Awards Shows and Credit
posted by Rick Webb 
on July 16, 2008 at 03:33 PM
filed under: Agency Collaboration
Rick Webb
Co-founder, COO : Boston
topics: Social Networking and Community, User Experience, The Networks and the Internet, Alcoholic Beverages, and Barbarian History
filed under: Agency Collaboration
First and foremost, I think this absolutely is an area that needs to be worked out. Change will be needed, no doubt. There’s a prevalent (though decreasingly so) viewpoint in the traditional agency world that interactive production is pretty much like traditional broadcast production, and that this has been pretty much all worked out, and there’s no reason to change it for interactive. There’s some logic to this, on some level, and also it’s of course in the interest for the traditional agencies to preserve this thinking and arrangement, since pretty much everything’s going to digital, and if the digital agencies got props for the digital, in another ten years or so they’d be screwed.
Then there’s the prism through which we’re looking at this: Cannes, and more generally, agency award shows. What are these? What are they for? What is their part in all of this? Are we talking about “credit” in an abstract sense, or are we talking about who should win the award? They’re two different issues, I think. They should be tackled one by one. Let’s talk about the award shows first.
The award shows are pretty intellectually sloppy about their “credit.” Cannes, especially, really got into the thicket when they started doing things like Integrated and Titanium. I do applaud them for adding categories that reflect the reality of the industry, and support innovative thinking, such as the “viral video” sub category in Film this year. However, they probably should have nipped this problem in the bud then and there. Integrated, especially, is a total hornet’s nest. Great integrated campaigns can happen all within a single agency, within a single agency network, or across agencies. No one disputes this, I think. We all love the old Truth stuff that Crispin and Arnold did together. Our work with Crispin on the Subservient Chicken, of course, is another example. To take an extreme example, Goodby, us, Erik Natzke, a small agency called Number 9 and the Omnicom mobile agency IPSH! all worked on Comcastic! We did some great T-Mobile work with Publicis and IPSH!. Organic and Ogilvy routinely do great Bank of America work and Wieden and Nike do great Nike work all the time. The category absolutely should have accounted for multiple “agencies” when it was set up.
Titanium has its own set of challenges, in that it may not even be “advertising” in the traditional sense. Was Nike+ advertising? Was our work on CNN? The answer, I believe, is yes, but the boundary pushing makes things very challenging on this front. This may seem like a MacGuffin – what does this have to do with agency credits? But it is at the very heart of the problem: if we don’t even know what form the advertising will take, how can we say who deserves the most credit? I believe that part of the awarding of the Titanium should be identifying who contributed, and not just assuming it’s the traditional “agency” – if indeed there is one.
Agencies, in their defense, are reacting to the rules and forms the award shows provide. Goodby has been stellar for credit to us throughout our six year relationship with them. I’ve been to award shows where we’ve run trailers of our work, sat together, and had both logos, side by side on the screen. Yet every year, when they enter, they are confronted with entry forms that have absolutely no comprehension of the various parties that were involved in the work. They are often forced to put us in as the “programmer” or the “developer” even when we’ve been partners the whole time. To go back to the Arnold and Crispin on Truth example, they even had to come up with a single “agency” name – I believe it was something like The Alliance, partially just to handle the rigidity of the award processes. In short, even if an agency wants to share credit, it’s often very difficult to. Much of Michael Lebowitz’s ire was justly directed at the ridiculous old school award show process. He is absolutely right here.
Award shows are really going to have to adapt. We believe we have a great hit with CNN this year, and even though there was no other agency involved in our idea, another agency came up with the tagline, and we’d like to co-credit them. Can we? How? Can we co-credit Spreadshirt, or T-Shirt fulfillment partner? Because their work has been vital. If we enter this, will they be upset? Is any of it even worth the money? Especially since as many people now read this blog in a week than even attend Cannes? Though we’re on the fence still, I can definitely see that eventually people will just stop bothering entering truly innovative marketing work because it’s just not worth it.
One other point here: as far as I know (and someone correct me if I’m wrong), unless there’s some sort of bone of contention, awards shows pretty much believe whoever enters the piece is the agency, don’t they? Is there any accreditation? Any method of debate? Any verification? Should we ask the clients who they think deserves the credit? Why not, right? Oh, because that very concept just made at least 100 readers completely upset. Many traditional agencies obviously would not be so into this.
In reading this, Benjamin made a comment that Cannes made some $28MM off of awards entries, and that the agencies pay those fees, so, really, in essence, the agencies are the award shows “clients.” That’s a very Benjamin way of looking at things, isn’t it? But he’s totally right. They’re not some independent judge, they’re a vendor, almost. This whole thing is, in a way, a service, and it could be argued that they wouldn’t be providing quality customer service if they let some agency spend a half mil on entries and then let another agency just hop on the Cannes Lion bandwagon. Benjamin also asked whether Cannes would be more flexible if agencies could split the entry fee, thus both being the client, but I suppose in reality that’s already possible, isn’t it? We’ve done it before, after all. Maybe this should happen more often.
Turning our attention to “credit” in general, however, this is where I think that there’s a bit more contention. The whole concept of credit now is corrupt. It’s flat out wrong. This entire conversation revolves around the ridiculous notion that it’s all about “the idea.” While we at The Barbarian Group will never dispute the power of a great idea, and indeed are paid very handsomely for our ideas, even if they’re not executed, we know that this is only part of the story.
