"Award-winning" Angst: Creatives, Accolades, & Validation.

Award-winning. It’s in my bio by virtue of a lil hardware and a few spare certificates in storage somewhere. Award-winning Copywriter. Now, please, hold your applause.

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Now, this isn't a reflexive guilt-dunk, but... what if you're not an “award-winning” creative? What if you've won some awards but not the big, brand ones? Or, what if you're just a creative who inhales briefs, knocks out work, and clocks out on weekends? Because, honestly, that's the vast majority of us creatives. Not award-winning. Not rockstars. Nor gurus nor ninjas, or whatever… Just 401K stacking creatives.

So what of us?

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Early on I was taught creatives need awards. Awards get the money. Big awards get titles (Executive Creative Director, VP Creative Director, etc.). Titles get badges that judge awards. Circle of life... So, win a lion—gold, silver, bronze... any lion. And by "lion," I mean Cannes. That’s our MVP. Our scoring title. Our platinum plaque. Our GRAMMY. Paris or bust! Now sure, there are other must-wins—ANDY. ADDY. ARCHIVE. CLIO. D&AD. The One Show. CA Annual Awards. OBIE. London International. EFFIE. Mercury. Mobius... But they're just demigods, Cannes is Zeus.

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When I was mad young, I interned under a creative team that was on a ’96 Bulls heater—they swept most of the aforementioned. The art director used one of his bronze lions as a doorstop; he turned one of his gold lions into a paperweight. He took a silver lion and—get this—bolted it to the hood of his truck. Drove around town for all to see. Finally took it off when snow came. (If you’re in advertising, it was as absurd than it sounds; if you’re not, picture NHL guys with Lord Stanley post-ceremony.) He relegated one of his Clios to back scratcher—tied a little tag around the base that said, “Scratch mine, not yours.” His partner glued one of his Clios to a cheap floor lamp and used the thing as a hat rack—stood it right next to the wastebasket in his office. And while they were doing all of that another creative director won so many One Show pencils that he let the summer interns play Jenga? with ‘em. (They tumble over once you get about 4-high, if you're wondering.)

?Industrywide trophies saw more drama than Fisher-Price toys surrounded by unsupervised kindergarteners hopped up on applej uice. It was so widespread that when one awards show got wind of the shenanigans they wrote a fairly long letter reminding agencies of the “dignity and honor” that the awards embody. As I recall, that letter went over about as well as a jaywalking ticket.

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But there’s rules to the awards game. As the Lottery usedta say, “You gotta play to win.” For starters you must pay to enter. Depending on the show you’re shelling out $400-$800 per single execution per category; full campaigns run a G to fifteen hundred-plus, depending. As a radio guru one year my agency entered three of my radio joints— “humor”, “overall”, “local,” and “national” … $400 each, per category. Plus, they entered some of my print and a couple TV spots… I had ten racks on my head. (I got a couple paperweights out of it.) I was a high-ticket item for a couple years, there...

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A lot of shops—usually "general market" (white-owned)—bake awards into their business model. I’ve worked at agencies that had ‘show teams’—2-3 people, usually Executive VP Creative Director or Group Account Director-level… They'd gather all the year's work, eyeball what topped prior shows, pick our best soldiers, then enter show-by-show accordingly. They had Benz budgets—you could cop a C-Class every year for what got spent on awards shows. (Also could hire an extra black staffer or two. ??) But other shops were so ad hoc that they just threw whatever the receptionist liked into a FedEx Next-Day Air? pack and hoped for the best.

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I've also worked at shops that cared but just couldn't afford it. They were smaller, usually African American or multicultural shops. They were already shut out of juicy RFPs and assignments and relegated fractional "ethnic" budgets. So with revenue streams squeezed they often had to prioritize office supplies and electricity over accolades.

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Now for The Client. There’s no awards game without them. Some clients will tell you awards are self-indulgent, outside their business model at best. They won’t pay to enter and don’t greenlight the type of work that often wins. (“Make the logo bigger,” we’d joke.) Other clients see awards as key to a healthy brand; they get as excited for a trophy as any rebel creative. They approve edgy work and cover entry fees. But both want credit if you win—even when they confuse you for a bike messenger. (True story.)

?When I started out, the business was 94% White, counting secretaries and mailroom workers. (That's what advertising agencies admitted to the EEOC at the time.) So not surprisingly, the work that they called “great” often came from a lense that either ignored us or, well... I remember thumbing through an annual for inspiration and my eyes stopped on a multi-pencil winning ad: Smiling Black teen. Track suit, track shoes. Mr. T-level medal drip, flanked by trophies. Headline reads: “If you want to see how fast he can run, wait till his girlfriend tells him she’s pregnant.” Kid was maybe 4 years younger than me, tops. The ad was for a clinic or hospital, I forget. They named it “best of,” tho. It was one of too many ads over the years that left me thinking “THIS is what they think of us… of me.”

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Once you put “award-winning” before “creative” things hit different. I’ve seen guys win the big ones and within days get near unlimited off-the-books PTO. Fancy golf clubs magically appear. Account people act nicer. And of course, their office phones jump off the hook. “There’s two ways to get a raise,” a vet told me: Quit, Win Awards. (He was on his third gig in eight years behind this.)

