• by Erik Sass  @eriksass1, December 2, 2005

A panel of ad industry bigwigs assembled by the Clio Awards and Contagious magazine Thursday both lambasted and praised awards ceremonies such as Clio and Cannes, poking fun at the usual sore spots while conceding that they still have enormous potential to make change happen.

Above all, the panelists--Ty Montague, CCO and co-president, JWT New York; Nick Brien, CEO and president, Universal McCann; Paul Woolmington, chairman and CEO, media kitchen; and Scott Goodson, CCO and founder, Strawberry Frog--agreed that criteria for judging ads must change to keep pace with the radical transformation of the industry.

Criticisms of awards ceremonies are never hard to come by (tedium, self-congratulation, and false bonhomie being common complaints) but Clio's panelists feel it can be different: a real agent for change, rather than simply a backwards-looking mutual admiration society. Convening a panel to rethink the awards criteria is one of the first steps Clio is taking toward this goal.

Foremost on the agenda was Clio's "Content and Contact" category, which aims to cover a wide variety of recently arrived and nebulously defined multimedia advertising. "C&C," as it's called, has become Clio's catch-all for so many different media--including viral marketing, blogs, and all sorts of Internet advertising--that it risks becoming incoherent. And by offering only one award in this broad "anything goes" category, Clio risks snubbing deserving campaigns across the multimedia spectrum.

"Once you get beyond the single medium, every campaign is multimedia," said Woolmington, who has sat on several award juries. With so many contenders, he went on: "It's damn difficult to [judge] C&C--it's much easier to do an ad, or a Web site." One major issue for C&C, according to Woolmington, is the simple mechanics of entering a campaign that by definition involves many different forms of communication: "How do you enter these things in a way that makes them legible?"

The Cannes Awards have responded to this confusion by tacking back toward honoring "one big idea, irrespective of media" with their "Titanium Lion" award, according to Brien, who deemed this even more watered-down "anything goes" approach unsatisfactory. At the other end of the spectrum, Woolmington mused over a radically different plan: "One provocative possibility is to let the jury make up its own categories somehow, because otherwise you have to go back to form. You could have a year where 'everything goes.'"

Meanwhile, structural changes within the ad industry also present new challenges in recognizing creativity. Prefacing his comments with amusing clips from a 16-year-old flash animator employed by Nike, Montague noted: "There was a time when you went to school for two years, got your portfolio together, and joined an agency where you would try to think up ideas to sell to clients, and then find some way of making it happen. Now, you have kids who are doing literally everything themselves--in their bedrooms."

These difficulties notwithstanding, Goodson--of up-and-comer Strawberry Frog--confirmed that no matter how avant-garde, new ad agencies still want recognition and the expanded business opportunity that comes with it. "When we started out, we weren't too interested in awards ceremonies," Goodson recalled with a smile, citing the popular image of awards criteria as old-fashioned, calcified, and closed to new thinking. "But that's changed a lot--now I can say confidently that Strawberry Frog is very interested in the Clios."

Later, Goodson concluded: "Award shows should not only recognize what has gone before, but lead."

Indeed, Clio is trying to find a way forward, making a new niche for itself in the process--seemingly aiming to become kingmaker not only between competing businesses, but competing concepts of multimedia advertising as well.