Awards Are/n't Industry Rubbish.

I got served an ad this week for the "Tweed Shire Business Awards", and because I've spent my whole career in agencies I immediately wanted to enter and win it.

I haven't entered yet, and don't think I will bother.

My best guess is that my target audience (you) don't care too much about a local shire's business awards. It'd be nice for the ego, sure, but I doubt there would be anything genuinely helpful to me and my business in doing so.

I'll leave it to well deserving businesses like Tweed Coast Meats (the ideal small-town butcher) who might benefit from the additional local exposure and awareness - because that matters for their business.

It did get me thinking about our obsession with awards though, so here we are.

Awards are/n't industry rubbish

I kind of telegraphed some of my core thinking about awards above.

I'm largely sceptical, but I think they serve a purpose - so long as the people you want influenced by you winning the award, will be influenced by you winning the award.

So let's start there.

Who's it for?

There's a version of thinking that says "awards are bullshit", and to be fair, there's some truth to that. If you've been in the industry long enough, you've seen enough pay-to-play, questionable judging, and endless categories to become a bit cynical.

But that's a very industry-centric perspective. Do your clients see the world that way? What about current/future employees? Investors/partners/broader stakeholders?

They might not have quite as much hard-won cynicism as some of us do.

So the first thing I'd be looking at doing is tying this back to a broader marketing or business strategy and asking:

Who are we trying to influence?

That'll help us to decide what's actually influential and what isn't.

Do they care?

Take something like a Google award in the performance space.

Within the industry, you'll get mixed opinions. Fair enough.

But outside the industry, it's a pretty recognisable logo. People know Google. They've used it for 20 years. That association carries weight, regardless of how you personally feel about the award itself.

Compare that to a niche tool or even industry body that no one outside of agency-land has ever heard of.

If your goal is to build credibility with potential clients, those two things are not equal (of course this depends on your clients etc etc).

The same logic applies on the people side.

"Best place to work" style awards can be incredibly valuable if they come from a source that your future employees recognise and trust. Much less so if it's something obscure that requires explanation. Same thing if we're talking about winning awards for creativity in campaigns - your current/future team will probably be influenced a lot more by Effies or D&AD pencils or even a small-time creative-centric group rather than [Insert Online Magazine Here's] next $500 a seat awards night.

So the question isn't "do awards matter?" It's more nuanced than that. I'd reframe it as:

Do these awards mean something to the people I'm trying to influence?

The hygiene factor

There's another dynamic at play as well, and it's a bit less strategic, a bit more practical.

If all of your competitors are stacking up awards, and you're the only one that isn't, you create a gap - intentional or otherwise.

Even if you think those awards are questionable, even if you don't believe in them, you're still the outlier.

Now, you can absolutely take a position on that. "We don't believe in awards, we don't enter them." That's fine. But it needs to be a pretty bloody compelling argument, otherwise it can very easily come across as self-serving.

Not "we don't believe in awards", but "we don't win awards".

Okay, now what?

I don't think the answer is to go all-in on awards, but I don't think the answer is to ignore them completely.

It's to be deliberate and intentional with what you choose to enter. If you're going to do it, go in with a strategy - be clear on who you're trying to appeal to and understand what they'll respond to.

There's also a practical point here. Writing good award submissions is a skill. There are people who specialise in it and do it very well (not me - this isn't a sales pitch). If it's something you want to take seriously, it's worth treating it like any other part of your marketing investment.

The final obvious point is to be selective and enter awards you think you have a decent chance of winning. You can't just enter a few 'swing for the fences' awards, not win, and then call the system corrupt.

Maybe that's the real reason I'm 'letting' Tweed Coast Meats win the local awards?