing meals-on-wheels deliveries with my mum in the '80's and it's feels like that but with massive corporate budgets, there's nothing systemic about it.
* meant in its full sense as explored in Affect Theory, this is all just blurted out, but what I mean is purpose seems to lack something corporeal, where 'empathy' is deployed in a way that feels distancing, superior, almost keeping the subject in their predicament.
Long(ish)-time reader, first-time commentator. 2 points to make. 1) if people working in marketing and advertising had a better understanding of how the machinery works, and doesn't work, to create value for individuals, companies, societies and economies, we wouldn't have to suffer all the purpose-y sanctimony. But since we don't believe in the work we do, we have to find some other way of doing it to feel less shitty, it seems. 2) I've judged thousands of award entries claiming some kind of effectiveness - IMHO the "for good" stuff has always gotten a free pass (in part due to the syndrome noted in item #1). It'd be very interesting if we looked only at long-term impact - my bet is, most of these cases would evaporate, and their "impact" claims along with them. Not to say they couldn't still be judged purely on their creative merits, just that we should be honest about the game being played. Which I guess was your main point to begin with!
Thanks Judd – yes, I think honesty is the key point. I find it weird that some people struggle to decouple the ideas of 'creativity and 'creativity for good' – I guess they're worried it leads to some kind of a-moral free-for-all, but it's really a misplaced concern. People who are truly serious about social purpose and creativity for good should be on my side of the argument: Recognise it's a different thing, set up a really good, rigorous, literally 'purpose-built' awards scheme and do it properly. But don't do this weird take-over of creativity categories and talk vaguely about 'redefining' creativity. You end up with the worst of both worlds, and hardly connecting at all with the world outside.
Right, especially when - given that most people don't think enough about brands to connect with them in the first place - brands are hardly credible arbiters of what's good or useful or purposeful, let alone of how to solve for society's many ills. Anyway, love your writing and what it contributes to meaningful conversation. (And on a side note, I gave my wife one of your calendars last Xmas - huge hit.)
We were looking at the Design Week results yesterday and thinking about this (and, naturally, anticipating your take). Everything that did well is for a "good cause" of some kind. I think good causes carried some fairly weak work too, although that's very subjective.
I surprised myself by preferring your second speech. Not because this situation is ideal, but because it's pragmatic and (more) honest. I don't think we're every going to stop people judging work based on their own moral compass, however much we might want them to. Asking them to "push in that direction" leaves it open to each judge to decide how far. Creative awards are always going to be a crapshoot; pretending that you can isolate the craft or the creativity feels disingenuous to me.
Thanks Sam – fascinating. I think the second speech is entirely valid as long as a) the same message is made clear to entrants, and b) the awards are described as the 'creativity for good' awards. The perfect can't be the enemy of the good – it should be totally possible for jurors to try their best to judge based on creativity.
Thanks Nick. Agree with all of that really! I suppose my challenge is – is it silly to push perfect when you know the very best you're going to get is good? (I may have pushed the phrase too far...)
I think, probably, the devil is in the detail, and I certainly support being clearer about the judging criteria – to entrants, to judges, and to the wider community.
Yes we can definitely agree on that last bit. I do think there are so many areas in life where we push for perfect in the hope of arriving at good enough (the criminal jury system being one example). The silly thing is to stop trying! I've heard stories of judges saying perfectly cheerfully and openly that (e.g.) they don't really approve of luxury brands, so it doesn't matter how good the logo or ad is. You can't thought-police the inner workings of all judges' minds, but you can at least create a climate where those kind of statements elicit a frown rather than a round of applause.
I worked at one of these awards shows for a long time in the awards and judging teams.
We never talked about purpose to the jury, we explained the judging process and asked them to find the best work.
What often happened afterwards was the jury president making a case for 'finding the best work that contributed to society. Creativity is at it's best when it has an impact on society and the world at large etc.'
Most fellow jurors chime in.
The results/ awards are a reflection of the industry leaders more than anything else. As you say, Nick, this suits their careers, companies and clients.
For next year, as soon as the juries are announced, send these two speeches to them and hopefully we'll make 'em lean on creativity
Thanks Nicolas. I'm sure most awards organisers would defend themselves by saying "We just appoint the judges and don't steer them in any direction". But I don't see that being sustainable for long. Awards organisers have a responsibility to the people who enter – at the very least, judges should be steered to follow the entry criteria and not make up their own.
agreed
The “cuckoo” analogy is so apt - wish I’d thought of it! It will be interesting to see how things go next year with inflation and the cost-of-living crisis hits in and people’s priorities change. I agree that the Apple Underdogs winning is cheering - especially as this is part of a longer-running campaign rather than a one-off.
