It’s almost time to award $100K to the winner of the Radio-Mercury awards (no relation to the company behind this blog).
And what is the reason-to-be for these awards?
According to the website:
The Radio-Mercury Awards were established in 1992 to celebrate and strengthen the successful marketing partnership among Radio broadcasters, advertisers and agencies. The power and effectiveness of Radio is apparent when great creative is put to work in the marketing of a product or service. Radio-Mercury Award winners in all categories set a standard of excellence for others to follow.
Now I don’t know what the qualification criteria is for these awards (and interestingly, those qualification criteria don’t seem to be on the website!), but what do you want to bet that quantifiable proof the spots actually moved product isn’t one of those qualifications?
Nobody loves to win awards for creativity more than ad agencies and nobody likes to hand out those awards more than folks who look to those agencies to place buys.