Awards are an odd feature of the creative industry. They’re highly visible, widely celebrated, and often treated as shorthand for quality. At the same time, many clients view them with a degree of scepticism, unsure how closely trophies relate to real-world outcomes.
That scepticism is understandable.
”We enter awards as a form of discipline.”
At Insight, we’ve never entered awards simply for recognition. We’ve entered them as a form of discipline. A way of testing whether the work stands up when assessed by people who don’t know the client, the context or the backstory.
In that sense, awards are less about winning and more about benchmarking.
We tend to favour awards that focus on effectiveness, rigour and outcomes, rather than surface-level creativity. Work that looks clever but doesn’t change anything is easy to admire and easy to forget. Work that solves a real problem, shifts perception or drives action is harder to do, and harder to judge. Those are the awards we find most useful.
We also look outward rather than inward. Entering global awards exposes the work to broader comparison and higher standards. It forces an honest question: does this work still hold up when measured against international best practice, not just what’s familiar locally?
That external lens matters. It keeps complacency in check and reinforces the importance of clarity, strategy and execution working together in the real world.
When we do win, it’s reassuring. It tells us the thinking is sound and that the work is being recognised by independent experts who see a great deal of work across markets and categories. We do acknowledge those wins. We tag awarded work and share the news. It’s part of being transparent about what the work has achieved.
But we’re careful not to let awards become the point.
Awards don’t replace trust, relationships or delivery. They don’t build capability on their own. But in some contexts they do help reinforce credibility, particularly for new clients, new markets or high-stakes work where independent validation matters.
“Awards don’t replace trust, relationships or delivery.”
For clients, the real value of awards lies in what sits behind them. Evidence that the work has been tested. That it’s not just creative, but effective. That it meets standards beyond personal taste or internal opinion.
Used well, awards play a constructive role. They act as a sense-check, a learning tool, and occasionally a reminder that the fundamentals still matter. Strategy first. Clear thinking. Purposeful creativity. Work designed to do a job.
When awards stop serving those purposes, they stop being useful. We’ve always tried to keep that balance in mind. Use awards to sharpen judgement, reinforce standards and build confidence, then move on. The work, and the relationships behind it, are what endure.
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50 years forward
- Lesson from 50 years
External benchmarks are useful when they sharpen standards and reinforce what effective work looks like. - What that means for you today
In a noisier market, independent benchmarks help keep judgement honest, and expectations high.
