95% Award Winner in Progress judging

On Tuesday night, me, Joescher and Mok were invited to attend the 95% latest batch of Award Winner in Progress students' final judging night. We had the chance to view the works before judges judging and to pick works that we thought were best 3 among those works.

There's a few things i noticed that i think worth mentioning here.

First, when we were required to look through a whole room full of hanging ads, we tend to skip those long copy ad. Visuals speaks louder than words. Compare ads that only takes less than 3 seconds for people to get it, and ads that take 3 minutes to read, i believe visual ads were definitely more effective in capturing attention. And that also explained why works that did well in award shows were mostly visuals ads.

I also noticed that most of us picked different works for our favourite, there not really any obvious winner. And when the judges announce the winners, none of my favourite works were selected. This reminds me that there's really no right or wrong in advertising. Everyone would have their own preference.

How often we waste time arguing whether the logo should be 90% smaller, or should we use Pantone 2747 blue instead of Pantone 2757 blue? That really doesn't matter. Have you seen your mom looking at an ad and says if the body copy is 1 point larger, i would buy the product? Or have you seen your dad looking at an ad and says if they use a darker blue for the logo then i will visit the website?

All this really doesn't matter. After all, no one really cares.

Just like the works on display for judging, some people will like some work, some might hate the same piece of work.

Unless your work is really spectacularly great. I believe not much people will disagree that the Adidas Vertical Football was a great idea, or not much people would really hate the Guinness noitulovE tvc.

Do expect people to disagree with you, or even hate your work if you are working in advertising. No point defending that using navy blue instead of sky blue is the right choice. After all, both of us could be wrong.

Instead, spend time on the big idea and the strategy will be more worthwhile.

That's just my personal viewpoint from the judging event. Joescher and Mok might realised different thing that they want to share here.