• by Richard Whitman , Columnist, December 7, 2014

Yet another ad exec has chimed in on the industry's fixation with awards saying the pursuit of awards in and of itself is "very wrong." However, that very same ad exec, Clemenger BBDO Melbourne Chairman Jim Moser, says awards are important in garnering new business and aiding recruitment.

Moser said: “The pursuit of awards of itself is very wrong, that’s not what should be happening. The award is an after benefit of the work you’re doing. Awards are extremely important and there’s two reasons why awards are important. One is new business in terms of attracting attention, getting your name in the paper and letting people know you’re doing award-winning work is extremely important."

He added: “The other is staff recruitment and you could say retention as part of that. If you’re an award-winning agency, particularly for creative, you’re going to attract a better caliber of creative persons because they want to go work for a highly awarded agency.” Which, of course, circles back to the whole (unhealthy, if you ask me) fixation on awards as the penultimate metric of, well, everything in this business.