Pencils are now fairly worthless
When I were a lad the D&AD Pencil was a very clear indicator of massive creative talent. To have one or two was great; to have any more than that was the kind of achievement reserved for a top 1% creative. Many brilliant copywriters and art directors missed out on that final confirmation of their talent because they were not given out lightly. I recall a few years where not only did a certain jury not award a Pencil, they even didn’t let any work into the Book.
So there used to be this kind of mythology about who won them, who missed out, why a great ad won for one thing but not something else. It was all kind of interesting and led to the D&AD Pencil being the one award a UK creative really wanted. I recall someone asking my old boss Mike Cozens if he thought a creative would prefer to win a Cannes Grand Prix (there only used to be four or five of those back in the mid 90s) or a D&AD Gold (Mike had two of those). He replied that the D&AD Gold would be the more coveted, partly because they were as rare as rocking horse shit, and thus jurors were loathe to give them to anything not 150% worthy.
Anyway, fast forward to this year and news reaches me that Pencils are no longer so rare (this may have been the case for a few years; I haven’t been paying attention). They now give a plain wooden pencil for anything that got in the book. so how many did they give out this year? Well according to this count the number is 747.
747.
Seven hundred and forty fucking seven.
Now, I get that the plain ones might be worth less than the yellow ones, the black ones or (Jesus wept) the fucking white one, but this now means that a D&AD Pencil has been utterly devalued. It’s like hyper inflation; the advertising equivalent of the Zimbabwean billion dollar bill. It’s become meaningless. When you flood the shelves of creative teams with that many Pencils they cease to become a respected badge of honour and instead take on the cachet of a Cannes Shortlisting. Perhaps they’ll make trophies for that soon.
I recently followed a Facebook chat about D&AD in general, in which the great Mark Denton, winner of several Pencils when they were hard to come by, added the perfect quote from The Incredibles: ‘When everyone’s super, no one is‘.
There’s a very simple reason for D&AD’s decline: money.
In short, they very nearly lost everything due to some unscrupulous boardroom dealings. They’d like us all to believe the introduction of more categories, more pencils, more events, more MORE! is an attempt to remain “relevant” but the reality is they just needed to make a lot of money very quickly. The good news is, D&AD’s books are now in rude health. The bad news is, it’s now little more than a pale pre-amble to Cannes.
That said, I think the question we have to ask to with all awards schemes is what the fuck are they really for? What are we supposed to take from them as an industry? How exactly do these week long circuses with a keynote from Martin Sorrell at the end really help to propel us forward? Personally, I feel increasingly alienated and (frankly) bored by all of them. Like politicians. By trying to appeal to the broadest possible audience, awards have lost all of their meaning and purpose. The meritocracy that existed has been replaced by these tedious industry love-ins, where we bleat on about the “power of creativity” to “change the world”. You see, it isn’t about just creating the best work you can anymore. It’s about standing in a room with a bunch of sub-TED Talking bullshitters and nodding about (for example) Life Paint.
Welcome to the new creative class.
Boom. Just fucking nailed it there son, take a bow.
wow. that’s just silly.
I remember the first decent assignment I got as junior in NYC was a mailer promoting the impending visit of the 1994 D&AD exhibit to the One Club. I did a bit of research and found out that the D&AD hadn’t given out a gold pencil in the previous two years. hence….drumroll…SEE THE AWARDS SHOW THAT HANDS OUT GOLD MEDALS LIKE THEY WERE ACTUALLY MADE OF GOLD.
Nailed it! Not anymore though, apparently.
‘Great’….I’ve always liked that word.
I remember when a post like this would’ve lit up the switchboard – bitchy, constructive or otherwise.
3 comments plus mine therefore proves your point, Ben. Nobody Seems to care anymore.
Well, we’re up to six (with this one), but I thought the same. Maybe fewer people are reading, too.
people are reading. i just feel like i’ve commented on this post 100 times before.
I think it can only be 76.
Man, the well is running dry.
You need to stop moderating comments mate. Makes it completely impossible to converse on this thing.
Writing, as always, is very good.
I’ve always moderated comments. It didn’t seem to deter chat in the old days. Then again I’m in another time zone, which might disrupt the flow somewhat.
I guess one thing to talk about is the actual work. Forgetting the “new and improved” pencil foolishness and looking at it through the lens of “In Book “”Nomination” and “Pencil” anyone have thoughts on how this year’s crop compares historically?
Fair enough. I’ll have a look.
I was fortunate enough to win a yellow pencil in the early noughties when it meant something. It now stands proudly in my downstairs loo, alongside a spattering of other worthless trinkets I accumulated over the years.
D&Ad is dead.
D&EAD
To me, the yellow pencil is still the yellow pencil.
Still the ultimate accolade.
And it’s still as hard as it was to get ‘in book’ (wood). Harder I might argue, as now there are no rules. And by that I mean before you kinda knew what you had to do, what boxes to tick to win one. But now, everyone is doing everything. It’s much harder to stand out I think.
I’ve won 5 wooden pencils in the past 2 years. And actually, it’s quite nice to get something for getting in book…(Cannes Bronze equivilant, not shortlist as suggested). But they’re still no substitute for yellow.
And actually, I don’t care about any other awards except D&AD. Still.
Anyway, boring myself.
My point is, yellow ones are still bloody hard to win.