Award-winning vs. Validation.

Award-winning. It’s in my bio courtesy of a couple hunks of hardware along with a folder of certificates I have boxed up (somewhere). Award-winning Copywriter. Please, hold your applause.

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Nowt this isn't a reflexive deflection, but... What if you're not an “award-winning” creative? Or, what if you have won awards but not the prestigious ones? Or what if you're just a creative who steadily knocks out work and clocks out every weekend? The vast majority of ad industry creatives are just that—not award-winning. Not rockstars. (Nor gurus, ninjas, or whatever) … Just everyday 401k-winning creatives.

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

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When I was mad young, I interned under a 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, think of what NHL guys have done with Lord Stanley.) He relegated one of his Clios to that of back scratcher—tied a little tag around the base, “Scratch mine, not yours.” His partner glued one of his Clios to a cheap floor lamp and used the thing as a hat rack next to the wastebasket in his office. Also, during that stretch a creative director won so many One Show pencils that he let summer interns play Lincoln Logs? (Jenga? for Gen Z) with ‘em. (They tumble over once you get about 4-high.)

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As for the others? Well, one uptight show got wind of the shenanigans and wrote a letter reminding agencies of the “dignity and honor” that the awards carry. As I recall, that went over about as well as a jaywalking ticket.

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But there’s rules to the game. As the Lottery usedta say, “You gotta play to win.” Awards show entry fees are nuts. 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 off that one awards show. (Got a couple paperweights out of it.)

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A lot of shops—usually larger, "general market" ones—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 for what got spent on awards shows. (Or hire more Black staffers. ??) But other shops were so ad hoc that they just threw whatever the receptionist thought was cute 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 swing the fees. They were smaller, usually African American, or multicultural shops. They were already shut out of juicy RFPs and assignments and relegated to pitiful fractional "ethnic" budgets. So they often prioritized office supplies and electricity over awards.

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Now for The Client. There’s no awards game without them. Some clients say 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 joked.) Other clients see awards as key to a healthy brand; they're as excited for a trophy as any indulgent creative. They approve edgy work and cover entry fees. But all clients want credit if you win—even when they confuse you for a bike messenger. (True story.)

?When I started out, it was different. The industry was 94% White—counting the secretaries—and that’s what advertising agencies admitted to the EEOC at the time. Not surprisingly, the work that they saw as “great” was thru a lens that either ignored us or, well... Early on I thumbed 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 under me, max. 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 kept us 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 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 direct line rings 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”. He was friends with my higher-ups. I hadn't heard of him before them, and his last name reminded me of motor oil. He looked like one of those scraggily white guy contrarians who, after a couple Jack ‘n’ Cokes browbeats you about “real music.” This day he was talking about 'the work'. 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 they heard Mark had started directing music videos, they hung on his words even more. One of his videos was for a song called “Right Now” by old band named ‘Van Halen’. It got some play. Mark was award-winning, so my boss said to “hear him out.” I did.

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Mark told us about a recent pitch—car giant, maybe a tech giant. He shows the head honcho his reel, pauses, then says, “You like my work?” They're like, "Yes." He lobs, “You want me to do work like this for you?” Head honcho, clearly eager, "Well, yes." So, Mark shoots back, “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 telling suits and critics to go eff- themselves is integrity. Now sure, some of this was white-guy-all-in-his-white-guyness slamming check-cutters who ain't even cut a check yet; a gambit that one Black not even '09 Obama was afforded. But some of this was just “award-winning”—you win awards, they let you act different. (It be what it be.)

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Some creatives did anything to be ‘award-winning.’ I 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 a real client. So, this creative 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. His work runs then cleans house across a bunch of shows. He becomes a renowned "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 Shaq n Kobe at Wieden and got their gavels… But they were dots in a near-blizzard. Listen, you coulda fit every Black Creative Director in America into 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—creatives older than me, way better than me… the teeth-cracking frustration, the Franz Fanon-masks-off liquor-fueled group therapy sessions 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.

But things have actually improved. Folks like Perry Fair, Vann Graves, Walter T Geer III (one-man buzzsaw for change), Peter Ukhurebor, Vida M Cornelious, Shannon Washington, Lewis Williams, derek walker, Deadra Rahaman, Tiffany R. Warren, the legendary Jimmy Smith, Tiffany Edwards, Keith Cartwright, Geoff Edwards, Greg Edwards, Jayanta Jenkins, and a trickle of others 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 a little.

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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 general market creatives 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 this recently. 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 access and 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 see myself standing in a nicely appointed open-air loft office, in my socks and an ill-fitting decidedly rude t-shirt and rolling a 7-10 split thru a rack of Clios... Because it really does hit different.

As for everyone who has a mantle or a shelf that hasn't buckled under the weight of hardware or doesn't have a little box in storage that you still don't know what any of it means: You're still a badass. Your work has worth. Look, this is hard. But you're a creative that actually gets to be creative for a living. We run weekly obstacle courses while they put a stopwatch to our imaginations and barcodes on what springs forth. Yet and still, we shine. So, whatever they try to take from you, or hold over you, the fact is deep down they know they can't do what you do. Not even close.

No award will ever capture that.