The power of awards (my Simon Cowell moment)

I was recently introduced on stage at an event and the organiser, rather generously, had decided to use the long version of my biography. This meant that, alongside the usual stuff about what I do now, where I’ve worked and the companies I’ve been fortunate enough to work with, the audience got a reasonably comprehensive history of my marketing industry awards over the years.

It was, if I'm honest, a little bit cringe.

It also ate into valuable speaking time, which I was slightly less grateful for!

But it did make me think.

I’ve been in marketing for a long time now. Long enough that awards have become part of the furniture. I’ve won them, lost them, been shortlisted for them, judged them, chaired judging panels and, in some cases, completely forgotten that I’d ever won them until someone puts them in a biography.

And perhaps that is the problem.

I’ve become a bit blasé about them.

Because when you’ve been around for a while, another shortlist or another trophy can feel like another thing that happens in the marketing calendar. You go to the event, you have a drink, you clap when somebody you know wins, you take a photograph, you put something on LinkedIn and then you get back to work.

But over the last few weeks, having spent time judging both the B2B Marketing Awards and the DMA Awards, I’ve been reminded that this isn’t how everyone sees them.

For someone earlier in their career, an award can be a very big deal indeed.

I can remember what it felt like to be shortlisted when I was younger. It wasn't really about the trophy. It was the fact that somebody outside your immediate team had looked at something you had worked incredibly hard on and decided that it was good enough to stand alongside some of the best work being done in the industry.

That is a pretty powerful thing to hear when you are still working out whether you are actually any good at this marketing lark.

And perhaps this is where those of us who have been around the industry for a while need to remind ourselves that our reaction to awards isn't necessarily the reaction of the people around us.

The person who has just had their first campaign shortlisted doesn't see it as "another award".

They see it as recognition.

The young strategist who has spent months working on the idea doesn't see it as "another awards entry".

They see someone saying that their thinking mattered.

The team that has had a pretty bloody difficult year doesn't necessarily see an awards dinner as another industry jolly.

They see a chance to celebrate something they have actually done well.

And that matters.

Perhaps even more so at the moment.

Because the last few years have been pretty brutal for a lot of marketing agencies. Budgets have been squeezed, procurement has got tougher, clients have had their own pressures to deal with, and now AI has introduced a whole new debate about what marketing work should cost, how quickly it can be produced and, increasingly, what bits of it people are actually prepared to pay for.

For some agencies, growth isn't currently the conversation.

Survival is.

And in that environment, getting recognition for great work isn't simply about another trophy sitting in reception.

It is about being seen.

By prospective clients. By existing clients. By potential employees. By peers. By the wider industry.

It can give an agency a little bit of oxygen at precisely the point when it needs it.

And perhaps more importantly, it can remind the people inside that agency that what they are doing is actually good.

That is something I was reminded of very strongly while judging this year.

You can spend an awful lot of time worrying about AI, automation, content volumes, channels, algorithms and everything else that is changing around us, but then you sit down and look at a few hundred pieces of marketing work and something rather reassuring happens.

The genuinely good stuff still jumps out.

The thinking is good. The insight is good. The creative idea is good. The execution is good. There is often a little moment where you get to the end of an entry and think, that's bloody clever.

And I think that is important.

Because for all the conversations we are having about technology making marketing faster, cheaper and more automated, there is still something very powerful about genuinely human thinking and creativity.

Awards give us one of the few opportunities we have to stop and recognise that.

Not because an algorithm has scored it.

Not because it generated a particular number of clicks.

Not because somebody has optimised the life out of it.

But because a group of people who understand marketing have looked at the work and thought it deserves recognition.

Of course, entering awards is a pain in the arse.

I've done enough of them to know.

There are forms to fill in, word counts to wrestle with, results to find, case studies to write, people to chase and that inevitable moment when somebody says, "Can we just make this one tiny change?" which, of course, isn't a tiny change at all.

And when everyone is busy, it is incredibly easy to decide that it isn't worth the effort.

I think we should probably enter more.

Not because everyone needs another trophy.

But because our people need recognition.

And right now, I think our agencies need it too.

Not everyone wins. That is how awards work. But being shortlisted can be enough to give somebody a bit of confidence at exactly the point they need it. It can give a young marketer something to put on their CV and, perhaps more importantly, something to believe about themselves. It can give a team that has spent six months fighting through a difficult client project something to feel proud about. And it can give an agency that is fighting incredibly hard to survive another reason for the market to notice them.

I suspect this is also why I keep coming back to awards and the wider B2B marketing community.

I describe myself, slightly tongue in cheek, as a B2B keeper and collector.

I collect B2B friends, stories, ideas, inspiration, arguments, trends and the occasional bit of marketing wisdom that makes me stop and think. I like keeping company with as much of the industry as I can, which is why you'll find me judging the B2B Marketing Awards, the DMAs and other industry awards, going to events, talking to marketers and agencies and generally sticking my nose into what other people are doing.

I’m fortunate that B2B Marketing gives me another place to do that through B2B Marketing United, and I see pieces like this as part of that slightly selfish collection habit. I learn something from the community, steal a little inspiration from the people around me, hopefully contribute a little back and, occasionally, write down something that I think might be useful to somebody else.

And perhaps that is what the world needs now.

Not another marketing framework.

Not another prediction about AI.

Not another 47 things that marketers should apparently be doing before breakfast.

Perhaps we just need to get a little better at recognising good work.

So if you're a client-side marketer, enter the awards. Put your people forward. Give the young marketer their moment. Give the team that has worked their socks off something to celebrate. Give the agency that has had a bloody tough couple of years the chance to stand up and say, we're still here, and look what we can do.

And if you're an agency, don't be too cool to enter.

Because yes, somebody will win the trophy.

But that isn't really the point.

The point is that somewhere, probably in a room full of people who have been working far too hard for far too long, somebody will hear their name called out and feel that little shot of pride that says:

Someone noticed.

And sometimes, particularly at the moment, that might be exactly what they needed.