Looking Forward to Looking Back… and then Forward Again.
February 25, 2010 | No Comments
As any Latin professor will happily share, January is named after the Roman god Janus, a deity of the two-headed variety, with the gift (?) of seeing both the past and the future (two-faced is also accurate, but paints him in a sketchier light these days). It’s pretty nice actually: the start of a new year is chock-full with looking back at the past year, and looking forward to the coming year. Nostalgia and the promise of the new–a pretty tasty and intoxicating cocktail. In fact, we like the mix so much, we’ve managed to stretch it out over the entire first quarter of the year, toss in some trophies, red carpets, and parties, making an entire season out of it. So here we are, at the close of February in the throes of (drum roll) Awards Season. For the most part, this boils down to movies and music, suddenly rooting for your favorite band as if they’re a sports team (which they’re not) competing in something non-subjective (which they aren’t).
Never one to miss a party, our own industry has the ADDY Awards. Yeah, like “Grammy”, but for ads. We know. Anyway, to be even more sport-like, the ADDY Awards are a mix of the traditional one-and-done awards event and a straight-up championship, complete with with rungs and advancement to the next level: local to regional to national.
If you’re ever hanging out with us at the Bluezoom bar and want to see an impassioned debate, just bring up the ADDYs. You’ll enjoy a tempestuous mix of 200-proof thoughts and opinions. What importance does one put on awards? Where does this fit into our value system? Do we need validation outside of the success and satisfaction of our clients? The work is no more outstanding than it was the day before it got a medal of honor, when it was merely doing the job it was designed to do–and we all know that truly good design (the kind that deserves awards) isn’t designed with awards in mind. How are these things quantifiable enough to be judged, anyway? On the flip side, what of industry-wide evaluation and recognition? That’s precious in our line of work, builds confidence and trust, and helps foster the invaluable bond between agency and client that we thrive on, the foundation that great work is built on. And it looks really good in lobbies.
So, the local ADDY ceremony is this Saturday night, February 27th, and we will have a few Bluezoomers in attendance (which isn’t necessarily a given, there’s more to that story). Next week’s post will be a re-cap of the ritual, and any shiny new hardware we may have brought home. We thought this post would be the perfect opportunity to take care of all the ADDY back-story and concept-wrangling this week, so that we can get right down to business next week. We hope you’ll pretend we’re a band pretending to be a team that you’re rooting for.
Thanks for reading,
- BZ