Advertising and creativity in award ceremonies: the challenge of transparent evaluation

This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/ licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Copyright © 2024 The Author(s). Published by Vilnius Gediminas Technical University CREATIVITY STUDIES ISSN: 2345-0479 / eISSN: 2345-0487 2024 Volume 17 Issue 2 Pages 462–474 https://doi.org/10.3846/cs.2024.18715 ADVERTISING AND CREATIVITY IN AWARD CEREMONIES: THE CHALLENGE OF TRANSPARENT EVALUATION Victoria TUR-VIÑES 1 , Araceli CASTELLÓ-MARTÍNEZ2, Marina RAMOS-SERRANO3, Ingrid ZACIPA-INFANTE4 1, 2, 4Department of Communication and Social Psychology, Faculty of Economic and Business Sciences, University of Alicante, Carretera San Vicente del Raspeig s/n., 03690 San Vicente del Raspeig, Province of Alicante, Spain 3Department of Audiovisual Communication and Advertising, Faculty of Communication, University of Seville, C/Américo Vespucio s/n., 41092 Seville, Andalusia, Spain Article History: Abstract. Award ceremonies value and highlight the best pieces of communication, reflecting the innovative trends of advertising practice, and are also on the rise as places for meeting and exchanging experiences, points of reflection on the challenges facing the industry and events to showcase the high value of the industry. The aim of this study is to evaluate the methodology of advertising festivals and identify the criteria for their operation. A content analysis of the official websites of 85 international award ceremonies with 20 indicators was carried out. The results show the non-specialized, general nature of most of the annual events. Five major award category types are identified: media and actions, digital, differential feature of the endeavour, resources used and results obtained. The jury selection criteria are only made public for one in ten award ceremonies, while the criteria for the assessment of the pieces are not known for 40% of the award ceremonies. This study has theoretical–practical implications, and expands upon previous knowledge regarding award, the selection of people and pieces, and the criteria for both. It concludes by underlining transparency as a potential area for improvement. ■ received 1 March 2023 ■ accepted 18 August 2023 Keywords: advertising, award ceremonies, awards, communication, events, industry, marketing. Corresponding author. E-mail: [email protected] 1. Introduction Advertising differentiates products using persuasive communication. Likewise, advertising agencies – and their new derivatives – need to differentiate themselves from each other. In response to this reality, advertising award ceremonies allow for the evaluation and classification of each agency’s work in a comparative way. It is difficult to calculate the financial turnover of advertising award ceremonies at the international level. The existence of consultancies (Boost Awards) (Boost, 2024; Wikreate, 2022) that help to manage the procedures of both advertisers and agencies alike provides important evidence that their turnover is truly substantial. As a reference, The Cannes Lions Awards (Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity, CLIFC) in 2022 had 25 464 registrations from 87 countries, with an average fee of approximately 600 euros, representing 15 278 400 euros (LIA: Global Sponsor, 2005–2023). Since the 1960s, companies have preselected agencies by ranking them according to one of the following criteria: revenue figures, number of awards won at award ceremonies, cumulative Creativity Studies, 2024, 17(2), 462–474 463 media volume or subjective classifications of agencies produced by the marketing directors of leading brands (Ogilvy, 2012; Butkys & Herpel, 1992; Helgesen, 1994; Kübler & Proppe, 2012). However, Polonsky and Waller (1995) concluded that the revenue or turnover of advertising agencies is not affected by the number of prizes won. Regarding the effects of such awards on the creators themselves, Tippins and Kunkel (2006) state that winning one or more Clio Awards can lead to an increase in profits, although they recognize the difficulty in determining the actual benefit obtained from specific advertising activities. However, the awards received at such ceremonies gained further importance in the face of the change in turnover declarations since The Sarbanes Oxley Act (2002), which sanctioned the publication of inaccurate or false revenue figures. Advertising is a highly globalized industry, and the best-known agencies often belong to multinational networks of large international communication groups. According to Kübler and Proppe (2012), in the United States (US), the available turnover figures have been aggregated at the holding level since the introduction of this law. It thus becomes almost impossible to determine national income figures, thereby altering the rankings based on that data. For this reason, the number of awards