Advertising Awards – Are they worth the fuss?

In one word — yup.  Advertising awards are so incredibly important for so many reasons, but in the chaos of our everyday work we forget the importance and power that award-winning work brings.   Here are three reasons why advertising awards (such as the MDDC Awards Contest) are important to your marketing organization:

1. AWARDS ARE BENEFICIAL FOR BUSINESS

Your clients are buying advertisements – they’re buying your creative ideas and strategies build their business.  It’s safe to say there’s no shortage in Marketing agencies and freelancers out there promising the world to naïve businesses.  Being an award-winning advertising and marketing agency will set you ahead of the competition. Did your marketing campaign win an award?  Share that success with a business as you’re presenting your idea to them.  Did your ad design win an award?  Use that design’s best practices in your prospects spec ad and share with them WHY your design uses best practices from your past award-winning designs. Don’t be humble with your awards — promote them.  Not to mention it continues to set an elite bar to strive to beat by your staff.

2. AWARDS ARE BENEFICIAL FOR MORALE

Let’s face it.  Marketing consultants, designers, assistants, and directors work long, arduous hours.  We really don’t have much off-time and that’s OK!  That’s what we’ve signed up for in this career. We are sounding boards for clients when they’re unhappy and are always pushing for peak performance in our campaigns.  It can admittedly be exhausting.  It’s nice to be recognized and motivates us to do our best work. Marketers like to win, and absolutely despise losing.  A win goes a long way to propel us to continue doing our best work.

3. AWARDS ARE BENEFICIAL FOR RETENTION

If your campaigns are winning awards, well you must be doing something right!  Your award-winning campaign is probably bringing in rich and relevant leads to your client, increasing their brand-awareness in the marketplace, and propelling your client to the next level. A high-performing campaign that’s winning awards will keep a client happy 99 times out of 100. Internally, recognition to your staff on a job well done by investing in submitting their work for award consideration can go a long way too.  As a young marketer, I would rather win an award that can help my career than be treated to a gift card, potluck lunch, or a pat on the back. Why? Because passionate marketers, eat, breath, bleed, and sleep marketing. An award shows that we’re on the right track in honing our craft. So, if you’re on the fence of whether or not you should invest the time and money in to submitting your work for awards, don’t be!  If you believe your content is worthy (and I hope you do, otherwise that’s a whole other conversation), show your staff you believe in them and your clients that you appreciate them.