Oct 25 2011
Look through various design agency sites and in some cases you'll see what they consider a big selling point: "award-winning agency." Or something to that effect. The problem is, awards don't always mean results.
Perhaps it's because the design industry is a direct descendant of the Mad Men era of advertising, but some design shops are obsessed with awards. Winning an award for your work is great – don't get me wrong. I can't say I wouldn't be excited if we won an award for our work; that'd be a flat out lie. But let's be honest here, more often than not, the award doesn't mean squat, other than to the designer or design team.
You see, a lot of awards given out are based on creativity, humor or some other touchy-feely noun that, while pretty damn important, isn't necessarily the defining factor of whether or not a project is successful.
A hilarious ad campaign might get a lot of people talking, but unless those people talking are influencing people to buy the product, you've done very little except get some attention. If attention is all you're after, by all means, go right ahead. Most businesses that work in the real world (that is, where every penny counts), however, can't afford spending tons of money just for attention.
Results matter. Plain and simple. Whether it's a conversion increase of 1% or 1000%, or increased sales month over month, those are the results that matter. That's what matters to the client and what gets ignored by so many award panels. A business looking to succeed and thrive just isn't going to do that with a bunch of nice big shiny awards.
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