Creative awards and why George C Scott got it right Ian Sizer
“OH, my God!” gasped Goldie Hawn.
Goldie had just opened the envelope that revealed George C Scott as the Best Actor Oscar winner for his lead role in Patton, the 1970 bio-pic of the WWII American general.
Her exclamation was understandable because, true to his word, George wasn’t in the theatre to receive his award.
Instead, he was at home in New York watching an ice hockey game on telly.
When the nominations were announced George had made his disdain for the “meat market” he claimed the Oscars had become very public by stating that, win or not, he had better things to do on awards night.
He went on to explain that when the Oscars stopped being a celebration of a job well done and more of a means to increase salaries and position on the ‘A list’, they ceased to be of interest to him.
So, what would George C have made of the wailing and bemoaning of our national creativity due to our poor performance at Cannes?
Would he have considered this appalling state of affairs as the “wake up call” we very obviously need?
I don’t think so.
In fact, if he were still with us, I reckon George would think even less of the navel gazing than he did of the waste of time and money that is the Cannes festival.
It’s not a polite wake-up call to be more creative that we need, it’s more like a pit hooter* in the ear hole to break through our coma-like ambivalence towards how far this awards thing has simply got out of control.
I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to state that awards have become a major destructive force in our industry.
The days when an awards annual was simply an honorary record of the previous year’s finest efforts are long gone.
The truth is, the work and its standard has had very little to do with the seemingly elevated position that awards hold in creative people’s esteem for quite some time.
Today, as every creative knows, creative awards are about what’s called money and profile development.
It’s very sad and it’s a global problem, but nowhere is it more evident than right here in Australia.
The Australian creative community is obsessed with awards.
So much so it even has a bi-monthly/quarterly/whatever publication pretty much dedicated to them in the form of Campaign Brief.
No doubt there will be hell to pay in the next issue:“Aussie shame saved by a stick”... I don’t know.
But why the pre-occupation to the point of religious fundamentalism?
Many creatives still cling to the notion that being an award winner equals being better paid. And when you’re an award-winning creative you can “live it large”, further increasing your reputation and salary.
And do you know what? They’re not wrong. The award machine is a self-perpetuating monster that lines the pockets of the “big guns” and the “young guns” (a group who even have their own eponymous global award show, God bless ’em all).
And the real problem with this is what, exactly?
The problem is, the biggest loser from all this award winning is our profession.
Do you recognise any of these bleats?
“Agencies don’t command the respect our contribution to clients’ business deserves”, or “The lack of great creative is due to the clients’ lack of trust”?
Of course, there are those who recognised the correlation between self-gratification and self-mutilation quite some time ago.
Over in the agency where awards are a dirty six-letter word they’re talking about happily achieving a profit margin of more than 30%.
Elsewhere things are so bad the AFA has had to put the 20% margin on the endangered species list.
Don’t think that’s got anything to do with awards?
Okay, tell me the heinous amount of money spent entering awards each year couldn’t be better spent.
If just half the amount was diverted into good quality training it might help redress the widening gulf between client and agency staffers.
Look, I have no doubts that this piece will have as much effect as a fart in the wind with fans of the Singapore Scammers (D&AD still hasn’t cottoned on to the “one day only” scam ad offer) and those that truly believe that “doing the walk” is the only way to get ahead.
It’s just my humble opinion that in these ROI-conscious times these people are destroying our livelihood.
Awards most certainly do have their place but they should never be the primary focus of the most important group of people in our business, and that’s why George pretty much got it right.
Ian Sizer is creative partner of BARE and a *pit hooter is an horrendous thing that used to wake Yorkshire miners and a young Sizer at 4.30 every morning.
