The awards blind spot

Visibility isn't the same as value.

While marketers don't consciously shortlist agencies based on trophy counts, awards create a visibility advantage that subtly influences which agencies get considered. That's not hyperbole — it's what the data reveals about market distortion.

According to WARC, of nearly 5,000 creatively awarded campaigns, only 20% also won effectiveness awards. Just 5% were considered "highly effective."

That's a problem. The industry visibility loop is well-established: awards lead to press coverage, conference speaking slots, and general awareness. Agencies that win get surfaced. Agencies that don't, don't.

What's more, the kinds of work that win are increasingly unrepresentative of the kind that performs. A strong TikTok series, a brutally effective landing page, a multi-market CRO campaign — these rarely make it onto the case study circuit.

And yet, this is the kind of work that drives results. If 80% of the industry's most decorated creative doesn't deliver commercial outcomes, then the most effective work is hiding in plain sight — just not in the places the industry has been trained to look.

When recognition stops reflecting results

The disconnect between awards and effectiveness isn't accidental — it's structural.

Once a credible proxy for creative effectiveness, the awards circuit now feels more like theatre than forecast. System1's longitudinal data backs it up: campaigns that once delivered twelve times the effectiveness of the average ad now deliver just four. The multiplier has shrunk, but the show goes on.

That shift reflects a fundamental change in what gets celebrated. The work has changed — and so has what counts as award-worthy. A decade ago, short-term tactical activations made up less than 5% of creative award winners. Today, it's over 40%.

The industry, in effect, has retooled itself to celebrate disposable brilliance: fast, flashy, fleeting. Work designed to impress a jury, not move a market.

"We haven't entered any of the more famous award schemes this year, because we don't think those schemes have ever recognised or taken those kind of campaigns or brands seriously," says Dan Appleby, managing director at Drummond Central.

That bias matters because it sidelines work that doesn't speak the language of awards. Yet those campaigns are the ones that speak most clearly to audiences.

For many independents, awards represent a fundamental mismatch with priorities. "We haven't entered awards because that would be a distraction from the main job of YoY growth and increasing marketing effectiveness," says Gasp!'s Elliot Connolly. "We want to grow the CCS marketing team headcount, not the number of awards on shelves."

His reference point is a B2B client in the retail operations sector — CCS McLays, an independent Welsh company that's just broken £100m turnover for their best-ever year. "A lot of our clients are mid-market or challenger brands, so the focus has to be on outputs linked back to business performance. Every £ is being sweated over, awards feel like a luxury."

"We haven't entered any of the more famous award schemes this year, because we don't think those schemes have ever recognised or taken those kinds of campaigns or brands seriously," says Dan Appleby, managing director at Drummond Central.

That bias matters because it sidelines the kind of work that doesn't speak the language of awards. Yet those campaigns are the ones that speak most clearly to audiences.

Take their work on Greggs' first-ever Christmas TV ad: built on a modest budget and fronted by Nigella Lawson, it traded in cultural charm rather than sentiment. No blockbuster scale. No cinematic gloss.

On just 10% of the category's average spend, it delivered 1,500+ pieces of media coverage and drove a 2.5% lift in quarterly sales. For a £2bn brand, that represents serious commercial traction.

Nigella launches the Greggs Christmas Menu | Drummond Central

"The work isn't purpose driven. Or particularly 'innovative'. And it doesn't have sustainability or diversity at its heart, although they're always important considerations in our work," Appleby adds.

It didn't pick up awards, but it achieved what most celebrated work only claims to: it shifted perception, moved product, and delivered genuine business growth.

The blind spot

This creates a fundamental disconnect: the most visible agencies aren't necessarily the most effective ones.

Awards don't just confer prestige. They create momentum. Winning generates headlines, invites to speak, inbox traffic. A shelf full of trophies is shorthand for credibility — but it's a narrow kind. One shaped by aesthetics, narrative arc, and the ability to compress commercial creativity into a jury-friendly showreel.

The scale of investment in this visibility is staggering. According to Justin Billingsley, author of Brandflow and former chief marketing officer at Publicis, awards could cost the industry well over a billion dollars annually. For the six largest holding companies, that represents roughly 21% of combined net profit — resources that could otherwise go toward talent, innovation, or client work.

That's fine, so long as you understand what's missing.

The problem centres on visibility bias. There's no Grand Prix for a perfectly tuned landing page. UX overhauls, loyalty nudges, subtle shifts in purchase timing — these don't make it into sizzle reels. But they absolutely show up in the numbers.

Will Hamnett of The News Movement highlights this imbalance: "It's a bit of a chicken and egg scenario. You can't win the big accounts without the proof, but you can't get the proof in the first place."

As Truant's George Bartlett and Charlie Lindsay put it, "juries don't usually award advertising that's just a bit of fun" — even when that fun drives millions of organic views and real product interest.

