Jimmy Gilmore

Years ago, I used to get excited when the lat­est CA Annual was com­ing out so I could see what great work was hap­pen­ing at other agen­cies and what to aspire to next year. Over the years, the excite­ment of award sea­son has faded but I still rec­og­nize value they cre­ate for their particpants.

Last night’s ADDYs were a suc­cess for the agency, we walked away with a bronze for our client Man­heim in the direct mar­ket­ing cat­e­gory and received a sil­ver ADDYs for a web­site we built for The Ban­tam Group. It was work done for “real” clients that are very happy to know that they’re not the only ones who appre­ci­ated the work. This is good stuff. Great for client rela­tion­ships and great for the moral of the peo­ple work­ing their ass off to make great work and happy clients.

So why should I feel con­flicted? Well, I have my reasons.

Rea­sons I don’t like award shows

Becaue you shouldn’t need con­fir­ma­tion from your peers that you’re doing good for your clients. You should just do good.

They bread cheat­ing and irre­spon­si­ble behav­ior from some agen­cies. Trust me, this isn’t an iso­lated incident.

Because there has been a lit­tle crony­ism in these things over the years. I didn’t see that last night, but I’ve seen it.

I an icon­o­clast and I just can’t help going against the grain.

Rea­sons I love award shows

If you win just a few awards it can help your career.

They help agen­cies attract top talent.

Awards can help bring the right ven­dors to projects.

They can be a nice pat on the back for cubi­cle rats work­ing in a busi­ness (award shows aside) that doesn’t do a lot of day-to-day back patting.

They are a great way to see what your peers are work­ing on.

Open bars.

By my count, there are def­i­nitely more rea­sons to keep par­tic­i­pat­ing in the shows than not. So you’ll prob­a­bly see me again next year, stand­ing by the bar cheer­ing friends on and hop­ing I’ll have good news for our clients in the morning.