I’ve been asked plenty of times, by both prospective clients and other copywriters, what I think about awards for copywriting.
Honestly, they’re something that I never gave any thought to at all for a long time. When you’re a junior copywriter, you’re more concerned with paying your bills than winning awards.
These days, when I think about entering to win a Yellow Pencil Award or the like, I end up thinking about Leonardo DiCaprio…
When this article was first written, Leonardo DiCaprio had received four Oscar nominations.
The first of these was in 1994, when Leo (me and the big man are on first name terms, clearly) was in his late teens.
Most of them were for Best Actor, and related to films he worked on with iconic directors like Scorsese and Spielberg.
Spawning countless memes in 2014 when he failed to win (AGAIN), Leo’s empty Oscar cabinet was long regarded by some as one of the biggest snubs in motion picture history.
He got pretty good at that ‘losing face’.
What does any of this have to do with freelancing?
Good question, and one that any sane person should be asking by now.
At some point in their career, most copywriters will think about whether or not they should be submitting their writing to panels in the hopes of winning awards or accolades.
Of course, very few of those who do enter will actually go on to become award-winning copywriters. For those who are shortlisted and lose out, or don’t even get shortlisted at all, it’s easy to deduce that you’re doing something wrong. Stop that right now.
It’s actually far more likely that the victors just happen to encapsulate something that’s en vogue at that moment in time.
Take, for example, this BK Bot campaign by Burger King that won a D&AD Wood Pencil. There’s no denying that it’s an innovative campaign, but it’s not strictly “good copywriting”.
The campaign won because it keys into wider concerns about AI replacing copywriters and other creative careers. Fellow copywriter Caroline Gibson has a nice piece about that here.
So what’s the answer? Copy what award winners are doing? No. That wouldn’t work here because the message has already been conveyed.
Copying award winning work always ends up looking derivative and unoriginal. Remember how played out flat design and the chatty style of copywriting made famous by Innocent both became…?
Copywriting for awards alone is exhausting and unfulfilling
If you’re still not convinced, go and take a look at some past award-winning designs, copywriting or creative campaigns.
They almost always seem tired and unoriginal because they’ve been so widely imitated since. The winners have, in most cases, long since gone on to create something else that feels new and fresh.
A willingness to push boundaries is essential for any creative. Especially those in agencies, where briefs asking for “outside of the box thinking” are as commonplace as overpriced flat whites.
But there are certain types of commercial copywriting in which trying to reinvent the wheel is not just unnecessary, but can be actively detrimental to a project.
Knowing when to work from best practices and when to do something different is a vital tool in any great copywriter’s arsenal.
Let’s get back to Leo for a minute.
You get the feeling that maybe the general public cared more about his Oscar snub than he ever did.
Entire articles have been written about how he’s too cool to win an Oscar, but he never changed the type of film he does in the hopes of winning one.
Integrity and consistency are clearly important to DiCaprio and, if you ask me, that’s a mindset we can all drink to.
DiCaprio finally won an Oscar for his portrayal of Hugh Glass in The Revenant in 2016. During filming he endured temperatures of -30°C, ate copious amounts of raw liver, battled illness and suffered through 3AM wake-up calls.
The experience was so intense that he took an extended break from acting, returning in 2019 to appear in Once Upon A Time In Hollywood. DiCaprio’s portrayal of fading TV star Rick Dalton earned him another Best Actor nomination.
He didn’t win.
All of which begs the question…
Can (copywriting) awards do more harm than good?
I’m not saying that awards are a bad thing. Whether he would admit it or not, an Oscar was probably a pretty good motivating tool that kept DiCaprio hungry to make great films.
If the desire to one day win a D&AD Black Pencil, Webby or .Net award motivates you then I wish you the best of luck.
What I’m getting at with this post is that changing your style in the hopes of achieving a certain type of critical success is a bad move.
On the off chance you manage to pull it off, you’ll get a beautiful little trophy that makes for a nice paperweight. And it’ll help you get better SEO out of the term ‘award-winning copywriter’ or whatever.
But there’s also a good chance that you might:
- Struggle to work with your new would-be client base, because their requirements are so different from what you’re used to
- Fail to live up to big expectations, even if they’re only your own
- Find that people won’t contact you in the first place because they’re scared you’ll be too expensive
I can’t imagine any of that being what you were picturing when you became a copywriter, designer or creative producer. Just keep doing your thing, don’t stop learning, graft hard and success will follow.
It doesn’t matter if copywriting awards don’t.