Are awards a showpony competition?
I have been reading a number of posts about Cannes this year. Many of them complain it has lost its way, that it’s now an overpriced showpony gathering, rather than a celebration of creativity.
Many noted the lack of young people, who are supposed to be the future of the industry. Is it that Cannes is too expensive for young creatives? Or are agencies inclined to send more senior creatives to such events? Where is the next generation of talent?
Maybe it’s time to change the way we think of industry events. Perhaps there is a reason why creatives, agencies included, are not participating in exclusive–because they are currently exclusive–industry events. What if we aimed to inspire and celebrate creativity without limiting ourselves to gold, silver and bronze awards (also what’s with the Grand Prix, is it just my Millennial brain that finds that to be an extremely pretentious name)? What if we started to get creative people together without the wild parties, yachts, and all those ridiculous things?
A new economic era
Let’s face it, the economy is not what it used to be. It’s not getting better. The Baby boomers have a completely different experience of the design industry than we–Millennials–do. I’ve just managed to witness the end of the golden era (that’s what I call the old times, back in the early 2000s), when budgets were easy to roll, company cards were used in excess, business trips were easily approved and money was flowing in. That era is mostly gone now.
Our industry has been affected gravely by the global economic situation, which only seems to be worsening. The new generations are concerned with a general lack of economic resources, jobs are harder to get and budgets are tougher to secure. And even when you have a job, it’s not going to be what it used to be. You know why? Because I can say–from looking at salaries across the industry–that in our industry, salaries haven’t risen much in the last few years, while in the meantime, the cost of living has sky-rocketed to new extremes. I know this is a sensitive subject for a lot of people. But I urge you to take a look around and consider the salary bands we have at the moment. How do we expect younger creatives to survive when their salaries are barely getting them through the month?
Most importantly, why are agencies gibing away work for free? We are dropping our fees and giving out freebies. But once the fees are dropped, it’s harder to bring them back up again. So we end up working for less money. And in order for other agencies to meet their competition, they drop their fees. The result is a general drop across the industry. That creates two major problems: firstly, we work with extremely stressful time frames, because the budgets are low, and secondly, we don’t have surplus income for when things get rough and projects run dry. As a result, a lot of agencies are suffering, they are laying off staff and then we all go into a plunge, until things pick up again and we all, collectively, start hiring again because we can’t meet the demand.
Who are awards for?
This is the big question. It’s expensive to enter for awards, so some agencies wouldn’t do it. In fact, I’ve heard of a lot of new agencies who refuse to take part in awards all together, and would rather focus their efforts in creating more interesting work. So who are these awards for?
Our clients have probably never heard of most of them. Surely a Cannes Lion is known, but mostly in the film industry, not so much in design. So even if we win the award, what then? Is it going to attract more clients? And do our clients deem the same importance on awards as we do?
The short answer is probably no. Ordinary people, outside our industry, will offer a blank look, if you ask about any of the awards we know of. Because for them, they are most likely nonsense. Awards won’t affect their judgement on how good a creative agency is. They are more interested in how the agency speaks about themselves and their work rather than how many awards they have under their belt. Then, who are the awards for? Us, of course. They are for our own self-fulfilment, a way for us to show off in front of our peers.
Are awards worth it?
For some agencies they are. And that’s ok. Not everyone will share the same view. From what I’ve seen, there are certain creatives who care more about awards than others. It’s certainly more of a big agency game rather than a general industry contribution. Maybe that’s ok. Maybe we can leave awards as they are and focus more on creating new creative events. Ones where we share work between us and focus on lifting each other rather than trying to show off how much better we are from everyone else. Maybe it’s time for a healthier approach to being competitive, a less destructive, toxic and absolute view of how the industry should be. Maybe it’s time for us to build the future industry we wished we had when we begun our careers.
