Hold Your Breath...Another Award Show Launched
While we could certainly do without, a new national advertising award show called The American Advertising Festival is an online competition where all the entrants judge the initial phase of the competition. Cool. Enter your own work then vote for it. That's logical. The final decision is made by a jury of selected creative talent. The best part of the competition and regardless of the judging outcome, all entrants will receive a summary of how their work fared under the scrutiny of their peers, including any comments about the execution. Hmm...no doubt comments will be rife with "This Sucks!"
The competition was created by ADDY awards facilitator Mike Weber. Entry to the competition is open through April 15th for all work appearing from January 1, 2005 through February 28, 2006. The award, named the "Eagle", features a stylized version of the American Eagle in profile on a medallion. Bling! Winners will be announced in late spring.
Comments
Peer review doesn't work when the judges can vote for themselves. People who want to game the system will vote for the worst instead of the best, knowing that the "competition" will get knocked out by their entry in the finals. Project Greenlight reportedly had this problem.
Thanks for the coverage of the show launch. However, the part about entrants voting for themselves is inaccurate. Entrants will not be able to judge their own work. We took that into account when writing the software. You won't be able to judge a piece more than once and we have safeguards that will develop a norm for entries that weed out those who slam everyone as well. In addition to the entrant judging there is also a review panel of creatives that will be part of the finalist short list decision. The reality is that if you enter, you have to review the other work with the knowledge that you're getting judged by some other guy as well. So it's "do unto others...". In the end the winners will be determined by the blue ribbon panel. But no matter what the outcome you'll get your scoring results and those valuable comments that hopefully will help you to improve your work and won't send you into a career in food service.
That's all well and good, Mike. But the larger question remains unanswered: What the heck do we need yet another award show for?