received at award ceremonies became established as an essential indicator, providing a mechanism for classifying and organizing the quality of agencies around the world, from that time until the present. The aforementioned literature focuses on the effects that award ceremonies provoke in agencies and professionals as well as in manufacturing companies. However, award ceremonies as events, and how they function, their structure and their characteristics, have received less research attention, as Kilgour et al. (2013) state. Given the scarcity of studies on this subject and the fact that more information exists regarding their consequences rather than how they function, we formulated our first preliminary research question as follows: What formal and structural characteristics can be used to describe advertising award ceremonies? (RQ1). Award ceremonies allow the registration of pieces or campaigns in different categories that usually correspond to different media or formats. Determining and comparing the categories offered at award ceremonies allows one to obtain data to answer our second research question: What are the significant differences in the volume of advertising activity between different media or formats? (RQ2). Moreover, various studies have highlighted gender imbalances in the professional practice of advertising communication. The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development (United Nations: General Assembly, 2015), signed by the member states of the United Nations (United Nations Development Programme, 2024), set the Sustainable Development Goals, which include gender equality (Goal 5). The presence of women in creative departments in the US is less than 30% on average (Grow & Deng, 2021). The 3% Movement (2022) in 2022 declares its mission as follows: “Until we came along, only 3% of Creative Directors were women. And very few were people of colour. We’re changing the ratio because the more varied the people who come up with ideas, the better the ideas will be”. In Spain, the industry has promoted initiatives to enhance the presence of women in the specific field of advertising creative. Among these, we emphasize MoreCreativeWomen (orig. MásMujeresCreativas) (Más Mujeres Creativas, 2022), which works in favour of the visibility of 464 V. Tur-Viñes et al. Advertising and creativity in award ceremonies: the challenge of transparent evaluation and equal opportunities for female talent, and Unadedos (2024), which collects endorsements for the collective commitment that drives the leadership of creative women. Roca Correa et al. (2012) calculate a meagre 16.67% of women among the jury members of El Sol, i.e. Festival Iberoamericano de la Comunicación Publicitaria, in the period from 2004 to 2008. Women have a greater presence in accounts than in planning or creative and are more widely employed in the communication departments of manufacturers than in agencies (Alvarado-López & Martín-García, 2020). It thus becomes relevant to investigate the composition of the juries that evaluate the pieces presented from this gender perspective. A third research question can be formulated: What criteria are considered in the selection of jury members? (RQ3). Finally, focussing on what is evaluated at award ceremonies and the criteria applied in their evaluations, we find that creativity is the most admired characteristic in the advertising industry and also the most important criterion for determining the success of an agency (Helgesen, 1994). Although there are awards for advertising effectiveness, most award ceremonies are designed to measure some form of creativity (Polonsky & Waller, 1995). Effectiveness is inherent to the very definition of creativity and should not be considered as a separate dimension, since it is illogical to say that adverts are more effective because they are creative; if they are creative, in part, it is because they are more effective (MacKenzie et al., 1986; Smith & Yang, 2004). Kilgour et al. (2013) revealed that the campaigns with potential to win awards for creativity were very original and rarely considered to be highly strategic. Kübler and Proppe (2012) identified the capacity for innovation and the integration of multiple channels as the main drivers of success in awards for creativity. The complexity of creative evaluation does not make it impossible or invalid to use objective elements or indicators that systematize the process and allow for the selection of what is potentially perceived as decidedly creative (Tur-Viñes, 2018). Therefore, a fourth and final research question can be formulated as follows: Are the evaluation criteria of the pieces clear, public, objective, and coincident? (RQ4). The aim of this study is to evaluate the methodology of advertising festivals and identify the criteria for their operation. From the point of view of branding and positioning theories, the award ceremonies highlight the work of the agencies and project the image of the professionals themselves, as well as the remarkable communicative level of the pieces of some brands. For the scientific field, this study uncovers the potential of festivals as an object of study and exposes the opportunities and difficulties. For professional practice, the study identifies areas for improvement in the definition and publication of criteria. 