Thanks Sue. Agree about the next year, but wish it didn't take that to make people rethink.
I enjoyed the Apple one and am delighted it did well. Did wonder if it's too long to sustain attention – but that's exactly the kind of *creative* discussion that it's really interesting to have with other jurors. How long is too long? Is the comic timing just right? Is the dialogue well written? etc. etc. If a juror announces we need degrowth and they can't support selling more Apple stuff, they're just abdicating their duty – go judge some other awards.
... or - ahem - get out of the industry altogether. If you’re not in advertising or marketing to help brands grow, what are you there for? Most people want good products at affordable prices as fair as possible to people and planet. I do agree that these awards seem to be a self-perpetuating system at the moment with the “cuckoo” calling the tune - a bit like literary awards.
Dear Nick,
You rightly point out that those who do "purely creative and commercial work" are aggrieved that their work is being ignored.
It's no wonder.
Just compare the effort and expertise that goes into creating an award winning piece of work with a) commercial purpose and b) social purpose.
a) Commercial Purpose: Take the marketing problem brief from the client ... write a consumer facing brief with a clear proposition that encapusalates the benefit to be derived from the brand/product/service and why the prospect would want it in their lives ... get the client to understand the significance of that proposition and sign it off ... get the creatives to stick to that brief and come up with an idea that, within budget, dramatises/demonstrates the proposition ... sell that idea to what is often a risk averse and conservative client ... help them sell the idea upwards within their organisation ... protect the integrity of the idea through all the stages of production and deliver it on budget until it finally appears in front of the prospect - as originally envisaged by the agency team.
b) Social Purpose: Find a trending issue and attach your brand to that issue.
That's it.
You don't even have to struggle to ensure that the issue is in any way related to the brand you are promoting. Any issue will do. It does, however, help if you have tons of money to throw at the project. Need an example? The Sheba Hope work. Do you see much evidence of a creative team's involvement? Nope, me neither.
Steve – you're right, that's a whole dimension of the argument I didn't even get into. Generally a social purpose is an easy way to win over creative jurors: if it's sufficiently righteous, it feels churlish to start criticising the typography.
Then again, if you had an *actual* purpose awards scheme, with judges who are experts in the slow and unglamorous business of social change, I'm sure the results would be very different.
Interesting that the purely creative exceptions usually involve humour – it seems to be the one way to cut through the purpose blob.
As Paul Feldwick reminds us, the most effective creative works on an emotional level (often, as you say, involving humour)
But to do that from scratch with a purely creative and commercial brief is damned difficult. So the lazy, short cut to an emotional response is to piggyback your brand to an emotive issue.
The public, however, are not convinced.
As Yael Casarkis, VP Executive Stratgey Director R/GA, explained in a refreshigly dissenting presentation at Cannes last week: "The reality is, most brands don't have the stature and credibility to be successful this way. The result is lots of fluff, because these claims of “purpose” are not directly attached to product benefits, features, or facts. At a moment where the value of Truth has been eroding and sense of Reality is fickle, a generation of savvy media consumers calls for a different approach".
Amen to that.
And now look where we are – this just out today. https://www.marketingweek.com/government-campaign-slash-prices-cut-marketing/ Right after Cannes and D&AD, the government launches a scheme urging brands to cut marketing spend in order to lower prices for consumers. Seems the industry isn't doing a great job of explaining its value.
Thanks Nick, a good read and I agree with much of it; the exasperating moral self-flattery, its arbitrary nature, the sense that anyone who hasn't got the purpose memo and isn't loudly cheering for the new orthodoxy is by default a reactionary. Yet I found myself voting for the speech which I see put me in a small minority.
There's a couple of things I tripped up on, & a general sense of wondering when the tangible results of all the creativity might be scrutinized. We live in a democracy, if a campaign for a gun manufacturer is 'creative' and backed up with results then why shouldn't they win an award for it?
