Cutting through the wank of creative awards
Tallying up an agency’s awards haul doesn’t really tell you how creative a shop they are. Darren Woolley proposes a better solution – The Crank Score.
News that the Melbourne Advertising and Design Club (MADC) has suspended its awards this year due to lack of support from the major Melbourne agencies did not come as a surprise. In an industry with an over supply of creative awards, and award opportunities expanding annually, there comes a time for a natural rationalisation.
When I was president of MADC there was a trend among media owners to create awards to engage creative people in their medium. But in the internet-connected global creative village where the latest and greatest work is seen all around the world, these local awards are seen as less relevant than those where the work is judged on a regional or, more impressively, global basis.
Today it is clearly more relevant to be creatively the best in the world than simply the best in Melbourne, or Dallas or Timbuktu. So what has this got to do with a pitch consultant?
Darren, A good post on a key topic. Here’s a client’s view, from an ex-client who has some understanding about the value of creativity and creative awards in winning new business. An agencies creative awards tally might get you on the list, but once you are in the door it counts for squat. If you are going to brag about it, some form of adjusted average like you suggest is smart. Otherwise everyone would currently be moving their business to McCann. I’d add to the mix the relative size of the agency. If you made 1000 ads last year, that will affect your success. With enough crap thrown at the wall some will stick. BUT…
Once you are in the room, banging on about your success at Cannes will do more harm than good. Even tallying your Effies is only an indicator of how good you were. Not how good you will be. In an industry as incestuous and cyclical as advertising, past performance is not always a good indicator of future success. I actually think agencies need to talk less about how creative they have been and start talking about two new topics. Talent / Culture management and Process. How good are you at attracting, retaining and developing your people? And how have you codified your thinking and creative processes so that they are replicable and scalable. Talent and Process – that’s all you have.
These are the predictors of future success. Many agencies I know and some I like, would probably be intimidated by that suggestion – especially the dreaded P word. Certainly many would not do well under close scrutiny on those topics. They are for me (and I may be alone) the hallmarks of the great agencies. Get those right and the creative awards and new business will come. What do you think?
Awards mean zip, but then I’ve not got any*, so I’ll zip it
* well I did win Gold for something once but it meant zip in the scheme of things, oh and a finalist but that really equalled zip too
For those who enjoyed reading the above article, might I also suggest that you check out James Hurman’s excellent 2011 book – ‘The Case for Creativity’ – two decades’ evidence of the link between imaginative marketing and commercial success’. In it James uses some great approaches to adjust for an agency’s awards’ winning potential by making allowance for its size and so forth. While as Patrick Collister, Director/Founder of The Big Won Report states ‘to be a top 5 agency in the Big Won rankings, an agency has to produce work to a consistently superlative standard across most of its portfolio of clients.’
Gunn Report specifically limits the amount of points a single campaign can win at any given show.
Also, Gunn has a non-additive bias towards multiple campaigns when assigning points for its agency of the year table. They don’t just blindly add up points.
A 5 minute search of the Gunn methodology on their website tells you this.
I don’t think there is any need for Darren’s patented new methodology. Gunn works pretty well. And given it is annual and only takes into account awards won in the previous calendar year, it’s as up to date as you can get.
“the pitch doctor’s role in attracting and keeping creative talent within an agency”
Darren, how exactly do you do this?
From my experience, you serve to drive prices down so agency’s are in the situation where they can’t employ senior talent. would love to hear your take on it.
Dear ‘You’re wrong on Gunn’ I have read the methodology and yes it limits a single campaign score in one show, but is across 45 shows and so there is an additive effect across the 45 shows, which they do not disclose. Certainly Gunn and The Won Report are the best system to date. But this is not the approach used by many of the trade press including AdNews and Campaign Brief. For AdNews to proclaim that McCann Melbourne has scored 500% higher than Leo Burnett Sydney, the next ranked agency in their system, seems ridiculous to me. Does that seem right to you?
Peter McDonald, great to hear from you. There is certainly a proven case for creativity delivering commercial success. That is not the point of the article. I think the challenge is bringing a more considered approach to the evaluation of creativity beyond simply ‘Number of awards won’.
And Colin, that assertion that we drive prices down is a scurrilous lie in regard to agency fees. Almost regularly in pitches our benchmarks are higher than the fees proposed by the agencies themselves, making a mockery of our benchmarking, until we apply it to an existing relationship, when suddenly the same agencies want to charge their existing clients much more to recoup the costs of their heavily discounted new business win.
Actually, CB don’t use an additive system at all to arrive at their hot+cold rankings and AOTY. They look at the body of work from the agency’s previous 12 months (if supplied) and then go on a ‘general vibe’ which is actually the exact opposite of the additive method you have an issue with.
Anyway, all it takes is 60 seconds effort on behalf of anyone to truly assess the agency: go to agencyname.com.au, look at their case studies, use your own judgement on which ones you believe have creative merit, and away you go.
re AdNews… the fact is they DID score 500% (or whatever) higher than Leo’s. But I don’t think anyone’s saying that Mcccan is 500% better than Leo’s. No awards tally system in the world is going to tell you that. And I’m pretty sure when adnews do their AOTY they won’t just add up points.
Fact is, if a marketer doesn’t have the judgement to look at an agency’s body of work and assess it for what it is – that god help us because that is one piss-poor marketer.
I’m a CD and numbers of awards will get me to look at someone’s work, but it’s the work itself (amongst other factors) that means everything. I don’t think anyone takes sheer numbers of awards seriously enough to let it cloud their judgement to the point where we need some kind of system overhaul.
Gunn (and bigwon) works just fine IMO.
I’m with Darren
Well, that’s not what’s happening in the real world.
While Darren’s refinement is a marginal improvement over current score cards, the debate still boils down to: Which completely irrelevant measure of creativity do you prefer?
The totally misleading one? Or the less misleading one?
“…what really drives success, in my experience, is repetition and consistency, not creativity. I think people who are in the [ad] business tend to get more hung up on the creative aspects. They start to think of themselves more as artists and less as businessmen. We have the same problem with tailors, by the way.”
George Zimmer, Men’s Wearhouse,
I’d like to see a side-by-side comparison of work that effectively shifts business (but has never won an award) alongside the award winning work that is also ‘effective’. I have a feeling one of them would be a substantially longer list than the other.
Truly great work doesn’t really need a little Lion for proof does it?
Awards, are an unneccessary junket maintained as part of the Advertising industry elite culture. We are not creative artists, but rather we are Professional Pitchers chasing the consumer $$. Nobody cares if its a great execution if it sells nothing.
Success of race cars is judged by winning races.
corporations are judged on commercial performance
advertisng should only be judged on improved market performance (the rest is irrelevant industry self indulgent twaddle).
The industry PRAISE combined with sheer lack of objective accountability (i.e. in changing train crossing behaviour in Melbourne) for “Dumb ways to die” says it all. The advertisng industry is more concerned with approval from its peers than objectuive performance.
It’s not hard to judge creativity as good creative stands out in an ocean of mediocrity. If you didn’t have any award events would the standard drop? Likewise has it risen because there are awards to be won? The answer is probably not to both questions.