Award winning work brings notoriety to both the individuals that worked on the projects and both the agencies they work for. It’s the shiny object on the shelf that makes clients think you know what you’re doing. If you have both big name clients and big awards, you’re a big deal. All too many times though, I’ve met creatives who’s books look good, they have some awards and then I come to find out they barely were a part in the projects that won. Or maybe they just were in the room and took some credit, because once they are given a project to take leadership of, it’s a scary sight. I’ve always aspired to do work that is both smart/attention getting which is achieved by creativity/a smart strategy and also that looks on point in terms of aesthetics/style. When that all combines it’s great work that get’s noticed and probably will snag some awards along the way. In that goal of great work within the agency world, i’ve been fortunate enough to be recognized in some competitions both nationally and locally. One of those has been the American Advertising Awards. This year due to an agency move, a lot of unsold really creative stuff and of course all the chaos/crazy deadlines our agency didn't enter. Not a big deal, we’ve been successful in showing our creative thinking in the past and already have a good relationship with local universities for scooping up the young talent and they take some time to enter (it was chaos at entry time, straight chaos).
I’ve often thought of entering myself as Jordan Fretz Design since my freelance business has been growing, but didn’t think it would benefit me much overall. I’ve entered other competitions that we typically wouldn’t enter as an agency before, but the Addy’s seemed more like a local agency thing and less of a one man shop thing. This year my thoughts changed a bit, I had a few successful projects, but maybe none more than my work for Ben Daniel Dentistry. I was going to talk about all what I do for him, but I may do that later since this is already way to wordy and I’ve already lost everyone who started reading.
Anyway, I don’t want to go into too much detail on the work itself since I already posted that on a blog you can scroll down to see, but I had a simple disruptive idea during primary voting time to promote his dentistry in the midst of all the political signage. The signs were standing all down Woodruff road by his office and the backup of traffic there made them easily visible (even if your texting while driving :). The campaign brought in more than ten new patients when first setup and just last week they had four more patients credit the campaign I was told. Anyway, such a successful campaign with a simple idea made a good entry I thought for the Addy’s. Sure, I had a few more impressive design projects I did on the side, but as far as ideas and execution with results, this took the cake. Excited to see that a simple idea and execution could compete with some massive budgets and brands also represented there like Denny’s, grocery chains, automotive brands etc.
The award was exciting for both myself and my client while also validating some of my work for them. Also, while i love collaboration, if someone asks “How much did you contribute on this?”, I can say “Everything!” I even proofed the thing by myself (scary thought if you have read any of these blogs). The campaign entry will go on to regional competition and I just got the opportunity to give some added client support with strategy and branding in an effort to expand the client’s practice in the near future.