On the other hand, when I read, "If you’re entering a campaign for a discount fashion chain, be aware that essentially juries might not want to encourage your kind of work," my instinctive reaction was, "good!". And that's specifically because of the proven systemic environmental damage of the entire business model. So then I was thinking, unless the fashion chain could prove their creativity on a measure of customer satisfaction per unit of environmental impact, and beat everyone else on score.
Similarly with the crypto Superbowl ads, tbh honest I was nauseated by the agency self-congratulation for something that's obviously a Ponzi scheme for unregulated securities, that from reports I've seen over-indexed in poorer, less educated communities.
So I don't quite know where I'm netting out, perhaps I'm more ambivalent in part because I really do think there is a evidence based fundamental problem with how markets are operating and we must take some responsibility for that, which for me means it can't just revert back to judging creativity 'neutrally'. But, it's above my pay grade!
I don’t think it’s above your pay grade – definitely need more thoughtful people like you chipping in!
I think it’s fine to have a creative awards scheme that explicitly favours ‘creativity for good’ and makes that part of the criteria. Then people can decide for themselves whether to enter or not – and huge swathes will probably steer clear, from discount fashion chains to crypto companies. Rather than the winners calling themselves ‘creative agency of the year’ and using that status to win lucrative work for giant corporations, they would only get to call themselves ‘creativity for good agency of the year’ and see how much work they get. The difference matters – there’s a reputation-laundering dynamic at work in the whole thing.
Of course, I would still be sceptical of a ‘creativity for good’ awards scheme because the industry has such naive ideas about what counts as ‘for good’ these days. But I can still imagine supporting it. Properly run, with a VERY different judging process, it would be interesting and worthwhile.
Fundamentally, if awards want to pass ethical judgment on the industry, they should make sure they’re on a strong ethical footing first. It can never be perfect, but it can surely be a lot better than it is.
Thanks! One of the things that's particularly struck me in the last couple of years comparing how things were in '92 when I started out and where things are today, is how incredibly techno-bureaucratic the strategy-to-creative process has become, the sense that functional managerialism has taken over, that there is no real depth of understanding, curiosity, thought into what it is we are all doing, whereas when I read e.g. Dichter, there's a palpable sense that he and others were "on a mission", in his words to liberate America from frugality, repression and puritanism, which lets face it has had mixed results! The thing with purpose, which tbh when I hear it is like nails on a chalkboard, it seems entirely absent of affect*, yet very slickly produced, but really just incredibly shallow. I don't know how to describe it, I mean I just randomly thought of doing meals-on-wheels deliveries with my mum in the '80's and it's feels like that but with massive corporate budgets, there's nothing systemic about it.
* meant in its full sense as explored in Affect Theory, this is all just blurted out, but what I mean is purpose seems to lack something corporeal, where 'empathy' is deployed in a way that feels distancing, superior, almost keeping the subject in their predicament.
Long(ish)-time reader, first-time commentator. 2 points to make. 1) if people working in marketing and advertising had a better understanding of how the machinery works, and doesn't work, to create value for individuals, companies, societies and economies, we wouldn't have to suffer all the purpose-y sanctimony. But since we don't believe in the work we do, we have to find some other way of doing it to feel less shitty, it seems. 2) I've judged thousands of award entries claiming some kind of effectiveness - IMHO the "for good" stuff has always gotten a free pass (in part due to the syndrome noted in item #1). It'd be very interesting if we looked only at long-term impact - my bet is, most of these cases would evaporate, and their "impact" claims along with them. Not to say they couldn't still be judged purely on their creative merits, just that we should be honest about the game being played. Which I guess was your main point to begin with!
Thanks Judd – yes, I think honesty is the key point. I find it weird that some people struggle to decouple the ideas of 'creativity and 'creativity for good' – I guess they're worried it leads to some kind of a-moral free-for-all, but it's really a misplaced concern. People who are truly serious about social purpose and creativity for good should be on my side of the argument: Recognise it's a different thing, set up a really good, rigorous, literally 'purpose-built' awards scheme and do it properly. But don't do this weird take-over of creativity categories and talk vaguely about 'redefining' creativity. You end up with the worst of both worlds, and hardly connecting at all with the world outside.
Right, especially when - given that most people don't think enough about brands to connect with them in the first place - brands are hardly credible arbiters of what's good or useful or purposeful, let alone of how to solve for society's many ills. Anyway, love your writing and what it contributes to meaningful conversation. (And on a side note, I gave my wife one of your calendars last Xmas - huge hit.)
Thank you, that’s nice to hear!