Campaign Media Awards
This is a #mediapositive to every single person who has delivered work good enough to be recognised by their peers.
Congratulations to all agencies who achieved shortlists and to all the individuals involved in the planning and delivery of the campaigns and those involved in writing and entering awards, it's always harder than you imagine, and time seems to go faster than the free drinks at a media party.
But with 186 Entries within media agency category
96% of all entries have come from media agencies within the Top 20 (as classified in Campaign School report billing 2023)
Just 3.7% has come from agencies outside of this 6 Agencies :
Total Media, Bountiful Cow, Yonder, Dentsu X, Flourish Direct Marketing & Craft Media London
As a small agency, getting your work through the volume of entries from the Top 20 means that this recognition means so much more
The truth is it is harder to cut through and at £500 an entry and £7,000 a table even entering these awards are a huge investment for smaller agencies and one that they have to be super selective at making.
We also want to #mediapositive to Spark Foundry for Benriach, TotalMedia for Greene King, Propersnacks (for yourselves), M&C Saatchi for The Ben Kinsella Trust, 7stars for Ka Drinks, Goodstuff for Gu.
Six specific entries out of 200
Six entries with a reported grand total media investment across 2023 of less than £4m
Versus the pool of over £2bn - and that's just the stuff that a certain ad spend tracking tool we all know (and love….) picks up.
We want to raise a glass of Benriach ;) to you specifically and the teams involved in these, because you were starting with a huge disadvantage. And despite that you got a shortlist, and managed to get a panel to see the great work you did beyond the brand name on the entry.
So what's that huge disadvantage? You are not spending millions every month, and therefore don’t enjoy that latent awareness within the judging room, and the familiarity that comes from having eight or nine figure media budgets (and the creative resource to match). You don’t in short, have availability bias.
We too have been guilty of this in the past, drawing on the deeply woven tapestry of knowledge and emotion regarding a significant brand (age, adspend and recency being some of the factors) rather than trying to be stoic and deliberate about the work in front of us.
And this surely has to be impacting the shortlist of the ‘under £250k’ category: Walkers, Lloyds, Sky, Channel 4 & Audible are all shortlisted, brands which have spent heavily (and consistently) outside of this ‘campaign’ who are being compared to Ben Kinsella Trust, Mitchum deodorant & Gu.
If you are fighting with these giants and holding your own you should really celebrate your achievements
At Craft we passionately believe good strategy drives business growth and should be available to all clients, not just the biggest spenders in media. And maybe we need to find another way to surface and celebrate the real depth of planning and effort that happens on the longtail and not just for the already highly familiar and famous.
Well done to everyone involved in every entry, and I wish you all the best of luck come the 18th April.
But a particular well done to those whose cream has risen to the top in challenging circumstances - we see you especially and we tip our Crafty hat. #mediapositive