What do advertising awards actually reward?

This paper examines the process of how industry experts assess advertising awards. Over 200 senior managers and directors from creative, account and planning departments, representing typical award jury pools, were selected to assess their own campaigns in terms of originality and strategy. They were also queried about whether their campaigns were worthy of winning creativity, and effectiveness, awards. Findings show that the campaigns deemed worthy of creativity awards recognition are usually highly original efforts. Yet, the same award winning work is rarely regarded as being highly strategic. This dichotomy may explain some patterns in the creativity research stream. Research utilizing creativity awards emphasizes that such advertisements primarily impact attention and memory, but are really no more persuasive than ordinary campaigns. So, is creativity all about breaking through the clutter? While the use of creativity awards may appear to be externally valid, better methods are needed to appropriately and accurately measure the full effect of advertising creativity. [PUBLICATION ABSTRACT