I Found The Answers To Last Week’s Poll Intensely Interesting.
When I set last week’s question I tried to think of a bunch of awards that might have a broadly similar appeal. I obviously got it wrong, but I have found the answers fascinating nonetheless.
The winners were the FA Cup and Booker prize with around a quarter of the votes each. This tells us that ITIABTWC is read by football fans and, I’d suggest, more copywriters than art directors (the very poor showing for the Turner Prize would indicate that ADs tend not to read this blog, or that they couldn’t really care less about the Turner. For what it’s worth, I don’t really care about the Turner, but then British modern art is in something of a trough).
My attempts to make the BAFTA and Olympic medal less glamorous obviously went a bit too far. What Olympic prize equates to the Booker, then? 400m Gold? Decathlon Silver? And which BAFTA would have been appropriate? Supporting Actor? Adapted Screenplay?
To the couple of people who wanted a Legion d’Honneur, are you French, or were you being mischievous?
And to the eight people (including myself) who fancy a Purple Heart, you are a shining beacon of nobility amongst those who would otherwise prefer a Cannes Grand Prix or D&AD Gold. Although, now that you can win one for being injured in a terrorist attack, maybe I should have chosen the Victoria Cross or Congressional Medal of Honour.
Talking of D&AD Gold and the CGP, I suppose their inclusion was the real point behind the question: are they as valuable to ‘us’ (whoever we are) as proper awards are? And I suppose the answer is yes. Both of them got 10% of the vote – only slightly less than a minor Oscar and the Nobel Prize for Economics (which, in case you didn’t know, comes with a monetary award of £900,000).
Now I understand that this is just a silly poll on an even sillier blog, but if that answer is genuine, I think it’s pretty sad. An Oscar, no matter how small, allows you to be the Oscar-winning Joe Bloggs for the rest of your life, and stick the gold man on your mantelpiece. The Nobel, likewise. You can’t do that with the two ad awards because (for those of you who wanted one) NOBODY GIVES A FUCK ABOUT THEM OUTSIDE THE TINY WORLD OF ADVERTISING.
OK, I might have made a mistake in allowing multiple choices, so perhaps some of you just chucked the D&ADG and the CGP in with the proper ones, but the point that was buried deep within the question was something about the insularity of advertising. No one ever wrote an obituary for a CGP winner unless they did something more significant in their lives (such as winning a Purple Heart, or even a Special Effects BAFTA).
So, for clarity, I’m going to run the poll again, except this time, you can only vote for one award, and I’ll try to select a few better choices.
Because, you know, I found the answers to last week’s poll intensely interesting.