2. Methodology 2.1. Object of study It was difficult to define the concept of award ceremony as an object of study, and it is advisable to differentiate the award ceremony brand or franchise from the award concept, since there are several award ceremony franchises that promote different awards. Some companies organize several awards, such as New York Festivals (brand award ceremony), which organizes the following (franchise brands): advertising awards, advertising and marketing effectiveness Creativity Studies, 2024, 17(2), 462–474 465 awards AME Awards, Bowery Awards, Global Awards, radio awards, and television and film awards. This model coexists with global awards programs such as The Drum, EVCOM, Design and Art Direction, Digiday, Best, WARC, or The Global, and awards promoted by magazines or advertising information spaces, such as Adweek, PR Daily, Ad Age, or Ragan Communications. Likewise, each prize highlights pieces in different categories (as well as sub-categories) and can even have several levels within each (for example, gold, silver and bronze tend to be common), allowing a certain degree of hierarchical organization in the evaluation of the pieces that gives rise to rankings. 2.2. Sample We merged the awards by the specialist consultancy in award ceremonies Boost Awards (Boost, 2024), the research company SCOPEN (SCOPEN: Agency Scope, 2021), Adforum (1999– 2020), and El Publicista (2003–2024). The result was completed with searches in the Google Chrome browser using the search terms: advertising awards, communication awards, public relations awards, and campaign awards. A total of 223 awards was obtained and grouped into 170 brands and/or franchises. By simple random sampling, with a confidence level of 95% and a margin of error of 7.5%, 85 international award ceremony franchise brands (50% of the total) were analyzed. The last instalment available on the web was analyzed: 39 award ceremonies (45.8%) in 2022, 40 (47%) in 2021, 4 (4.7%) in 2020, the 2019 instalment of eWards (1.2%), and the 2018 edition of The EthicMark Awards (1.2%). 2.3. Organization of the study Prizes that consider advertising or public relations in different media have long been considered to be generalist, although at the same time, some prizes focus on specific themes (gender, social value, technology, etc.). There are single-prize award ceremonies as well as multi-prize award ceremonies. Where an award ceremony promotes more than one prize, only one of them (the most general in terms of advertising) was analyzed. A content analysis of the public information found on each award ceremony’s official website, in its most recent edition, was carried out. One of the authors undertook the pre-design of the categories and the variables of the content analysis and then, following the recommendations of Krippendorff (1990), did not participate in the data collection. Data collection was carried out using Microsoft Excel and SPSS by the three other authors, considering intercoder reliability, which was guaranteed via repeated consultations to achieve consensus on the criteria. The variables and their values were selected according to the principles recommended by Berelson (1952): homogeneity, completeness, exclusivity, objectivity, and adequacy in terms of the content studied and the objective of the work. 2.4. Content analysis Four dimensions were considered, one per research question (structure and functioning, categories/sub-categories of the awards, information regarding the jury, and the evaluation criteria of pieces) that include 20 variables (Table 1). 466 V. Tur-Viñes et al. Advertising and creativity in award ceremonies: the challenge of transparent evaluation Table 1. Internal consistency between dimensions, research questions and indicators analyzed (source: created by authors) Dimension Research questions Indicators Formal and structural characteristics What formal and structural characteristics can be used to describe advertising award ceremonies? (RQ1) ■Starting year; ■Frequency; ■Descriptor; ■Promoting entity; ■Scope of the promoting entity; ■Scope of the award ceremony; ■Thematic subject; ■Cost of registration of pieces; ■Cost of gala entry; ■Conference and event offerings; ■Exclusive women’s section. Award categories Do the categories awarded reveal significant differences in the volume of advertising activity between different media or formats? (RQ2) ■Total categories and sub-categories; ■Awards by category and sub-category; ■Special awards; ■Young