Their Royal Caribbean Eurovision stunt, delivered on a ham sandwich budget, sparked genuine brand heat but barely registered with the trades or award juries.

The same goes for strategic repositioning work that drives real business transformation. Danish Chan of Untangld repositioned STAND+ from a shoe for nurses to a performance shoe for all frontline workers, seeing the business increase direct sales by 122% in just 6 months. No voiceover. No festival slot. Just strategic rigour and commercial results.

Niki Jones of Southpaw delivered similar outcomes with Chambord's "Make the Moment Magnifique," achieving a 53% sales uplift across key markets by creatively applying behavioural science. "It wasn't a big campaign, rather led through social and retail, with challenger brand budgets," she says. Designed for social and retail, not broadcast, it achieved commercially literate creativity doing its job.

For eight&four's Christopher Slevin, effectiveness means tangible change: "Our Heroes Beneath campaign for Sky Ocean x WWF inspired the nation to learn about, fall in love with and force the government to protect the heroes beneath our seas and oceans. The best result was getting the government to make the addition of five new highly protected marine areas."

Consider Drummond Central's "Gameshow" campaign for Greggs. It encouraged loyalists to explore new products, and helped push 2024 revenues to £2.014 billion — up 11.3% from the previous year. Greggs ended the year #1 in Consideration and #2 in Purchase Intent, outperforming global fast food giants on a fraction of the spend.

None of that translated into award entries. It wasn't built for juries. It was built to work.

That's the blind spot: when success looks unremarkable, the market doesn't see it.

How to spot real effectiveness

Moving beyond awards-based thinking means asking different questions entirely.

If effectiveness is slipping through the cracks of the awards machine, it follows that the criteria for discovering and identifying agencies may need a rethink. Awards still matter for team morale and creative ambition, but they've become disconnected from the business problems they once helped solve.

Essential questions to ask:

• "What impact has your work had for your clients?"
• "How have the businesses you've worked with grown since working with you?"
• "What are the biggest problems you have solved for your clients?"
• "Can we talk to some of your clients about what it's like to work with your agency?"
• "What's your strongest independent verification of impact?"
• "How were your other clients able to demonstrate your value to their boards?"
• "What work are you really proud of?"

That last question is particularly revealing. If agencies only mention award-winning work, that tells you something about their priorities.

Dan Appleby of Drummond Central points to more formal validation: "We're one of only 30 UK agencies to have been accredited by the IPA for Effectiveness."

Redefining creative effectiveness

For a glimpse of what an alternative might look like, consider The Chutes. Launched in partnership with …Gasp!, The Marketing Meetup, System1, and Tracksuit, it's designed specifically to recognise "work that works" — campaigns that drive both long-term and short-term impact.

What makes it different? It's free to enter, open to all regardless of budget or brief size, and celebrates effective work monthly rather than annually. Most importantly, the judging process is rooted in real-world results. System1's 'Test Your Ad' platform evaluates campaigns across over 100 categories for commercial success, while Tracksuit measures ongoing brand health and perception changes over time.

The first winner — Whyte & Mackay and their agency Mr President's 'Well Earned' campaign for The Woodsman Whisky — scored 4.8 stars on System1's rating scale and delivered double-digit volume growth immediately, with sustained growth continuing into year two. It increased mental availability, won more shelf space from retailers, and generated 142% growth in new customers.

Winners share their stories on The Chutes podcast, offering practical insights rather than acceptance speeches. No confetti, just working case studies on what actually delivered growth.

Whyte & Mackay ‘Well Earned’ campaign for The Woodsman Whisky | Mr. President

None of this is a dismissal of awards in totality. At their best, they unite teams, sharpen creative ambition, and offer moments of pride. But as a filter for agency selection — or worse, as a proxy for business performance — they mislead more than they illuminate.

If marketers want work that works, they'll need to look beyond what gets applauded. That means discovering and identifying the agencies solving hard problems in less visible ways: optimising customer journeys, increasing lifetime value, building long-term brand equity from the bottom up. These things rarely come with fanfare — but they come with results.

The challenge isn't just about valuing different work — it's about finding it in the first place. When industry visibility is dominated by awards coverage and conference circuits, the most effective agencies can remain hidden beneath the surface.

The agencies doing this kind of work are rejecting theatre in favour of results. They're staffed by senior talent, structured around outcomes, and incentivised by what clients actually care about: business growth, customer behaviour, sustainable returns. And increasingly, they're not the ones standing on stage.

Awards represent one version of success — and a shrinking one at that. As marketers recalibrate their priorities, they'd do well to recalibrate their signals, too.

Because the work that wins awards isn't always the work that works. And the work that works is busy delivering results while someone else is polishing a case film.

Natasha Randhawa, newsletter editor.

DCA is a marketing intelligence service helping brands make smarter decisions and connections. Through practitioner-led insights and transparent matchmaking, we connect forward-thinking marketers with specialist independent agencies.

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