It’s no big secret that I’m a bad loser. I hold my hands up and fully accept that my inability to be gracious in defeat is one of my weak points. Yet it is also a strong point too… as it drives me, pushes me harder and makes me ensure I have explored every opportunity for my clients. Simply because I want to create something special that will not only exceed the goals set in the brief… but also deliver some awards because the strategy is sound, it looks damned good, is incredibly well written and has pulled like a freight train.

For me, winning is key to a passionate, productive, purposeful, and prosperous life. If I were to value it less than I do, then I fear I would begin to say goodbye to my talents as a creative. The will to win is what drives me to be the best I can be in everything I do… and I have seen first hand what a winning mentality can do to an agency.

The power of winning

If you ask any sports person about what winning can do, they will tell you it gives you the confidence to take risks, to try something new, to relax and trust your own abilities. More importantly, though, winning encourages you to push yourself more as you begin the chase to win the next big thing to give you that thrill of being highlighted as achieving something special.

Sports men and women will also tell you that they see failure or rejection as temporary obstacles to be overcome, not as reasons to give up. When they are confronted with a challenge, they immediately start dealing with it and looking at how they can tackle it in a positive way rather than just seeing it as a problem…. simply because they believe that anything can be achieved if you want it enough.

A winning culture in an advertising agency

When I first joined Red C over four years ago, one of the first things I did was place a strong emphasis on winning awards. It was also written into my contract that I had to get the agency onto an awards league table, as Adrian (Red C’s Managing Director) also knew the effect an award-winning mentality would have on the agency as a whole.

You see, both of us had a shared belief that when you win it really does rub off on other people. They see you winning and it gives them the belief that they can be a winner too. And due to the inclusive nature of creativity, we soon had many winners at the agency who were passing on the excitement of winning to other members of staff.

Winning anything from awards to new business to a client’s praise solidifies an internal belief that the efforts you are putting in every day are worthwhile. Yes, we may all say that we get out of bed because we get paid, but really none of us would get out of bed if the day were to be full of failures. It’s that belief that we will win that drives us all whether we know it or not… and the more wins we have the keener we are to get into work and achieve more, as praise is addictive.

But do advertising awards matter to clients?

Everyone loves a good night out with all expenses paid, but beyond that, do advertising awards mean anything to clients? I guess the answer to that is that it depends on what type of advertising awards your agency is winning.

If the agency is winning awards based purely on creativity and not results then you could argue that to a client it does not really matter if the agency wins or not. But if the awards are based on results too, then to a client knowing that the agency you are working with can deliver award-winning results is incredibly important.

It’s one of my jobs to make my clients look good so they can achieve their own personal career goals. To me, helping them achieve awards that are based on a combination of both creativity and results is a priority. And when they move on to the next stage of their career, they will hopefully turn to me again when they want to deliver another award-winning campaign that has an outstanding ROI and looks the business.

You probably have lots of opportunities to create award-winning work!

I think it’s easy to fall into the trap of thinking that it’s easier for the big agencies to win awards because they get all the sexy briefs. It’s probably true that a top London agency has far more opportunities to win awards than we do… but I don’t look at it like that… I look at it that I only need one killer piece of work to wipe the floor with all of them.

Take our campaign for the Mystery Tipper as an example. 2 ISP Awards, a B2B Marketing Award, an IDM Business Performance Diamond Award, 2 DMA Awards and 2 IPA Effectiveness Awards. That last award saw us sat on tables alongside Grey London, Publicis and WCRS… and hold our own against the big boys from London.

You see it only takes one, and a year is a long time to find that one campaign that has gold written all over it. The trick is, how do you find the brief that has the potential to send you to an awards dinner?

When I started at my first agency back in the mid 90s, the Creative Director had a belief that every brief that landed on our desks should be tackled as if it had the potential to win an award. And that’s the approach I still take now with every brief at Red C. They are not briefs to me… they are opportunities to shine and deliver something special to our clients that will achieve their internal goals and my professional and personal ones.

It’s fair to say that in reality not every brief will give you the opportunity to win awards. But if you approach each and every one of them with the same positive mental attitude, eventually you will unearth something special that can be exploited and turned into a slice of pure marketing gold.

In short

Don’t underestimate the positive influences that being an award-winning agency can have on both your staff and your clients. And remember, as Edward de Bono once said, “The winner is the chef who takes the same ingredients as everyone else and produces the best results.”

Tags: Advertising Awards, Award-Winning Advertising Agency, B2B marketing Awards, Direct Marketing Agency, Direct Response Advertising, DMA Awards, Grey London, IDM Business Performance Diamond Award, IPA Effectiveness Awards, ISP Awards, Manchester Advertising Agency, Online Marketing Agency, PPC Agency, Publicis, Swinton Mystery Tipper, WCRS

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 24th, 2010 at 4:35 pm and is filed under Advertising, Advertising Awards, Blog, Branding, Creativity, Direct Marketing, General Interest, Influences, Inside Information, Marketing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.