When people say award winners are “rigged” or “pay for play” is this credibly accurate? Of course agencies have to pay to submit but is the actual winner paid for?

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It's a lot of politics. Big sponsors one year typically end up winners and judges the next year.

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Try winning a Cannes Lion or a D&AD pencil with a bad campaign. You won’t.

Sure, some people count on friends in juries to get a vote or two. Maybe it helps once or twice. But great work always rises to the top.

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It's not rigged in the traditional sense.

If you enter a terrible campaign there's no money in the world that would make you win. So you still gotta have good work to show.

But there's a lot of politics involved that can make a good work win more than others, first is the amount of money behind submissions, than the agency name, than the leadership and who they know that can help sway the jury, and if that person actually have a sway or not.

lot's of things involved.

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It’s very political. Like congress people trading their votes on bills for political favors, many of the award show judges do that as well.

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It depends on the award. For trade publication-sponsored awards, there’s frequently a correlation between the winners, and who shows up as a significant paid advertiser in that same publication months later. For higher-prestige awards, there’s a correlation between the number of wins and the volume of submissions, so the more deep-pocketed the submitter paying for the submissions is, the more likely they are to win something by sheer virtue of numbers. Other times there’s no direct financial contribution, but there is a contribution in the form of the time invested for employees to serve on juries, as judges, year after year, building up the sweat equity that leads to the name recognition that helps earn future favors and awards.

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Unpopular opinion:

Well, first of all, the different award festivals are not all the same. They are quite different. Contrary to what some commenters here say, Cannes, D&AD, One Show are quite different. Cannes is definitely not what it used to be. It has become increasingly corrupt, there’s tons of scam ads, especially in the lesser known categories. And I have seen some extremely questionable winners. I’ve seen people win with an exact copy of a winner from the previous year. Like literally the same idea winning two years in a row, by different agencies. It’s quite a shitshow.
I think it’s much harder to win at D&AD and I have much more respect for that award show than Cannes. Don’t even get me started on the regional shows of Asia, Middle East and Latin America. Those are just totally filled with tons of scam ads and quid pro quo votes. (I’ll vote for yours this year and next year you vote for mine type of thing. Corruption is the norm).
There’s a buttload of award shows out there and it’s a numbers game. The more entries (and the more money you spend) obviously the higher your chances of winning. But there’s always a conflict of interest in that the judges’ agencies are also competing.
Probably the most honest and less corrupt award shows, that genuinely award the best work with less bias, are the regional Addys. Not very sexy, but the judges for those shows are outsiders and not from the region being judged, so they never have a dog in the fight. They are usually less experienced ACDs and CDs who haven’t been corrupted and don’t “play the game” yet and have no favors to pay back. They just judge the work how they see it with an honest and sincere approach. They almost never know the entrants.

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Thanks. I think I won one in like… 2008. Congratulations on your lack of reading comprehension. I never said they were harder to win than a D&AD pencil. I don’t know where you got that from.

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Of course. If I create a campaign that gets my agency a Titanium Lion, they're for sure going to give my CCO a raise.

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