AAF and ADDYs
This post is about the AAF and ADDY awards, and is mainly written for ADDY awards participants. Anyone is welcome to read it, but it probably won’t have relevance for many businesses who aren’t participating in the ADDY awards.
ADDY judges in Tampa Bay. L-R: Leslie Haines (Nashville), Randy Gunter (Madison), Judy Thompson (Cincinnati) taken in front of the Columbia restaurant, Ybor City, Tampa, FL.
Recently I was in the Tampa Bay area judging their local ADDYs, the advertising awards sponsored by the American Advertising Federation (AAF.) The local advertising club’s entries were down significantly this year, almost half of what it had been in previous years. In fact, all of the clubs in Florida were down this year. (And I am going to be inquiring about other clubs across the country, so I’ll keep you informed.)
I predicted that the local clubs were going to be hurting with lower entries four months ago. No, I’m not much of a psychic, I was just included on an email from the national headquarters of AAF announcing that they were going to raise the prices of the entries and they expected the local clubs in turn to also raise their prices.
From my knowledge of the entries on the local level in Madison, and the fact that the economy isn’t getting better that quickly, I knew that this was a major mistake. Higher prices would mean that participants would lower their number of entries, or decide not to enter anything at all.
National AAF claimed that the reason that many agencies weren’t participating at ADDYs was that winning at the national level didn’t have the prestige of other awards shows (Emmy, Clio, Cannes, One Show, NYAD, CA, etc.) This is probably true for larger agencies who are competing for those prestigious awards (where a single entry can cost $500.) AAF decided that they needed to spend more money on marketing and advertising their awards in order to garner a better reputation, and they needed to raise the fees in order to spend the money on marketing the brand.
There is one fatal flaw with this thinking: a brand does not get to decide what it means to other people. A brand can only try to influence the perceptions of others, but it cannot actually create perceptions. In other words, if a person believes a brand is one thing, it is near impossible for any amount of advertising to change their mind. For instance, it would be fruitless for Timex to convince people that they are a luxury watch. The perception of Timex is that it is a good, middle of the pack watch, a good brand but not in the same category of luxury brands like Bulova, Rolex or even Seiko.
ADDYs are the Timexes of the advertising awards world. What ADDYs are all about is bragging rights of creativity in your local market. Who’s the best in Tampa Bay? Madison? Peoria?
I do believe that the ADDYs can do some things to make it more viable for local entries to enter it and also make the national awards have more meaning. But to try to make it more important than Cannes is a mistake, it has to carve out its own niche.
Here are my suggestions to the ADDY national headquarters to make ADDYs more viable:
- Get involved in judge selections at the local level. I’ve heard numerous complaints about how judges aren’t always qualified and I’ve noticed this myself. This becomes a real problem for agencies that might want to compete at the national level, but it first has to win at local, then regional, before it even gets to be seen at the national competition. If you don’t have confidence that the judges are qualified the first two steps, you’re not very enthused about entering. Why not just enter the other shows where you know the judges are qualified and you are automatically competing at the national level?
- Make the local ADDYs mean more in regards to the national awards. I propose that the Best of Show (and possibly other recognitions) at the local level automatically competes at the national level, regardless of what it does at the regional level. This gives the local competition more meaning in regards to the national competition.
- Label all Regional ADDY winners as “National Finalists” (with appropriate certificates.) That’s what they are, when they win at Regional, they go on to the National finals. So what has more prestige for the local ad agency or advertiser, a Regional ADDY winner or a National ADDY finalist? It’s nothing but different verbiage, but as marketers we know that how things are packaged can make a huge difference in their value.
The Madison ADDY awards
At the local level, my agency has decided not to participate in the Madison ADDYs the last two years. Previous to that we’ve won a Best of Show, three different Judges Choice awards, several Best of Category awards, and have won 9 Regional ADDYs (what I am suggesting can be changed to “National Finalist ADDYs”.) So it certainly isn’t sour grapes on our part that we aren’t participating.
My biggest concern is the internal workings of the Madison AAF organization. I was (briefly) on the Board of Directors and was the only person to vote against approving the annual budget. I think there is a major problem when the club asks for very high dues, very high ADDY entry prices, gives very cheap awards (paper awards for Gold ADDYs, and they often don’t look very good), and yet can pay an outside organization $50,000 a year to basically keep their books and take notes at the meetings. This particular organization doesn’t even get involved in the ADDYs, the most time consuming program of the year and the one with the most impact monetarily on the club and the most visible program in the community. The club last year even approved to hire their previous executive director to come in to help with the ADDYs to the tune of several thousand additional dollars. This organization was supposed to take the place of the executive director, but they charge more money and do a fraction of the work.
I think this is very irresponsible to the club members and should be made apparent to all within the club. Until that time, it is doubtful that we will participate in ADDYs or other club programs.
In addition, the club has to do a better job of engaging the bigger agencies in the community if they want to get them back to the ADDYs. The type of judges are one concern to these agencies. (Although I know that they had a world-class judge in Tom Lichtenheld last year.) For several years now, the biggest and best agencies in the Madison area have not participated in the ADDYs. (Not to say that some of the remaining agencies aren’t talented, but I think they would also agree that the overall show has declined immensely over the last several years.) It’s a Catch-22, because some of the agencies have dropped out, the other agencies have also dropped out. Until they can convince some of these bigger agencies to participate again, the others won’t either. It’s a vicious cycle.
I have always been open to discuss any of these things with national or local ADDY clubs. And, I hope by speaking up I don’t jeopardize my opportunities to judge the ADDYs or NSAC events, I do enjoy seeing the work and meeting new people, and for the NSAC, interacting with the college students who are interested in an advertising career. But, sometimes when you want to see improvement, you need to challenge the inner workings and thought processes of organizations like these.
This entry was posted on Monday, January 24th, 2011 at 8:36 pm and is filed under Business. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.