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I remember this one creative, “Mark” and his last name reminded me of motor oil. He was friends with my higher-ups. He looked like one of those scraggily white guy brooding contrarians who, after a couple Jack ‘n’ Cokes, browbeats you about “real music.” This day he was talking about 'the work'... Mark was award-winning, so my boss was like “hear him out.” Back then every creative director had a guitar in their office which they played badly plus half-a-screenplay or a quarter-novel in a drawer. So, when the crowd heard Mark had also directed some music videos, they hung on his words even more. He'd done a video for a song called “Right Now” by old rock band named ‘Van Halen’. It got some play.

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Mark starts telling us about a recent pitch—car giant, or Big Tech maybe. He walks into a room full of C-suite honchos then with no set-up just plays his reel. At the end he stands up and says, “You like my work?” The honchos are like, "Yes." He lobs, “You want me to do work like this for you?” They (clearly eager) "Well, yes." So, Mark stares 'em down and snarls, “Well then shut up and get out of my way!”

Now the whole room goes up like a hot church at high noon. Red meat for all the white creative fanboys convinced that "go f--- yourself" is how you sell work to clients. Sure, some of this was white-guy-all-in-his-white-guyness talking down to moneymen who ain't even cut the check yet; a gambit that no one Black, not even '09 Obama would be afforded. But some of this was just “award-winning”—you win the right awards, they let you act different. (It be what it be.)

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Some creatives will do anything to be ‘award-winning.’ I once knew one who flipped some spec into trophies. Spec (or “speculative”) are fake ads you do for real brands to show agencies what you could do if that brand was your client. (It's how we hire.)

So, this creative... he goes out and knocks on doors around town begging real brands to attach their name to his spec so he can run it. (Work must "run" or appear in recognized media platforms to be considered "real" and thus, awards-eligible).

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One day he gets a bite. A company lets him use their brand, but he has to split production cost and enter shows on his own dime. He agrees. His work runs then cleans house across a bunch of shows. He becomes a stamped "award winning writer/creative director.” Mission accomplished.

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For a couple years I went to all the key awards shows and the only non-white judges I saw were Carol H., Tracy Wong, and Tom Burrell. Then Jimmy and Jayanta went on a Shaq and Kobe tear of their own at Wieden, and got deputized to judge… Aside from them it was a near-blizzard overall. You could fit every Black Creative Director in America into one of Erin Throlopolis ' daily zooms.

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A White judge once told me that Black creatives (and agencies) weren’t ready for shows. We didn’t do “big enough” work to be competitive. We got in a heated argument (one of many) about how great work has ‘universal truths’ that crosses demographics, and Black creatives need to "broaden our universe, if that’s even possible." Watching White creatives adopt Black slang, styles, quote Black artists then tell Black creatives 'we need to broaden our universe...' At some point the words “bail money” and “right to remain to silent” flashed across my eyes.

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In earlier years I saw so many dope Black creatives with universal tastes shut out—shops refusing to enter their work, having their work slighted in the trades... It drained them—people older than me, way better than me… the teeth-cracking frustration, the Franz-Fanon-masks-off group therapy session in separate meetups—because no matter how progressive your coworkers were, they weren’t progressive enough to not put us and our truths at the back of the bus. And being the Angry Black at work will shorten your career quicker than ripped Achilles.

But things have improved. Folks like Perry Fair , R. Vann Graves , Walter T Geer III (one-man buzzsaw for change), Peter Ukhurebor , Vida M Cornelious , Shannon Washington , Lewis Williams , Tiffany Edwards , derek walker , Deadra Rahaman , the legendary Jimmy Smith, Keith Cartwright , Geoff Edwards , Greg Edwards , Jayanta Jenkins , and Tiffany R. Warren have opened things up. They’ve racked up awards with great work, challenged stale definitions of “universal truth” and “cool” … all while championing new blood along the way. It’s far from the Promised Land, but the wilderness is thinning out.

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Sometimes I go thru the latest CA Annual or ARCHIVE and I wonder 'Are they that much better or are they just having a good year with braver clients?... Was this their brain or their budget? If X switched places with Y, could they have done this work? Could they have cleared X's hurdles? Could the general market folks carry what we've had to and vice versa?...

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Some years you question it all, every little bit.

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I was talking with a veteran creative director about it all. It’s not the money or the “act different.” He said it's about embracing a standard of excellence; and okay sure, excellence may shift with the times but the chase is timeless. You want to see where you stack up against the best. And if they say you nailed it, that counts for more than something.

Still, someday, on a random Tuesday afternoon, I kinda want to stand in a nicely appointed open-air loft office, in my socks and an ill-fitting decidedly rude t-shirt and roll a 7-10 split on a rack of Clios... Because it really does hit different.

And for every creative that doesn't have a little box of stuff no one in your family understands... You're still a badass. You work has worth. Look, this job is hard. We run the obstacle course while they put a stopwatch to our imaginations and barcodes on what springs forth. Yet and still, we shine for a paycheck. So, whatever they try to take from you, hold over you or hold back from you, the fact is deep down they know they can't do what you do. Not even close.

There's no award for that.