Awardaholics Anonymous

Hi. My name is Craig Thompson and I am a recovering awardaholic. 

It’s been two months since my last Addy. But did I really need to get an award for “Best use of two-colors or less in a fractional page magazine ad, business to business, regional, less than 5,000.00”? Really? I used to justify our firm entering the local Addys by citing the local publicity that the Addys get and that’s got to be good for new business, right? But the fact is most of our clients are national, non-profit and out of town. And, after the 25th year of entering and winning our share, I think most of the local folks are aware of who we are. So maybe it just boils down to ego. I want to see how we stack up against our peers. I have always been competitive (just ask anyone who has played softball against me) and enjoy the challenge of trying to be the best design firm around. But do design and advertising competitions really determine the best? I think they are really more like a beauty contest, judging the surface without getting too deep. It’s impossible to judge how difficult it was to convince the client to make the logo just a little smaller. How many hours you spent begging the marketing director to spend enough on the ad to make it effective to the audience. How much time you spent on-line scouring e-bay to find just the right prop for that non-profit client that can’t afford an L.A. prop shop. And do I really want or need a few twenty-eight year old junior creative directors judging the work of this forty-eight year old? Shouldn’t a happy client and bottom line results be the real award? 

By the way, has anybody heard the results from the Print Regional Design Annual yet?

God bless.