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If you work for Australian agency Cummins Nitro, you’ll be feeling on top of the world today. Your agency has just scooped the Cannes Grand Prix, not only in the PR Lions but in the Direct Lions also.
 
No surprise then that your double Grand Prix-winning digital response campaign for Tourism Queensland, advertising The Best Job In The World, is the talk of this year’s Cannes Advertising Festival (in full flow as I write).
 
One doesn’t have to be an advocate of industry awards schemes to know that winning them is a huge boost to agency (and client) morale but also some kind of proof that you’ve done work that scores creatively or results-wise, depending on the awards scheme.
 
There’s no doubt too that winning awards is great for people’s careers. You’d expect someone with a good book and who consistently wins awards to see their value go up in the marketplace.
 
But will Cummins Nitro come away from Cannes with new business? I’d say that’s debatable. In my experience no agency has ever been picked on the basis of an award.
 
Ask some award-winning agencies if they’re getting lots of calls and wins, and they’ll often say ‘it’s weird, but no’.
 
Before I get accused of being a party-pooper, let me explain.
 
Each client considers their situation to be unique. For them, it’s about the rigour of the agency’s thinking, not about the award, and how can they adapt that thinking to their business. The client’s attitude is more likely to be that your award was for some other brand, perhaps in some other sector, but you have to crack my business problem.

The danger with pushing awards in clients’ faces is that it reinforces the attitude that it’s all about you, the agency. Instead, we ask agencies to put themselves in the world of the client. The longer you keep talking about your turnover, and how much profit you earn, the more you distance yourself from the client.
 
As to whether awards are proof of an agency’s prowess, remember that success has many fathers. When something’s done well, you have no idea how many people were involved. The client’s worry is, am I going to get that same award-winning team – the account handler, the planner and that creative duo? With small agencies, perhaps, but not necessarily so with larger outfits as the client they won the award for still wants them for themselves.

So things to remember about using awards to win business:
 
1. It’s talent that clients buy, award-winning or not. In football parlance, they’re trying to buy your centre forward, not the number of goals he scored.

2. An award is past glory. Consistency is what counts to clients.

3. By all means include your award(s) in your credentials, but a little bit of humility goes a long way. When talking about awards with clients, don’t slip into family album mode. Place them in your reception, where clients wait and can observe. A design agency I visited years ago had three D&AD yellow pencils in reception, and they had every right to flaunt them*.
 
There will be clients who use awards as a yardstick, but they tend to be the ones doing the hiring themselves. An intermediary interrogates agencies on their behalf using a set of criteria they’ve been given, and I’ve never seen one that included ‘must have won an award'.
 
If winning business was all about awards with clients, then only award-winning agencies would get work. And with due respect to Cummins Nitro, we know this not to be true.
 
Tony Spong is head of direct, promotional and integrated marketing at AAR Experts in client:agency relationships


* Remember positioning is everything: an agency reception I once visited had three gongs from 2002 at eye level, with the award from 2008 at floor level. I told them to move them around.