:: Life on Planet Dan-E ::

:: Tuesday, August 09, 2005 ::

:: Filtering out all the Crap ::

As much pressure as our group may feel they're being place under, there are moments of reprieve that comes in the form of other people's work. An assignment given to us by The Ron was to go all the major advertising awards websites, evaluate the quality of the work, and see if we can detect any trends.

I admit, I kinda half-assed it since most of us were under the agreement that it was B.S. assignment but having done what we did, at least for me, it was equal parts inspiring and frustrating. Inspiring because t occasionally, we did see bits of what anyone could call good work. Frustration because lot of the stuff that seems to win awards is recycled material. Not that it's necessarily a bad idea, but it's just not a great one and repeating the idea just dilutes the effect.

Even Ron, when talking about a campaign for bubble gum done by an MAS student that won an award, said that while he was glad the someone brought the award home, he wasn't exactly enamored with it. This is apparently more common than we realized and it's something the he himself dealt with in the past as a judge for some of these competitions. Looking at the work on the student boards, there's a lot of stuff that looks like it's been done before. One campaign done by a person who graduated last quarter is pretty much a direct rip-off of something done by another student a few quarters before. The only real difference is that his is for Starbucks Liquer and the previous iteration was for Red Bull. Unfortunately, it's not something that's exclusive to student work either.

So obviously looking at this stuff in the midst of working on our books makes for a few moments of aggravation. There's stuff that we want to do that might be a little edgy, highly creative, and never been seen before but we're faced with the reality that the people who evaluate our books at the agencies can sometimes judge them on whether or not there's any commonality with the award winning stuff they also see in the annuals. But at the same time, when we see what's out there, it's relief to discover that most of us are capable of better stuff.

Compared to most of the other students, I've never been one to get all excited over upcoming competitions. I used to have dreams of Clios and Grand Lions but that's been absent in the last year and a half. I couldn't give an exact reason at the time other than something about them always seemed a little "off" and now I see why. I remember letting out a silent groan when we got this assignment but I see now why The Ron made us do this. It's going to be interesting to see where he takes the class from here.

:: Miscellaneous Ramblings by Dan-E at 9:40 AM [+] :: | 0 comments
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