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Media Growth Trends
The second annual Econsultancy report on Media Growth Trends is an in-depth continuation of last year’s study, in partnership with The Jordan, Edmiston Group, Inc. The goal for this report was to capture senior media, information, marketing services and technology executives’ outlook on growth opportunities and key challenges as the industry continues to respond to dramatic changes in the media and technology landscape.
Alternatively, see our JUMP Magazine: Issue two or JUMP Magazine: Issue one.
We Do Not Have Titles at Little Devil Media
26 June 2001 00:59am
One day,... when the Internet is taken seriously by the mainstream media we will have come along way. 'Multi Award Winning', 'Cutting Edge' will be a thing of the past.
You see we bring ourselves undone time and time again, because we like to talk about ourselves too much, instead of letting our work speak for us. We get into a rush of trying to hard to impress, that we forget just what it is that we are being paid to do!
I want to stop it now!
Boycott all awards for 'design' and stop feeding these media companies promoting them, because most of the 'winners' are actually losers in my mind.
Why? Well nearly every 'worthy' award you can win, you have to enter and pay money to do so or at least promote the hell out of yourself to even stand a chance. You have to waste valuable time preparing and for what?
We should spend this time shouting lunch for the media and for those few that understand the Internet, try to pass on this knowledge to the press.
The other day I looked through a short list of tenders for a rather large project and every single one of them spent at least 2 pages talking about themselves, to be honest it was quite sickening.
Surely we must know a better way of showing our skills than trying to prove them all the time. I never want to be put into the same class as Ad Agencies, who after all cthese years are begginning to be found out.
I am a partner in a small Tasmanian firm that one day hopes to be successful, it will take time and hard work but it will happen one day, why because our company spends its time working testing, not entering awards not telling clients why, but testing them with why not?
One last thing, if I ever have to read another article from an industry expert that runs a company that loses millions of dollars a month I will start an execution list. They are the big losers of tyhe economy and I cannot wait for every loser to go down, so we can start getting on with making this thing work! Who the hell do these people think they are?
Lets bring some respect back to what we do by actually doing what we do day in day out. There are plenty of opportunities for success speaking for itself and it makes for alot better reading!
CEO at Econsultancy
26 June 2001 07:32am
I agree that we should spend less time entering awards and more time creating work that speaks for itself and is worthy of awards. The ceremonies and the attending PR are likely to remain an engrained part of the media circus and have the potential to be positive, if handled correctly, in as much as they celebrate and bring attention to new media work and the people involved.
There seems to be some suspicion in the industry (at least in the UK) that perhaps these awards are not always run as fairly and independently as they should be. This needs to be countered if the industry is not to further lose face.
Looking from the outside, things certainly seem suspicious. The UK BIMA awards are taking place this week. Comparing the shortlist (http://www.bima.co.uk/awards2001/shortlist.htm) with the judges (http://www.bima.co.uk/awards2001/judges.htm) one finds remarkable similarities.
My own experience is not encouraging either. This site was entered to the recent NMA (New Media Age - a trade publication) Effectiveness Awards at a cost of £76.38. We were not expecting the site would win, or even get shortlisted, but we did hope that the judges might at least look at the site as they are precisely the kind of people the site is targeted at. As you need to register to use the site, they were issued them with log in details. And guess what? The judges never visited the site.
Within 6 months of launch the site has attracted an active registered user base almost 50% the size of NMA's circulation with an average cost of customer acquisition of just £1.80.
So I wonder, is it right that you should pay and not even be judged? Did I just miss some devious small print on the entry form? Or is it that NMA won't consider sites that compete in any way with theirs? In the end, the majority of the winners were big brands (with correspondingly large advertising budgets). Coincidence?
Maybe we should just accept that this is the reality of the way things are, and rather than rage against the machine, get on with producing quality work as you suggest?