Let’s look at BBDO Creative Chief David Lubar’s comments on the issue:
“Ideas are timeless,” the statement read. “Ideas are what inspire people. Ideas are the root of all execution. On ‘Voyeur,’ BBDO thought of the idea, shot the idea, then brought in Big Spaceship to do what they do. They did a great job (and we’ve made every effort to acknowledge them). What’s the issue? Maybe Cannes should consider the idea of a Palme d’Or for digital production.”
This, intentionally or not, is slightly intellectually muddling. In Lubar’s defense, he is an executive at a corporation and needs to espouse a point of view that supports the company’s goals, and in more real defense, ideas are indeed timeless and important.
There is, however, no Cannes Lion for great idea anymore than there is one for digital production.
Cannes does not give out awards for ideas. We all know this, of course. Execution is absolutely as important as the idea. And indeed, Cannes own website stats that lions honor “the most creative TV/cinema, print, outdoor, interactive, radio, sales promotion, integrated advertising, as well as the best media and direct marketing solutions”
It honors creative work. Not ideas.
When Bruce first talked with Benjamin and I, before we even had an inkling of making him our president, one of the things he said that stuck with me was “agencies aren’t in the business of making anything. They think things up, and other people make them.”
This has, in the past, proven to be a very convenient situation for the agencies. And it has given them a strong incentive to talk up the idea side of the equation. It is now, however, proving to be an achilles heel in interactive advertising for some of them. The nature of the work has changed. The challenges are new. Some agencies – most notably Goodby – have stuck to their core mission of being in the ideas business, and continued to work against this mission with great success. Others – such as Crispin and Wieden – have tried a few different things in this realm. Others aren’t sure what they want to do. Others – like BBDO – do both at the same time.
This has always been the case, of course, to some extent. As an aside, I find it interesting that both Lubars and Lebowitz both comment on how BBDO “shot” Voyeur, when, in fact, RSA did. But interactive makes this more challenging. The nature of interactive is that creativity and execution are combined. And while I am willing to bet that several people will challenge me on this, it is the basis of what we do, and I believe our work stands out as a result. Even Goodby, who still adheres to their original mission of being a brand steward and an ideas shop – has radically changed as a result of extending this mission into the digital realm to compensate for the massive amount of additional work beyond the idea that they need to handle.
I think, however, the strongest argument for this is in the actions, and not the words. If Mr. Lubars believes this so strongly, that the idea is the most important part, and that Big Spaceship just did “what they do,” why did he hire them at all? Why didn’t he use Atmosphere BBDO? Why did he hire RSA? And I don’t claim to know the insider details, but was there really not a single contractor or freelancer working on the project inside of BBDO? If it’s the idea that matters – tell us who had it? Did Lubars? Did Mike Smith and David Carter?
In a perfect world – and this does happen – all agencies are working together for the greater good for all clients, and credit is shared. And the awards shows are up to speed on it all, just like when my partners Benjamin and Keith went down and sat in that Purple Chair at Art Directors’ Club with Jeff Benjamin when the Chicken took home the honors.
This flare up is maybe an unfortunate press tiff, but it absolutely serves to highlight the issues here – and honestly, I’m thankful for an excuse to talk about it not in relation to our own work and clients (though BBDO is a sometime client of ours).
The problem is really larger than credit, though. It’s about the utility of the agency, and the role they play as an “agent” and gatekeeper for their marketing clients. Personally, I don’t believe that will ever change. I was chatting with an account person recently about her work on a massive global client owned by one of the agency networks, and there’s just SO MUCH to be done there. Global marketing is a serious business. Interactive Marketing is just a segment of it, and it’s driven by the brand, the brand statement, the global and national strategies and the media strategy. We aspire to none of those.
But the sad thing is that in seeking to keep a lock on this gatekeeper role through the control of credit and not being fully up front about the substantial value outside organizations – from cultural, to mobile, to interactive, to street – bring to the table, agencies are frustrating clients, and further eroding their credibility as the gatekeeper. This doesn’t do anyone any good.
3 comments
I believe that as an industry that is going through the growing pains of a new medium and as the new kids on the block we need to become a more cohesive group of creative professionals. An idea is never the child of one single person, its an entity that is comprised of the pasts and presents of a collective of creative individuals who have all breathed some life into the idea. We cant single out any one contributor as the only creator unless it was a one man show that made it all happen.
It really boils down to a very fundamental rule we all learned in pre-school. Playing nicely and sharing. Egos are rampant in this business and those who can set aside their egos for the betterment of the idea are the real winners here. No slab of metal fashioned into a lion is worth the strife that our industry has be thrown into, the unity has been compromised and we have been set back because of some petty ego stroking.
Credit is always a nice thing to get, but at the end of the day the check you get is really the only credit any one company can give another, being paid fairly is above all the farthest anyone needs to go. Once we all get past this and start refocusing on the big picture then maybe we will all make it a point to be more sensitive to our respective roles and spread the love a bit more.
This is not a new subject and has been infecting the creative process since the dawn of time. Who did this? Who discovered that? Did the captain of Columbus's ships throw a shit fit when the King and Queen noted Columbus as the founder of the new world? Probably.
I think we all need to take a good hard look at ourselves and keep in mind that we are at a critical stage in the convergence of a new medium with age old traditional advertising and that right now there is no time to bicker over small issues when much larger ones prevail.
Well effin said.