Stanton On…Awards Shows

On Sunday, January 6. my wife and I settled in to watch the Golden Globe Awards. Actually, she settled in. I hate award shows. I even hated them when our agency was up for something at an advertising awards show.

Some cynics/critics would say it was because we didn’t win often enough. My response was/is, I didn’t like entering them in the first place. I always felt they were beauty pageants, rather than a place to receive credit for work well done.

First of all, good or great work follows a brand strategy. And good or great work is measured by the client’s expectations, tempered by the agency’s ability to guide those expectations.

And did/do the judges at advertising creative award shows have a brand strategy that accompanies the work in front of them when they judge? No. Frankly, in most cases it’s totally arbitrary, done in a vacuum. [Usually, by four or five current big names in the industry who come in for a couple days to judge a couple hundred pieces of work and spend the rest of the time partying.]

From what I’ve observed, the judges’ decisions are based, in large part, on the agencies’ reputations. This is my opinion, and you can certainly disagree. But this leads me to one of things I hate the most about all awards shows: the acceptance speeches usually are too long and self-serving and often downright embarrassing.

Let’s take the previously referenced Golden Globe Awards, for example. Between the commercials (more to come on this later) and the mostly boring speeches, this mess began at 5pm and ended at 8:30. It should have taken two hours at most, even with the advertising carpet-bombing.

Why do winners insist on thanking everyone they’ve ever met?  I have no doubt, winner-person, that you’re grateful for your family’s support. Thank them later, OK? And the endless list of first names that get mentioned are probably even lost on some of those mentioned. “I want to thank Larry—you know who you are—for being there for me.” Huh?

As the Globes ground on, I became more and more irritated with the lack of preparation and grace that went into most of the thank-you moments. I was especially put-off by Green Book director Peter Farrelly’s bizarre, misplaced anger over the get-the-hell-off-the-stage music.

After rambling on for minutes about stuff most of us don’t give a rat’s ass about, he finally got around to saying something meaningful. He spoke about how Green Book reflected on the divides of times past and how they reflect on the issues of today. It was really well said, but diminished by his waiting so long to get to the point.

All he should have said was, “Thanks for the award. Everyone up here with me understands the value of what the critics see in our movie and we appreciate it greatly, but there is something more important for me to say, while I have this platform…”

Then there was Jeff Bridges. I love the guy. He’s in some of my favorite movies and his range is brilliant, hence his receipt of the Cecil B. DeMille Award. He knew he was going to receive the award, yet his bizarre acceptance speech erased any doubt that “the Dude” smokes weed. He ate up 10 meaningless minutes on his own and he never heard a note of the get-the-hell-off-the-stage music.

As for the commercials, one in particular stood out. Walmart’s ad for grocery pick-up seemed to violate its purpose-positioning statement, due to wretched production and media-spend excesses. Walmart’s positioning is simply “Save money, live better.”

I don’t know how much the ad cost to produce (hundreds of thousands, a mill?), but couldn’t they have gotten the point across without spending that kind of money? And then they ran it three times inside of an hour!

But back to acceptance speeches. My suggestion: “Thank you so much, I’m humbled.” Even though we know that last part is bullshit.