How to get awards judging completely wrong in five easy steps
With a raft of advertising awards shows throughout every year, and with the Cannes Lions just around the corner, Ross Taylor, Group Executive Creative Director at Havas Play London, shares the things he believes jurors at any show should try to avoid.
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It’s no secret that prestigious awards shows are designed to celebrate the very best of our industry. And it’s true, that often they do.
However, spend enough time around judging rooms (or even just attending awards shows), and you start to see the same patterns and blind spots playing out again and again. And to be frank, it’s getting on my nerves.
You start to see the same patterns and blind spots playing out again and again.
Before we get into it, I want to be clear; I love awards, I love judging, and I love being part of this industry, but it’s time to get these behaviours off my chest.
Here are five of my personal pitfalls for jurors that only serve to make the industry a worse place.
1. Personal taste
“I don’t like this,” says a juror. Honestly, who cares? The work wasn’t made for you. Yet, time and again, jurors default to their own taste as the ultimate filter. If you’ve spent your career in sports marketing, of course a piece about Gen Z identity exploration might not land with you. That doesn’t make it bad, it just makes it not for you.
Let’s be very clear, fame inside our industry bubble is not the same as cultural impact.
Great jurors, great creatives and great leaders have empathy. They can step outside their own worldview and assess whether the work resonates with the audience it was intended for. The industry doesn’t need more personal taste reviews, it needs better representation in the room, and better awareness of who the work is actually speaking to and why it’s important.
2. Familiarity ≠ effectiveness
“I’ve seen this everywhere.” Yes, on your LinkedIn feed! Let’s be very clear, fame inside our industry bubble is not the same as cultural impact. Just because a campaign has done the rounds when it was launched, or sparked a debate on LinkedIn doesn’t mean it cut through in the real world.
Good judging requires a bit more rigour than gut feel. Did it work? Did it move anything? Did real people care? Results exist for a reason, use them. Your personal exposure is not a metric.
Above: Just because you think something stinks, doesn't mean everyone else should.
3. Fame by association
“I know the agency that did this.” Great. But totally irrelevant. The badge on the door doesn’t make the idea better. Nor should relationships, reputations or whispered endorsements influence outcomes. And yet… veiled lobbying happens. Bias creeps in. The halo effect does its thing. If the work only stands up when you know who made it, it probably doesn’t stand up at all. Judge the work not the agency, friend or industry figure behind it.
4. Loud voices win
Every jury room has one. The interrupter, the performer, the one who treats judging like a live audition for ‘Thought Leader of the Year’. Big opinions, lots of airtime and, sadly, those people often win.
The best perspectives in the room are rarely the loudest, they’re the ones that are most considered.
In my experience, the best perspectives in the room are rarely the loudest, they’re the ones that are most considered. The people who listen, who weigh things up, who don’t need to dominate to contribute. The ones who have watched the case study, actually read the submission thoroughly. Be informed and open enough that if someone has a contrary opinion to the consensus, listen to them and know that it is ok to change your mind. That’s not a weakness. Good juries and presidents create space.
Above: Loud voices can be impactful, but it's the considered approach that should be entertained.
5. The big budget effect
Big director. Big production. Big media spend... and voilà suddenly, big scores and delicious metal!
There’s a hypnotic quality to scale, and that can come in the form of a famous director’s name, expensive cinematic production craft, a media plan that could fund a small country, or even a bedazzling case film that had a bigger production budget than the work. All of which can make work feel more important than it actually is. It looks like a winner, so it must be one… right? Not necessarily.
Great work doesn’t need a blockbuster budget to prove its worth, and a massive budget shouldn’t be a shortcut to the podium.
Great work doesn’t need a blockbuster budget to prove its worth, and a massive budget shouldn’t be a shortcut to the podium. If anything, the question should be tougher: did it earn that scale, or is the scale doing the work? My main fear in this sticky pitfall is that when juries start rewarding spend as much as idea, we’re not judging creativity anymore.
Bonus gripe: “It’s already won, so it must be good.”
Different show. Different category. Different room. And yet, the logic creeps in. It picked up a Lion, a Pencil, a Cube, Rhombus, Diamond, Gazelle… whatever! So, it must be podium-worthy here too? No!
Previous wins are not proof of universal greatness, they’re proof that a different group of people liked it, in a different context, at a different moment in time, probably in a different category. Every jury has a responsibility to judge what’s in front of them. Not to validate what’s already been validated. Otherwise, it’s not a fair game.
Whether your off to judge a show for the first time this summer, or an awards veteran, I hope this has been useful. And, one final time, I write this because I love this industry, and awards matter. They shape careers, agencies and the direction of the industry itself. Which is exactly why the way we judge them matters just as much.
Let’s do better, let’s free ourselves from consensus and bias, let’s put the work in to understand the submissions, and we might just end up awarding the work that truly deserves it.
