WEEKLY COMMENT: Award ceremonies: why all the fuss?

Of course, the wondering lasts barely longer than a second. The answer is: so the organisers can make a few bob. But what value is there for the attendees, the nominees, and the industry at large? Netimperative has an editorial policy of not covering award winners - chiefly because it has no say over who won the award, the criteria by which they were judged, and who exactly was entered. This, aside from being sat on a half-full table, was the problem with the BIMAs.

As each set of category finalists was announced, you wondered about many things. How did they know how to enter? How much great work people without a marketer interested in such things were doing? Thoughts turned to the loose, warm and cuddly concept that to do great work is reward enough and that genuinely clever people are the ones least inclined to talk about it.

Such risible idealism has little place at an awards ceremony of course and even less so when one's own company is in the initial stages of organising its very own. All last night this correspondent wondered how the Netimperative awards - under the working title of the GIMPs (Great Interactive Media Prize) - could avoid the 'creepiness' associated with all the others. There's a very real fear that there is no way to avoid it.

Aside from viewing every web page, iTV application, and mobile treatment designed in the last year, it is impossible to cover everything. It is also impossible to design criteria for awards that are both specific and generic enough to make them relevant. What does 'best' mean? Should large compete with small? How on earth does a Shiatsu beat a Springer Spaniel at Crufts?

Naturally, one could look at the initial objectives of a campaign or application and measure the work against those. But what if the objective is best met by, shock horror, not being innovative? What if the correct treatment is to design a site so basic, you'd be hard pushed to tell it from an Etch-a-Sketch? To be simple, after all, is often the best and hardest thing to do.

The idea of online voting is a tempting one - by opening up the nominations or final judging to the world at large you could conceivably arrive at a People's Champion. But for anyone who's ever managed to sit through the 'People's' television awards commonly hosted by Trevor McDonald, it's easy to see that 'the people' rarely know best. Lest we forget, Will Smith is the planet's biggest selling rap star.

So, how to do it? Perhaps in an industry like ours it is safer to assume that the people know what it takes to do great work and have a deeper understanding of just what represents an excellent solution - perhaps not. But anything to lessen the discomforting exclusivity inherent in an awards event and the disturbing aroma of insular self-congratulation is truly welcome. Bah humbug.

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