Ad agencies tout their awards: “Look at all the Addys and Clios we picked up this year.” Awards are their accreditation; their mark of quality. Having been raised around advertising agencies, I accepted this as gospel truth.
Until I noticed that the campaigns getting the awards and accolades were for products that I don’t actually use: beer, soft drinks, lottery tickets, etc.
Lottery ads always show people doing ridiculous things with ridiculous amounts of money. The reality of using the product is going to a dingy convenience store for a cheap piece of paper and then disappointedly throwing that paper in the garbage on Saturday night. Beer ads show beautiful people in exciting places, but the reality is that most beer is drunk on a couch.
I pointed this out to an ad exec once, and to his credit, he admitted the truth: Sometimes we have to distract people from the product.
Rule of thumb: the better a product’s creative, the less remarkable the product actually is.