I’m amazed at how often and passionately the merits of award shows are debated. There will always be creatives who desire awards and ones who are indifferent to them. Everybody has their own reasons for participating in the pageants or shunning them. Everyone has an opinion.
Personally, I don’t believe any award is a substitute for, or a reflection of, marketplace success, so I stopped entering them years ago. My clients are free to enter my work in the award shows of their choice, but most of them aren’t interested in building trophy shelves when they could be building their businesses.
Caples, Echos, whatever. None of them will ever showcase the workhorse DM packages whose effectiveness is buried in the details of scientifically crafted letter copy, time-tested techniques and cost-effective production. It’s nice to have our peers toss us accolades, but I’d rather have customers tossing cash. I’d rather help my clients build their brands one customer relationship at a time. And that is the motivation for creating things that work consistently in the mail.
Now here’s a simple solution for ending the awards debate: If you believe in awards or have clients who do, then enter the shows. Have yourself a ball and good luck! On the other hand, if you don’t believe in the merits of awards and don’t need them to impress clients, then do not enter the shows and ignore their proponents like I do.
But enough with the bickering and letter writing. Don’t you people have some work to do?
Scott Calame, Calame DMC LLC
