James Hilton Column: These Awards Need an Enema

It’s awards season, and I’m proud to see AKQA already doing very well. But as I’m no longer in the thick of it, I find myself questioning what it all actually means. Now, usually when I write this column I have a point, not always a very good one, but a point nevertheless. Today, I just have questions I don’t know the answers to, and hope someone else reading this (presumably someone with absolutely fuck all to do) might be able to help.

When I left AKQA I got lots of people wishing me well (with the odd one who didn’t for good measure) and a brilliant text from someone, which only now I am starting to understand. It was this: “Don’t worry, the Stockholm Syndrome doesn’t last long”. I thought they were referring specifically to agency life, but now I wonder if they meant the Ad World as a whole.

After all, by leaving AKQA I was, by association, leaving the industry and, with it, all that I had come to think of as normal. I had fallen in love with my captors. But they were right, it doesn’t last long, and on the Outside you start to see that normal is anything but.

You see, I didn’t realise just how many awards there were in the advertising industry. OK, I probably did realise, but honestly, it must have more awards than any other industry in the world, and I’m now beginning to appreciate the sheer scale of the awards business that has grown up around ad world. Now being on the Outside looking in brings all sorts of fresh perspectives, but I think one of the most refreshing observations is that most Outsiders couldn’t give a shit about any of it.

“Imagine Blackpool and Knightsbridge had a baby, and all that baby can talk about is how creative it is, how vital/inspiring/super-cool all this is, and which totally-impossible-to-get-into party it’s going to tonight. That,” I explained to someone, “is Cannes.”

They looked at me with a mixture of bemusement and nausea. Which is funny, because that’s how I often felt about it all. You see (to Insiders this will be heresy) Outsiders are equally amazed and appalled that such a temporary thing as advertising is so lauded and narcissistic. 

For the first time in eleven consecutive years I won't be in Cannes for the Festival of Creativity. Yeah, I’m sure there’re loads of people really choked-up about that, and I’m sorry to disappoint, but I have no purpose being there. I was worried I might be a bit upset about it, but I’m not.

In fact, I’m blissfully happy that Groundhog Day on the French Riviera won't be happening for me this year, maybe never again, who knows? And in that not knowing is joy. Don’t misunderstand; I’m not down on Cannes at all. I’ve had some incredible times there, met some very strange people, been whipped with a glow-stick and even won a few awards.

As a jury member I’ve also gained immense admiration and respect for the team who put it all together. They are consummate professionals who, for some reason that completely eludes me, have decided to make a living dealing with the fragile, opinionated egos of the industries creatives. Dealing with that lot all day? I doff my cap to them.

But like I was saying, I have questions. I have questions because I see people saying the same things other people have been saying about ‘the work’ for decades. Some of the mechanisms change, but the subject matters are the same; it’s all about storytelling, innovation, about ‘pieces’ that are ‘vital’. It’s all about ‘the idea’. Yadda yadda yadda. But is it? Doesn’t it all sound a bit fluffy? A bit subjective? Shouldn’t judging an advertising award be the simplest thing in the world? I mean, it either worked or it didn’t, right?

I also hear lots of people who run awards shows talking about how they should adapt to the new landscape, and it often starts with the question “how do we remain relevant?”. The beauty of this particular question of course is that if you’re asking it, you’re probably already too late. The problem as I see it, and I’ve offered this view when asked essentially that question, is that in order to truly reflect what’s going on in the creative/advertising world, awards don’t just need a re-jig, they need a re-build.

But where to begin? Obviously you still require categories – you want to be able to judge like against like so it becomes a fairly binary choice – one will, invariably, be better than the other. But what if you can’t judge like for like? What if you can’t tell where or in which specific medium an idea lives? One remedy is to add even more categories, a solution that is very popular with the awards business as it means multiple submissions – why pay once when you can pay four times?

Another way is to start again; to study and analyse the work that is produced and out there, and from that formulate a more efficient organisational structure into which the work is placed and judged. I would argue that as what we’re talking about is advertising (dress it up however you like, but it is still advertising if there is a client looking for ROI at the other end), the most important bucket of all is effectiveness.

Allow me to postulate a hypothesis; might it be that awards bodies are confusing advertising with art? As far as I can tell, awards in the film industry; Sundance, the Oscars etc., judge films on their use of this profoundly powerful medium and ask, crudely, is this a good film? Does it make me feel something? Does it transport me? Have I fallen in love with it?

The problem is that the vast majority of advertising awards, or maybe it’s the juries, use the same criteria; they look at marketing as if it were art, and this is wrong. It's wrong because marketing in any guise needs to fulfill a different purpose, a purpose that can be unambiguously measured.

Of course you can measure the success of a film, but its success doesn't need to translate into anything else. Marketing does need to translate into something else, because no matter how good it is, how well crafted, how funny, how touching, or how ingenious, if it doesn't directly and quantifiably alter the thing it was created for, it has, by definition, failed.

Maybe I’m too simple a soul. Maybe I don’t understand the nuances of all this. But I’m pretty sure all that actually matters in marketing/advertising/creative industries is how many people saw it and remember it? And did those people do the thing that the brand was asking them to do? Did they download the App? Did they buy the product? Did they use it? Do they still use it?

These are all questions for which a specific evidence based answer exists. But these facts are left to the agencies to supply and spin. The very entities that stand to win or loose depending on how persuading their statistics are.

So, why don’t the awards bodies independently verify the claims made? That’s the big question to my mind. The answer is probably because it’s inconvenient. It costs time and money and it might very well mean a reduction in submissions. Let’s not forget, awards are big business, a business that feeds on the egos who supply the data with which they are celebrated. The irony is beautiful.