Perilous Prizes: Do Awards Impede Progress?

Faye Dunaway by Terry O’Neill

'I don't deserve this award, but I have arthritis and I don't deserve that either.’
Jack Benny

I won my first prize at St Mary’s Primary School. 

Our teacher Mrs Hughes was an elderly Irish lady enamoured of times tables and using every inch of the exercise book. A strict disciplinarian, she was not afraid to issue reprimands with a wooden ruler to the rear. But I respected her for her fierce enthusiasms and academic ambition. She once had us 9-year-olds estimating the height of the church tower by measuring its shadow - a re-enactment of the experiment carried out on the pyramid at Giza by Thales of Miletus in the 6thcentury BC. 

One day Mrs Hughes invited us to participate in a speech competition. We would have to compose a short address about any subject that took our interest, and then deliver it to our assembled classmates.

The first challenge was to find a suitable topic. Football and telly were bound to be popular, and so I determined to expound on a more esoteric theme. I had always been interested in medieval history and had recently been given a colourful book about heraldry. It was a magical world of arms and armour; of argent, azure, mottoes and mantling. My book outlined the key terms and traditions, and explained that having a distinctive coat of arms emblazoned on your tunic or shield made tidying up after a battle much more efficient.

So I decided to share my new enthusiasm for heraldry. And to amuse my classmates I would draft my own coat of arms. True to the spirit of the ancient craft I needed to design something that summarised the things that most mattered to me. This took a certain amount of unaccustomed self-reflection. Eventually within a shield device I drew some crossed ping pong bats and a lump of bread pudding. Since most coats of arms also had some animal participation, I introduced Granddad’s bull terrier Chips supporting my shield on one side, and the Carroll family guinea pig Bubbles on the other. 

On the allotted day I delivered my oration with the confidence of youth, and Mrs Hughes awarded me first prize - as much I suspect for the abstruse subject matter as anything else. I confess I was rather pleased with myself.

My classmates, however, were less impressed, and mocked me unsparingly for weeks to come. Winning the competition had certainly not made me more popular. Nobody likes a smartarse.

I had learned for the first time that prizes have pitfalls. 

'Shoot a few scenes out of focus. I want to win the foreign film award.’
Billy Wilder

A recent analysis of Nobel Prize winners, published in the Journal of the Royal Society Interface (The Times, 22 April 2020), suggests that winning this most prestigious award can handicap scientists’ subsequent pioneering efforts. In the two years after receiving the Nobel Prize, winners’ research output, measured in citations, dropped by an average of 11 per cent, and took four years to recover. This phenomenon has been dubbed ‘the curse of the Nobel.’

'The Nobel prize has often been described as the kiss of death… You constantly get invited to all sorts of events, and even if you say no to 99 per cent of them, it can be very distracting.’
Venki Ramakrishnan, President of the Royal Society, winner of the 2009 Nobel prize in Chemistry

It seems that Nobel winners are befuddled by all the attention they receive. They can become complacent. And sometimes they are emboldened to explore esoteric areas of research that are of particular personal interest, rather than pursuing answers to the most pressing problems in their field.

‘Competitions are for horses, not artists.’
Bela Bartok

We may recognise ‘the curse of the Nobel’ in our own commercial world. We all love to award prizes, to celebrate success, to recognise and reward excellence. We like to think that accolades encourage healthy competition and worthwhile endeavour; that they set standards and educate the young.

But in my experience trophies can also prompt complacency, arrogance and affectation; and some of the awards events are sadly just festivals of conceit. Winners often develop a tendency to believe their own PR, ascribing success to their individual genius rather than to team collaboration. And some subsequently are less attentive to criticism, demanding to work only on the best briefs or their own pet projects. 

I wonder: Are prizes perilous? Would we win more if we awarded less? Would we just be better off without them?

'In the light of his love,
In the light of reflection.
What a world this world
Sometimes oh so it seems.
Eyes to the sky in the silver gift friendship.
Glittering prize
Is the price of lost love.’

Simple Minds, ‘Glittering Prize’ (C Burchill / J Kerr / M MacNeil / D Forbes)

 No. 285

The Good Shepherds: The Planners That Lead from the Back

Gustav Klimt, ‘Beech Forest’

Over the long summer holidays Martin and I had an appetite for adventure.

We played cricket in the back garden, made a den in the shed and caught grasshoppers in jam jars. We clambered across the patient branches of the old lilac tree and leapt over the high wire fence into the council-owned sports fields beyond - to join the Chergwins and Richards for makeshift Olympics: jumping in the sandpit, boxing without gloves, running against a cyclist. Technically we were not allowed to play in the council fields, and when occasionally a light aeroplane flew overhead with its lights blinking, we all dived face down onto the grass so as not to be identified in the photographs. 

Sometimes Granddad Carroll would take us for long walks in Epping Forest with Chips, his faithful bull terrier. Before we set foot into the vast ancient woodland, he told us to make arrows from twigs and place them periodically along the route – that way we could retrace our steps later, back to the safety of the car park and a hot sweet tea from the tartan Thermos. 

And so we set off, scampering past majestic oaks and tall lean silver birch trees, weaving in and out of pathways, diving into ditches, sprinting into clearings. The leaves and moss were soft underfoot, the light dappled from the canopy above. The forest seemed wild and infinite. There were no people, just us.

And every now and then Martin and I carefully placed our twig arrows on the ground to mark the way. We took this responsibility very seriously. The fate of us all depended on it.

Of course, Epping Forest was not quite so immense and treacherous as we imagined. And the twig arrows were surplus to requirement. Granddad knew exactly where we were and how to get back to the car. He just wanted to heighten our sense of adventure.

