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Wendys twitter interactions are pure gold.
Craziest offsite ever. Go.
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Sure you might want one. But why do you REALLY want this trophy?
*gets out soap box to stand on*
-Is it reassurance that you’re good at what you do?
(Answer: You are good at your job already. That’s why you get paid to do it. Think of how many people in this world think they can do advertising… but they’re not doing it, you are. Now if it’s numbers you care about, how many people in the world get paid to work in advertising? My guess is a smaller % than how many won Lions.)
-Is it a measure of success?
(Answer: You need a new measurement of success. Because you, as a human, are not your job.)
-Do you just want to be in on all the hype?
Answer: The hype is a lie. Do you. And if doing you is trying to win Lions, then alright… go win some Lions.
(I have two Lions, maybe you think I can write this because I won them already, that’s fair. But looking back, I wish somebody told me this before I tried so hard to win them. Before I tied my own self worth to these trophies. Because what I’ve written here is the truth.)
Chief
For each category, like 1% of entries win a lion of any color and like 5% make the shortlist. A typical category can have from 100 to 5,000 entries.
Now, Cannes has added a crapload of categories so they’re not as rare as they used to be, but it’s still fairly hard to win. In a creative department of 100 people, I’ve usually found 10ish creatives have won one.
But i should be clear - creatives with lions are NOT always good creatives. Theyve often just worked for good people. Some of my best creatives have never won, because a lot of it has to do with luck and whether or not you paid for ad school.
Chief
You are 100% right. I won big time. And I’m absolutely not the best creative at my shop. The one creative I work with that I consider a genius has none.
I still think I can have award winning ideas, but as soon as I left people and shops that made that a priority I stopped winning.
Chief
What everyone have to understand is that making good work is no guarantee you’ll win awards. Is true that if you do win your work is probably better than average. But that doesn’t mean that if you don’t you are a failure.
If you wanna win awards you gotta focus on winning awards not good work.
Here’s a guide.
- work for agencies (and people) that win awards. This is not a sign that the agency does better work, this is a sign that the agency spend a lot of money on submitting stuff. If you do great work and your shop don’t send anything, or send for one category, your chances are slim.
- focus on winning awards early on your career. This makes it easier to do the step #1. Enter student awards, future lions, young lions, young guns etc etc…
- Know the categories. If you wanna win you have to do the work for the award shows. Example, you have budget to do a tv spot and also some billboards. You know that your spot is not strong enough to win so instead of hiring the best director the money can buy, hire a good artist for the billboard campaign and try your chances on design craft. You have to be able to make this kind of decision. That’s why you should work with people that also have awards as priority. That’s Menno Kluin MO. Pick your fights and hire good talent to do the heavy lifting.
- Study the winning case studies. You will need to be good at making case studies, is different than having good ideas.
- PR PR PR. Again, agencies that win awards usually do a great PR effort. Your ideas need to be PR forward. Think of shock value, first (or unexpected) use of technology etc etc etc. It have to be a global effort. I worked with a creative director that would personally email outlets in asia, middle east, latin america. The jury is international make them know your work too.
- Be prepared to be extremely frustrated. A lot of times you do everything right and it doesn’t work. If you make this your priority and work hard for it you WILL be pissed if you don’t win.
This is what I did, and worked for me. Looking back now I wouldn’t have done it. Awards did helped my career but also shaped the kind of work I do now. Since I early on I never had a lot of money to do award winning TV I’d focus on other stuff and then I would not get hired for accounts/agencies that do a lot of tv/video content. And that’s what I’d like to do most.
I just want to illustrate that you don’t need to be a genius to win awards. Money win awards. Money is 90% of it. The rest you understanding the rules of the game.
Chief
Not that common, not rare either. It’s more common on big networks because they spend more money on it.
There’s a lot of lions distributed every year for decades. So chances of a creative working on a big shop having at least one during their career are big. However the award is also worldwide so not everyone will have.
Focus on making great work. If it gets awarded, great! If not, you’re still building your book. Awards will come in time, but they’re not the end all, be all.
Where can be we see some of the winners?
I doubt many of us would call most of them great creative.
There are literally agencies that hire strategists who’s sole job is to enter work that checks the boxes in as many categories as possible with giant budgets. Agencies and networks win awards. More occasionally great ideas...made at a big network.
Chief
Yes there was an award person at my former agency. She was also a pr person to make sure the work had visibility prior.
29,000 entries this year. How many lions given out total? Maybe 500?
I'm not good at math but it's fairly low in the grand scheme of things
And most of those 500 to the same couple of big network projects if anyone can do that math
Honestly I really want to know the answer to this question because I get so hard on myself for always feeling like I’m underachieving. I shouldn’t care about these dumb trophies, but the pressure to collect more of them is real.
See CD1s response below. That’s it.
I tied my self worth to my job for years in a quest for validation. Turned out that was a symptom of some deeper issues I interrogated.
You are a senior writer, probably great at your job. Trophies are fun, but question why you think you are underachieving. Awards are not just a measure of how good you are. And if you are senior? You probably pretty great. Keep up the work, keep working on yourself. The rest will come.
Pretty common.
10 Shortlists = 1 Bronze Lion? 😂
If you have holding company money to facilitate fake work, really really good.