Out of the blue I received an invitation to be a Master Digital Jury member for the Abby 26 Media Awards. Getting to be a jury member is significant, but it scares the living daylights out of me: it’s much easier being judged than to take decisions on work done by people who are obviously very intelligent and extremely creative. Giving in to the adrenaline rush, I responded with an ‘of course’.
There were two benefits of being a part of the jury: interacting with some of the top brains in the industry and seeing some undeniably top-class work from agencies young and old. The interaction part came later than expected – the first 2130 minutes were spent in splendid isolation in front of my screen viewing 500+ videos and reading through 200+ PDFs. And therein lay a truly captivating experience that telescoped my 30+ years of branding and creative management. Having done my isolation bit with great reverence and care, the jury deliberations were enlightening and energizing . There was just a whiff of disappointment that I hadn’t emulated Justice Radhabinod Pal (of WWII fame).
Moving on to the case for building databases that could define our industry and give it the R&D base that is being discussed:
Why are awards important? The HR-led rah-rah on good-for-morale is completely accepted. The hullabaloo on underlining the importance of client-agency relationships? Of course! The bragging, and bargaining, rights of the winners… well deserved. Impact on sales? As true as sunlight.
Closer to my analytical anthropologist’s heart, though, is the function of said awards as an organised, searchable database that defines the evolution of our industry. The motivation for awards creates that impulse to pull together and faithfully record the strategies, and the resulting outputs, OR retrofit a strategy to a creative output, and send out epistles to the fraternity’s most current award organisers. The prizewinning work is celebrated, conferred and congratulated. The preservation of these case studies is somewhat doubtful though.
The non-prizewinning entries are perhaps consigned to the proverbial flames. This is what needs to change as well. Let’s put them all up for the fraternity to see… Not just for the eyes of the fuddy-duddy jury types. Let there be large (obviously digital) galleries that celebrate hard work – not just the metal winners. This database, should it be available, will clearly go beyond AdEx – given the information that accompanies the creative output. We can always devise ways to screen the confidential information that agencies, and clients, upload. I had the privilege of evaluating 213 entries for the Abby Media Awards (phew!) but I certainly would not have minded seeing many more in my leisure time.
Next, I’ll surface the question that begged attention during jury deliberations – what’s the credibility and validity of the numbers quoted in the entries? Not that any untruth
was stated – it’s just that the business historian would demand more. That’s another debate waiting to happen.
And the last one – can databases help with better creatives and strategy? Manas Mohan