Granddad was the Good Shepherd, gently guiding us along the right path, steering us through the wild wood to safety – empowering and yet in control, without impressing the fact upon us.

I was reminded of our Epping Forest exploits when I was judging the APG Planning Awards last year.

Many of the case studies broke with convention. They didn’t relate the story of a brilliant analysis or blinding insight. These were not simple linear narratives of before and after. Rather they were tales of Planners quietly, conscientiously coaxing a concept through to fruition; or carefully, cautiously evolving a campaign so that it retained its freshness.

How do you navigate a bold new creative idea through an institution as bureaucratic and conservative as the United Nations? How do you convince a serious-minded enterprise like Greenpeace to adopt a light-hearted communication initiative? How do you maintain consumers’, and indeed Clients’, interest in long-running campaigns like Marmite, IKEA, Change4Life and Audi?

The job of the modern Planner requires that we focus on sustaining and developing an idea as much as having one in the first place. Planners must facilitate and negotiate, illustrate and substantiate. The role has evolved to embrace a wide range of functions: brand design and co-creation, arbitration and diplomacy, codifying and ‘show-running’. 

Nowadays Planners must learn to lead, not just from the front, but from the back. It is perhaps a less celebrated, more subtle duty. And one that requires a sensitive hand and an agile mind.

Like the knack for steering unruly children through the depths of the vast forest to safety.

'I hear her voice
Calling my name.
The sound is deep
In the dark.
I hear her voice
And start to run,
Into the trees,
Into the trees.

Suddenly I stop.
But I know it's too late.
I'm lost in a forest,
All alone.
The girl was never there.
It's always the same.
I'm running towards nothing
Again and again and again and again.

The Cure, ‘A Forest’ (R Smith / L Tolhurst / M Hartley / S Gallup)

No. 282

Chips & The Barking Creek Crisis

It was a long, long time ago. My brother Martin and I would accompany our ageing grandfather and his tortoise-shell bull terrier Chips, for walks by Barking Creek. This was a windswept, desolate place. We could play freely in the derelict gun emplacements, throw sticks for Chips to fetch, and cast messages-in-bottles out into the brackish water.

Chips was our widowed grandfather's soulmate. They went everywhere together.

One day by the Creek, Chips began scampering off into the distance and we chased after him. He kept running and we kept following. Soon our grandfather was left far behind, unable to keep up, and Chips kept running, and we kept following.

It seemed that Chips was on a break for freedom. Our grandfather would soon be bereft of his fondest companion. Martin and I began to panic.

I turned around and shouted to grandfather, now way back in the distance. "Grandpa, Chips is running away. What do we do?" ''Stop running," he cried. And we did. And Chips stopped too.

I guess the Barking Creek Crisis taught my brother and me a lesson about cause and effect. We thought Chips' running was the cause of our running. In fact the reverse was true.

It was a useful lesson. In life we often unwittingly confuse cause and effect. When we look at the world around us, we rage against what we imagine to be the causes of our problems, but frequently they are just the effects of them. And when we look at ourselves, we imagine we are at the centre of our own universes, influencing events, determining our futures. We tend to see ourselves as causes, when in fact we are effects. Because for most of us, most of the time, our behaviours, and even our beliefs, are the effects of other people's habits, tastes and preferences, of extraneous events, of conditioning, custom and convention.

It's a melancholy truth, but perhaps inertia is the driving force in much of our personal and work lives: the endless repetition of patterns that were laid down by others years before; theme and variation played out with infinite variety.

Working in a creative business we may think we are different; that we are the ultimate paradigms of free expression, that we are causing change on a daily basis. It's in the job title. But often much of a creative agency's activity entails translating, transplanting, adopting and adapting. Responding to events, to competitive action, to the predispositions of clients and customers, to the conventions established by our seniors and forebears. Executing the strategy, extending the campaign, evolving the idea. Much of the time we're just keeping the train on the tracks.

You might imagine our clients would wish for more than this. But often their primary focus is the management of consistent delivery and performance across time, geography, platform and outlet. They don't want to change the world. They're not looking for a New England. They’re just looking for another year of steady, incremental growth.

Now you may find these observations a little depressing. But I don't. For me they serve to illuminate the fact that genuine, original, creative thought is a rare and precious thing. Pure creativity, the kind that rewrites rules, reinvents language, changes minds and precipitates new behaviours, is not called into play very often, even in a creative industry. But when it is, there are few people and few businesses that can deliver it. Creativity's value is enhanced, not diminished, by its rarity.

Indeed, although much of commercial life is driven by conformity and consistency, systems and processes, creativity is becoming more, not less, important. Because, in a more confident economy, CEOs and shareholders are less and less satisfied with modest, incremental growth rates. They are setting more ambitious plans for the future. They are asking for step change innovation. Inevitably the strategies and behaviours that deliver steady, incremental growth are not fit for dramatic step change. And the people who are suited to keeping a train on the tracks are rarely capable of laying new lines.

As one of our founders, Nigel Bogle, has expressed it, 'growth needs space'. And to discover new space you need a pioneering spirit, a very particular combination of original thought, persuasive skill and mental stamina. Pure creativity is not just the best answer; it is the only answer.

If you're pursuing a creative career, you may be intimidated by the scale and congestion of the creative industry. But fear not. If you genuinely have the ability to ignore convention, to set aside case studies and best demonstrated practice; if you can find a way of changing the behaviour and belief of individuals, and thereby communities and cultures, you'll go far. Because there aren't many people like you around: People who dare to be different; to be a cause, not just an effect.

First Published: YCN Magazine 10/07/2014

No. 29

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