The Mumbrella Awards – something to get stressed about
It is now 16 years since I felt the first exquisite stress of organising an industry awards event.
In 1996, standing backstage before giving a welcome speech to 1300 doctors was one of the most stressful five minutes of my life. I physically shook. Having got through it, the next year I got cocky, and did the whole thing without notes.
Since then, I’ve been involved in six awards events for doctors, two for British media agencies, launched one for the Middle East ad industry and I helped lead the first three years of the B&T Awards.
But the most stressful hour of my life came when we presented the Mumbrella Awards for the first time back in 2009. For idiotic reasons I now forget, it struck me that a good way to do it was as a live video stream, with no autocue and only a mariachi band to fill any awkward silence. The highly edited video below of OMD winning the media agency of the year category makes it look a lot slicker than it actually was.
mate you didn’t seem nervous at all on the day.
Act confident and people think you are confident…
Cheers,
Tim – Mumbrella
Smile, slow down… smile, slow down…..
Whoops, hope I didn’t just give away your top tip!
Had the pleasure of being there (with none of the pressure) in 1996 and hope to be with you again in September!
Great award categories. However the Bravery award’s scoring criteria caught my eye.
Maybe there should be an award for good English?
“Learnings” ????? I think the word they’re looking for is “lessons”.
Learnings isn’t a word – unless one has English as a 2nd or 3rd language in which case, it’s excusable.
If “learnings” was right, we wouldn’t have lunch – we’d have “eatings”.
No thoughts, but “thinkings”. You get the drift.
Here’s an idea for your bravery award.Give it to someone whose bravery was funded with their own money and not their clients.
Hi Braveheart,
We certainly would welcome entires from clients, or joint entries from clients and agencies.
Cheers,
Tim – Mumbrella