The Award Inflation

As I type this post into my Air Book, I keep getting interrupted by my voicemail: Cristal Award Last Call for Entry - Bling - Telly Award Early Entry Deadline is Dec 12th - Bling - Andy Awards are thrilled to announce the Winners - Bling - Eurobest First Shortlists Released - Bling! There is a real award inflation. If you'd rather think about surprising solutions for your customers than spend all day dealing with submission forms and case movies, you're forced to focus. Ruf Lanz took time off from almost all festivals in 2014 (the fact that we still show up among the top ten in the creative rankings surprises and delights us). We put the resources into an elaborate new website in 2014. At the same time, we asked ourselves once again what the lighthouses are for us as an independent, owner-managed agency in the whole award flood. The result is this shortlist:

1st ADC Switzerland: ADC has evolved from an ensign of the seven upright who took on advertising mediocrity in 1976 to an authority on creativity, with leading minds from the fields of advertising, design, digital media, film and photography. As the only competition in Switzerland, ADC honors outstanding work in all disciplines. Compared to international juries, it also has the advantage that you don't have to explain to the jury who Mörgeli and Jositsch are.

2nd Swiss Poster Award: Switzerland's most important poster competition. Michelangelo is said to have once answered the question of how he managed to carve a lion out of a block of granite: "I simply knock off everything that doesn't look like a lion." The art of omission also applies to the great medium of posters, which today are unfortunately often overflowing with messages, disruptors, logo clutter and QR codes.

3. edi: The prize for advertising, industrial and corporate films honors outstanding Swiss productions. As long as many TV commercials only make consumers want to pee during the commercial break, we need the Edi.

4th Cannes Lions, Clio and One Show: Internationally, the most glamorous awards in this order. However, the glamor also leads to a lot of fake creativity, i.e. to works that are produced with bombastic effort only for these competitions. Those who craft such arty-farty fakes confuse advertising with ego marketing. The real winners are campaigns like those for Harvey Nichols, Nike or Volvo, which achieve outstanding results for real clients with grandiose ideas.

5. epica: Unlike most creative competitions, the works here are not judged by advertisers, but by journalists from the international trade press. A nice confirmation from an unsuspicious side.

Selectively, participation in advertising festivals makes perfect sense. Agencies that win relevant awards for relevant work are a magnet for talented creatives. This also benefits the clients: in the form of particularly pointed and concise advertising. However, the number of competitions that count for the creative ranking could be reduced. "Reduce to the max" would also be a smart slogan for awards.

Markus Ruf is founder, partner and creative director of Ruf Lanz. He was twice Advertiser of the Year