Worthington’s One Show Diary – day four
ColensoBBDO executive creative director Nick Worthington is in Hawaii judgingThe One Show, one of only a handful of non Americans on the prestigiousjury. Worthington offered to write a daily diary for the blog:
We’ve whittled the work down to what will become a very long short list, with no guarantees of any of that work making it into the book.
The real judging will be in NYC on the week of the show, but they will release the “finalists” in a couple of weeks, none of us know at this stage what is in and what is out.
We’ve all learnt that the best way to judge print is to see it on a board in front of you and not projected on to the wall (we judged both ways) and a word of advice to those entering The One Show in future, keep the explanations to a minimum, and then only put them on if you’re convinced it’ll increase your chances, rather than reducing them.
There were some tough judges and anything that looked like it needed a lengthy explanation (or was remotely scam-like) got scowled upon.
But like I said, none of us know what went through at this stage and pressing “In or Out” was a private and personal thing so we’ll see what everyone thought in a week or so.
Trust that the good stuff always comes to the top.
On another note, I was talking to a lot of the judges about what awards they value the most. In America it seems to be The One show, CAA and The Art Director’s Club, then there’s Cannes and D&AD get’s a mention.
Their local awards are the most important.
I can’t help thinking that we should make our local awards our most important shows. Be the best in your country. Then get together once a year to see how you stack up against the rest of the world. At Cannes.
For me the thing that muddies those clear waters are the agency and network ranking, The Gunn Report, The Won and of course Campaign Brief’s own ranking.
To do well in those rankings you’d be well advised to enter half a dozen shows at the very least, more like a dozen.
I think the rankings are wrong.
Why not rank agencies country by country based exclusively on their local show. Then rank them again based on Cannes. Best in your country, best in the World. Simple. The Brits will always enter D&AD, it’s their local show, The American’s will always enter The One Show. We’ll always enter Axis. Fine. Then we’ll all enter our best work in Cannes and see who comes out top.
All I know is we’re having our arms twisted to enter too many shows and we can’t afford it and I suspect you can’t either.
Any thoughts on this matter would be well appreciated.
Nick W, Hawaii.
15 Comments
Brilliant observation. What an absolute waste of money the dozen shows are, for our little egos.
For agencies in asia I’d say you go for adfest and cannes.
Use adfest as your local show, as the local singapore and bangkok shows are a joke construed of politics, favors, and jealousy.
I think rankings are wrong too. I think yours is a good solution.
I have a solution for making it less expensive too.
Perhaps if agencies stopped doing scam ads, that would reduce not only the entry costs but the costs of making the scams.
Then you’d only need to enter the great stuff for real clients, like the Telecom Treehouse, and not scammorama, like the Comedy Fest radio.
Why is it scammorama?
Yeah…. and then photographers/directors/illustrators….. ‘real’ people would get paid too …. not shafted for ad egos….
Hi Nick,
I wrote this article in (I think) 2006 so some of it may be out of date. Apart from that I think it still holds true.
Cheers
Paul Catmur
Stop the award shows, I want to get off.
The Gunn Report is evil.
Its supporters claim it shows which is the most creative agency in the world. Wrong. All it tells us is the one that has won the most awards. If you think that’s the same thing I’m afraid you’re in the wrong business. Try weapons inspecting.
The Gunn report adds up points from the big award shows and puts them in a neat little table that proves absolutely nothing. It announced last year that the most awarded print campaign in the world was a scam for toy soldiers from Singapore. So what conclusions can we deduce from this? That the way to rise up the Gunn Report’s table is to do scams and enter them into as many awards shows in the world that you can afford. Yup, that’ll advance the claims of the industry to be taken seriously by clients.
In Australia Pacific, Campaign Brief Magazine runs similar tables to the Gunn Report. The Australian film production industry recently set up their own awards show called the Gongs. I have no problem with that, they can all sit around and chose their favourite ads just like we do in advertising. My problem is when they coerce Campaign Brief into including the Gong results in their annual results table. So if I wish my agency to do well in the table I’m supposed to enter another award show which has nothing to do with me, and is judged by a set of people using completely different criteria. For example, the ad that won Best in Show at the Gongs last year did not even get a finalist at the two advertising shows from the region.
I can’t see the point in Young Guns (half the people who win aren’t young, if the ads are any good they win elsewhere, and since when has youth been seen as a drawback in our industry?) but at least we’re not obliged to enter it.
Don’t get me wrong, I have nothing against award shows in general (other than that there are too many). I’ve judged at Cannes, Clio, Adfest, Award, Axis and I enjoy the competition, I enjoy the debate, and most importantly I enjoy meeting clever people from around the world and learning from them. It just upsets me when someone attempts to draw scientific conclusions from what is a completely subjective process. I’m sorry, Donald, I’m sure your intentions were good, but I think you’re doing the industry a big disservice. Your report does nothing to encourage good work. Rather it is a Pandora’s box that rewards scams, awards-chasing, biased jurors and I really wish it hadn’t been opened.
7:35 – how does not entering scam ads lower the entry cost!?
What a great conversation to be having.
With the world in its current state of flux, now could be a good point in time to initiate change. People are more receptive to new ways of doing things now than they have been for a long time.
How? Any suggestions?
11.19.
Example:
Agency considers entering 3 ads into an award show.
1 ad is a real ad, 2 are scams.
At the last moment, agency sees error of its ways decides not to enter scam ads.
Agency enters only the real ad. Cost of entering to agency is thus reduced by 2 thirds.
Mind you, real ad fails to win award. Following year, agency enters nothing but scam ads. Debate starts again.
Agree completely with the theory, Nick. Think Paul Catmur is on the same track as well.
I reckon it will put smaller agencies on an even keel with the big ones. Perhaps if everyone adopts it in a big way, one could even convince AXIS to lower entry fees a bit.
You constantly hear people say, ‘this will do great at One Show’ or ‘this is perfect for D&AD’
What happens if a campaign is deemed to do better at One Show or D&AD as opposed to Cannes?
what do you say to that?
Interesting comments.
Isn’t advertising when clients pay agencies to increase their visibility and hopefully grow their business?
In the current state of flux, how long before paying clients don’t give a shit about awarded work that delivered no financial benefit, and was never intended to?
Interesting that people who have excelled in the award overload are now calling for an end to the whole mullachy.
I couldn’t agree with you more Nick. If we got the CEOs and ECDs of the big 5 agencies to enter an agreement just to enter Axis and Cannes the NZ industry would save hundreds of thousands of dollars that could be used to save a few jobs. Its only our egos that make us enter every award show under the sun. How do we get this onto the agenda at the next CAANZ meeting?
4:38, I think you’ll find that at least two of the big five have already scaled down their entry frenzy to Axis and Cannes, purely by dint of the recession. That said, anything that does well at Cannes will no doubt be entered at D&AD and One Show, but it nontheless ensures a degree of filtration.
I couldn’t agree with you more 2:46. But the reasons are exactly the same – self/company P.R. So what’s really changed.
What’s really changed is that it’s not really up to all the people commenting here about how much scam is done what is entered where. It’s up to finance directors. And I have a strong hunch all of them say no, pull your heads in. We wouldn’t even be having this discussion if the economy was still rocking along. Real work entered in local shows, wow, what a revelation. Weren’t BBDO the ones who didn’t even enter Axis a couple of years ago?