Went to the Addy Gallery last night. Addy’s are the ad industry awards. Gallery night is like opening night at an art gallery (and in fact it was at the R.K.Bailey Studios at University of Tampa). But the exhibits are some of the submissions for the local (Tampa Bay) Addys.
The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly.
Once again, most of the best work was done by students. They turned out some posters that were completely ready for prime-time.
The two big elements of developing an effective marketing piece are 1. concept; 2. execution. Many of the student submissions made it on both points. My favorite was a poster for the Clearwater Jazz Holiday. Unusual and very effective use of color, great composition – everything tied together and said GREAT JAZZ.
The Good.
I can’t say the same about the professional (agency) submissions.
Most of them, it’s true, were well executed. That is to say, considerable talent went into the artistic elements – color scheme, arrangement of elements, etc. There was lots of eye catching work.
That wasn’t true of all of them. There was one series of ad submissions which was so bad, it could have been turned out by an amateur using Publisher. I dunno, maybe it was. Someone’s brother-in-law working as an in-house agency. I can’t imagine any agency putting their name on work that bad. There were quite a few others that were seriously flawed from a design standpoint.
The Ugly.
But even the majority of submissions on display, once you got past the “ooh” and the “ah” of them, you look at what is the message they are getting across, really?
One campaign with lots of submissions was for the first hot sauce created by prison inmates. Really. And that was the whole point of the campaign. So let me get this straight…. I’m supposed to rush right out and buy this hot sauce because it was designed by felons?
The Bad.
Probably it’ll win Best of Show and I’ll have egg on my face.