topics include Recruitment Marketing; Awards;
I was invited to the CIPD Recruitment Marketing awards a week or two ago, having been one of the judges in the first cull of entries.
It was a very different type of event from previous Guardian-run affairs, but a creditable first effort for the CIPD/People Management partnership. Was it just me, or did the Connaught Rooms lend it a feeling of 1970's Harrogate?
There was nothing retro about the entries, though, nor the judging process, which I found to be both thorough and well-run. Each entry had a detailed submission together with a collection of the relevant work to be viewed online. This was initially scored online and subsequently debated with fellow judges at a meeting to establish the initial shortlist. Much of the work was very impressive for its execution, some of it for its strategy and in some instances for the research that had gone in to provide the creative teams with some solid facts to go on.
On the night the multi-award winning, multi-media Army campaign ‘Start thinking Soldier' created some controversy The concern is not predominantly with the work itself, but that, given the likely multi-million pound budget involved, it is unfair to compare this work to the more typical recruitment-related marketing outputs which have budgets in the thousands.
This is not a new issue; it has been in evidence since the earliest Daily Express Awards of thirty years ago. There have also been a number of successful solutions over the years. There used, for instance, to be a COI category, where government funded advertising competed with other projects with similar budgets. This may be something to look at in the future, although with the COI budgets being trimmed, it may be less of an issue.
Few can argue with the importance of the Army campaign objective (although some do). It is clearly of considerable significance to ensure the continued strength and quality of our armed forces, particularly when we are currently playing a substantial role in a high-profile conflict.
In fairness this work should be recognised and lauded for what it is regardless of cost. The campaign is undoubtedly impressively produced, well targeted and engaging and it did its job....or so they said.
However, there is now evidence being highlighted on Ri5 that before the campaign began, Army recruiting offices were being inundated with people wanting to sign up, whether spurred by the desire to make a contribution to the defence of the realm or because of the economy. Thus the campaign may not have made such a significant contribution to achieving the annual recruitment target as was suggested.
Nevertheless, there are some impressive statistics - 80,000 online registrations, 1.5 million users - and without tracking back along hundreds of individual recruitment processes, which is clearly unrealistic, it is impossible to identify the precise impact of the campaign. But the same goes for virtually all of the entries.
Another frustration for many was that ‘Start thinking soldier' won so many categories - although this is not an uncommon occurrence in recruitment or any other award ceremony. The runners-up are always going to have their highly frustrated supporters - like the makers of Avatar, for instance, who, tipped to win a shelf-full of Oscar's, watched The Hurt Locker run away with virtually all of them.
The Army work was undoubtedly excellent, but there were a number of entries that were equal in quality of thought, execution and effectiveness (if not in emotion, significance or production values) which could also have won some of those categories and presented a more balanced celebration of the quality and diversity of work that is being generated. But then, that's seldom the way that awards ceremonies work.
In conclusion, here are a number of possible steps which could go some way to having a more level playing field in the future.
• Project costs do not currently feature as a formal part of the entry criteria, perhaps they should. This would help judges to weigh up the relative merits of entries against the resources committed to them.
• There could be a category for big budget stuff. It doesn't necessarily have to be a COI category as in the past. Alternatively each category could be divided into cost bands - although this could lead to a very long awards ceremony.
• There could also be a limit on the number of categories that a particular campaign or piece of work can be entered into.
• It may also be necessary to tighten up on validating statements of effectiveness. All too often good work is entered with thin or incomplete evidence as to its effectiveness. If all of the data isn't yet available, agencies should be encouraged to wait until it is and enter the following year.