talent contest. Information regarding the jury What criteria are considered in the selection of jury members? (RQ3) ■Members; ■Presence of women; ■Different jury according to category; ■Selection criteria. Evaluation of the pieces Are the evaluation criteria of the pieces clear, public, objective and coincident? (RQ4) Evaluation criteria 2.5. Data analysis Descriptive statistical analysis was carried out, taking into account the frequency and percentage of the prevalence of each indicator, as well as the standard deviation where appropriate. To analyze the most common terms used to describe the award ceremonies, a semantic analysis was carried out with NVivo, differentiating the results by language into award ceremonies in English (79; 92.9%) or Spanish (6; 7.1%). The semantic analysis of the category denominations unified their English translations, along with the elimination of plural and singular words. The study database listing all the award ceremonies in the sample is available in the special source (see Tur-Viñes et al., 2022). 3. Results 3.1. Formal and structural characteristics of the award ceremonies The analysis of the starting years of the ceremonies revealed that the ADC Annual Awards are the longest running (since 1920), followed by Association of National Advertisers (ANA) International ECHO Awards (since 1929). The most recent initiatives are the Campaign Brand Leadership and Partnership Awards (debuting in 2022) together with the Davos Communications Awards and Digital Event Awards (that started in 2021). The decade of 2010–2020 witnessed several debuts (n = 22; 25.9%), followed by the decades of 1990 (17; 20%) and 2000 (15; 17.6%). The 21st century included 51.7% (44) of the award ceremonies from the sample. The year of creation is used to demonstrate prestige. Creativity Studies, 2024, 17(2), 462–474 467 Reviewing their frequency, 100% are annual. Most are of non-specialized, general themes (68; 80%). Public relations is represented by a total of four award ceremonies (4.7%), with events such as Bulldog PR Awards or Chartered Institute of Public Relations Excellence Awards (CIPREA), while digital strategy has three award ceremonies (3.5%): Internet Advertising Competition Awards (IACA), AVA Digital Awards, and Online Media, Marketing and Advertising Awards. Areas such as creative (Cannes Lions Awards), design (Marketing and Communication Design Award), and marketing (B2B Marketing Awards) have a reduced share. We found seven award ceremonies (8.2%) classified in the “other theme”, including events (one), content creation (three), social advertising (two; Publifestival and Caracol de Plata) and humorous advertising (one; SMiLE Festival). The positioning of each award ceremony is expressed by its descriptor. Award ceremonies in English (79; 93%) tend to position themselves as international events by using the terms global (27) or international (18), and use the terms marketing (49) and advertising (40) interchangeably. The term communication appears 28 times (35%). Likewise, the words industry (30) or creativity (16) are used to refer to the advertising industry in a general way. The award ceremonies define their aims with two recurring terms: best (33) and excellence (21). This means that they seek the best or excellence in professional practice. Verbs such as celebrate (15) or recognize (9) predominate in describing the intention of the award ceremonies. The awards also serve as meeting places where the latest trends in the industry are debated, with parties or gala ceremonies: AVA Digital Awards is an international competition that recognizes excellence by creative professionals responsible for the planning, concept, direction, design, and production of digital communication. Meanwhile, award ceremonies in Spanish (6; 7.8%) are also described as international events where the best of advertising (9), communication (4), creativity (3), or ideas (3) are recognized. The term marketing (2) is used less to describe the industry. Like award ceremonies in English, Spanish-speaking award ceremonies focus on seeking “the best” (5) in the industry and “excellence” (2) in the profession. Recognize (5) and gather (2) are the verbs most commonly used to describe these professional encounters: recognizing the work, campaigns or ideas, but also bringing the industry together. In addition to the term international, terms such as Ibero-American or Latino were found to describe some of these award ceremonies, highlighting “creativity” or “ideas” in Spanish. For example, El Sol (2023) is defined with these three concepts: “a quote from Ibero-American creativity. Of international scope. A multimedia award ceremony”. Regarding their promotors, the 85 award ceremonies from the sample are organized by 80 different entities. A total of 47.1% (40) of the promoters are professional associations, while 20% (17) are consultants and/or event organizers. Sixteen (18.8%) award ceremonies are promoted by magazines or news blogs. Private companies hold seven award ceremonies (8.2%), while exclusive media companies hold five (5.9%). Companies such as Produ and Content Marketing Institute, which manage the Fiap Awards and Content Marketing Awards, respectively, are media content providers. The United States (US) is the country with the most award ceremonies (44; 51.8%), followed by the United Kingdom (26; 30.6%), Spain (4; 4.7%), France (3; 3.5%), and Argentina (2; 2.4%). Belgium, Canada, Slovenia, South Korea, Mexico, and Switzerland hold only one award ceremony. For 12 of the award ceremonies analyzed (14.1%), the registration of pieces is free. The average registration fee for all 70 award ceremonies is 394 US dollars (USD) per piece. In 88.2% 468 V. Tur-Viñes et al. Advertising and creativity in award ceremonies: the challenge of transparent evaluation of cases (75), the price of attendance at the gala ceremony, including conferences and social events, is not provided. When provided, the price ranges from 50 to 500 USD. Five award ceremonies (5.9%) include a section exclusively for women. In the case of the ARF David Ogilvy Awards, the SeeHer Award category was created in 2021. El Ojo de Iberoamérica created the recognition +Women (+Creative Women and +Women Producers) in 2019. The Awards for Communications Excellence present the following awards: Top Women in Marketing Awards, PR Woman of the Year, and Top Women in Communications Awards. Cynopsis Digital Model D Awards honours campaigns that promote diversity and inclusion. Finally, 27 award ceremonies (31.8%) that endorse specific causes were identified, including training (Design and Art Direction awards, Publifestival and SMiLE Festival), culture (The Cannes Lions Awards), support for the advertising industry (Summit Awards and The One Show) and seven other events (35%) related to COVID-19 pandemic. Golden Drum and AICP Show do not accept submissions from Russian companies or brands. Ukrainian agencies have free registration at The Cannes Lions Awards 2022. El Sol and Events Industry Council Global Awards have sustainability and the sustainable development goals as their objective. Experiential in color promotes the interracial visibility of young people in the industry. The One Show supports the industry through different programs for inclusion and diversity, education, creative development and gender equality. 3.2. Categories, sub-categories, and awards A total of 2048 categories and 13 708 sub-categories were identified, corresponding to an average of 24.1 categories and 161.3 sub-categories per award ceremony (Table 2). The average number of sub-categories per category is 6.7. The award ceremony with the most categories is The Cannes Lions Awards (163), followed by IACA (106). The CIPREA, The EthicMark Awards, and IACA have only two categories. There are 36 award ceremonies without sub-categories in the sample (42.3%). The remaining 49 award ceremonies range from four sub-categories (The EthicMark Awards) to 4859 sub-categories (IACA). Table 2. Categories and sub-categories of the award ceremonies (source: created by authors) Award ceremonies 85 Absolute categories 1458 (71.2%) Special categories 344 (16.8%) Young talent categories 246 (12%) Total categories 2048 Sub-categories 13 708 Average categories per event 24.1 Average sub-categories per event 161.3 Average sub-categories by category 6.7 Award ceremonies with absolute categories 85 (100%) Award ceremonies with special categories 46 (54.1%) Award ceremonies with young talent categories 27 (31.8%) Award ceremonies with sub-categories 49 (57.6%) Award ceremonies with more than one award per category 27 (31.8%) Creativity Studies, 2024, 17(2), 462–474 469 There are 27 award ceremonies (31.8%) that award more than one prize in each category. Awarding three prizes (gold, silver, and bronze) is the most common practice. The total number of registered categories (2048) is broken down as shown in Table 2. Categories for young talent were identified in 27 award ceremonies (31.8%), with a total of 246 categories (representing an average of 9.1 categories for young talent). Award ceremonies such as the John Caples International Awards (JCIA) feature agency-sponsored categories. The categories have their own names in the Annual Markie Awards (Thinker, Pinnacle, etc.) and in the Design and Art Direction awards for young talent (BBC, Burger King, The Walt Disney Company, Duolingo, or Tesco). In the JCIA, there is no limit on the prizes or an obligation to give them. ADSTARS asks for the type of appeal of each submitted piece (fact presentation, humor, fear, sex, comparison, demonstration, recommendation, soft sell, hard sell, direct response, affection, and nostalgia). The semantic analysis enabled the identification of the most popular words among the names of the categories (Figure 1). These possible thematic clusters