Winning Creative Awards is Not the Same as Doing Great Creative Work

Steve Henry wrote a good post on his Campaign blog this week (read it here) – his six tips for a successful career in advertising. Tip five is very interesting to me, because it tallies perfectly with the Sell! Sell! view of creative awards, and you don't often hear high profile industry people say this...

Only work at agencies that genuinely care about great creative work. (NB this is NOT the same as saying they want to win lots of creative awards. In fact, it’s usually the opposite,) They will all tell you they love great ideas, but it’s very easy to see if they’re lying. Look at the work on their website. Agencies that say they want to do better work are like people who say they’ll definitely cut down on their drinking.

Bingo.