Quoth the great Jeff Goodby:
It's fast becoming clear that the majority of things we're rewarding, as an industry, are either small or marginal efforts for legitimate clients, things we made for real clients that the clients seem not to have ever heard of, or out-and-out fakes.
Some of these projects are well-intentioned since, at the very least, they are meant to "inspire" us when we work on bigger, better-paying accounts. But without getting into whether this kind of activity is immoral or just plain chicken shit, I'd like to point out a graver toll it's taking on us all: It's making our business less famous. Less fun. Less public. Less about any of the reasons you probably got into it in the first place.
We've created a system that rewards work that is increasingly unknown to anyone outside the business. We have become connoisseurs of esoterica. And in the process, we're becoming more about us, and less about changing the world.
(Via AdPulp. Read the whole article at AdAge.)
Now, I'm a copywriter and therefore a creative person, so I have no trouble with creativity for creativity's sake. Have at it. But I do agree with Jeff that we advertising folk have a bad habit of spending way too much time and energy trying to impress each other, and not nearly enough time creating innovative, inspiring work that both services the brand AND our hungry, needy, attention-seeking creative egos. As one insightful AdAge commenter says, we’re creating ads TO win awards, not ads that win awards.
How about we spend a little less time frantically waving our arms for the attention of that hip agency across town, and a little more time creating brilliant work that both engages the consumer and (bonus!) gets the attention of judges, up-and-coming talent and—gasp!—new client interested in buying work that, well, works. So everybody wins. Even our egos.