were identified: ■Media and actions: event (31), film (25), radio (21), outdoor (13), commercials (11), sports (11); ■Digital: mobile (25), influencer (22), online (22), technology (20), web (18), virtual (10); ■Differential feature of the endeavor: creative (36), innovation (29), branded (28), production (28), communication (24), direct (20), integrated (20), strategy (16), business (15), creativity (12), experiential (12), b2b (10), effective (10), interactive (10); ■Resources used: date (29), budget (8); ■Results: experience (28), excellence (22), engagement (13), impact (9), sales (8). Some ceremonies award prizes in identical categories, distinguishing between global campaigns (several pieces) and isolated actions (e.g. spots). Six award ceremonies emphasize their eminently Ibero-American character by keeping the names of 150 categories (10.3%) in Spanish: Caracol de Plata, El Ojo de Iberoamérica, El Sol, Fiap Awards, Publifestival, and SMiLE Festival. 151 77 77 73 69 68 59 58 47 47 43 42 41 0 20 40 60 80 100 120 140 160 design campaign marketing digital media social year adve rtising content video craft print brand Figure 1. Semantic analysis of category denominations (frequency of occurrence) (source: created by authors (after eliminating stop words and plurals, among others)) 470 V. Tur-Viñes et al. Advertising and creativity in award ceremonies: the challenge of transparent evaluation 3.3. Information regarding the jury The composition of the jury is public and transparent in 55 cases (64.7%), including full names and, sometimes, a professional profile and photograph. ANA) International ECHO Awards, IMC European Awards, and International Association of Business Communicators (IABC) Gold Quill Awards only mention the total number of (unnamed) members. Only 20 (36%) of the awards have different juries by category. The following only report on the procedure (without names): Annual Markie Awards, The Drum Awards for content, and WARC Awards for Media. The jury selection criteria appear in 11 cases (13%). It is common to justify their selection based on the length (5–10 years) of their international professional experience or prizes won. Thus, Cresta International Advertising Awards speaks of the “world’s most experienced and successful creatives” while El Ojo de Iberoamérica simply mentions their professional trajectory. Territorial or country representation is also important. For example, AME Awards selects its members divided into five regions: Asia–Pacific, Europe, Latin America, Middle East, Africa, and North America. Only in the case of Cresta International Advertising Awards is it mentioned that the jury is semi-permanent, which differentiates it from the rest of the award ceremonies. Two award ceremonies that accurately explain the selection criteria of the jury are IABC Gold Quill Awards and IACA. In both cases, 10 years of experience is required, whether you are a professional or university professor. Academic members with 5 years of experience are admitted if they are postgraduates or Doctors of Philosophy. Business owners must be directors or senior executives. The IABC Gold Quill Awards requires online training and availability for 2–10 hours in the first quarter of the year to qualify as a jury member. Meanwhile, the IACA selects jury members through a focus group consisting of consumers with higher education and specialized journalists with 5 years of experience. Summit Awards allow jury members to be nominated. The average number of members on the jury is 100. However, there is wide divergence in the values, with a standard deviation of 127.74. Data reveal that 38 (69%) award ceremonies have juries with fewer than 100 members. Six prizes (11%) have juries of 100–200 members, five (9%) have 200–300, and another five (9%) have 300–400. Only the Design and Art Direction has a larger jury, with 603 members. The information available makes it possible to analyze gender parity in 53 award ceremonies (62.3%) that total 5,096 members with 2,216 women (43.5%). In 19 award ceremonies (35.8%), a percentage of women greater than or equal to 50% is observed. Femvertising Awards and London International Awards are the exception, with an exclusively female jury, while SMiLE Festival has a jury made up of only men. The number of women chairing these juries is very low (in Clio Awards, 4 of 17 juries are chaired by women; in El Ojo de Iberoamérica, 5 of the 15). In The Cannes Lions Awards there is a certain commitment to parity, as 15 of the 28 juries are chaired by women. Juries are usually organized by category (20; 22%), although sometimes several sections are grouped together (in ADC Annual Awards, a jury evaluates packaging, and product design). Geographical regions (AME Awards) and student categories entail different juries. Only four award ceremonies (20%) have two different juries (ANDY Awards, El Sol, ARF David Ogilvy Awards, and Effie Awards).