Rethinking the Lotus Awards

Last night Vancouver’s Advertising and Design community gathered at the Westin Bayshore for the AAABC‘s 2006 Lotus Awards, which showcases some of the best advertising, design and interactive work done in British Columbia. Our one entry, the GDC Colours of Cuba site, earned us a Merit in a category that had no Lotus awarded.

Interestingly, this seemed to be a theme of the evening with a prevalent number of categories going without a declared winner and in some cases, no entries recognized whatsoever.

The other theme, and one that carries forward from years past was the blanket entry strategy of Rethink and to some extent DDB Canada. Priority and large budgets allow these agencies to enter in as many categories as they see fit and as a result, they tend to rake in the trophies. In most instances, the work is solid and the recognition well deserved. But when a category contains five different entries from Rethink competing against each other, the veil gets pulled back a little too far and the whole night starts to seem absurd.

There are those who are quick to blame the “Big Agencies” for this outcome. But I don’t think that is the only problem. The root cause of both of the above issues, the lack of worthy work and the dominance of the Haves over the Have Nots, lies perhaps in the lack of participation from a good majority of Vancouver firms. Where were ad agencies (and AAABC members) Elevator, Publicis, Wasserman and Y&R ? And where were all the great Vancouver design firms like Bau Wow, Fleming and Karo? Is there simply a lack of interest? Are the majority of Vancouver’s Creative Directors and Communication Designers nobly going about their daily duties in the name of good design without a desire for recognition and worldwide fame? And why is it that each year it seems the promotional materials for the event make it to the finalists – that always seems wrong somehow. Perhaps the Lotus Awards are to blame for not encouraging more participation, or for charging 130 bucks an entry. There is a lot of great work being done in this city. How can we make the Lotus Awards more a reflection of the overall talent rather than the celebration of one Agency?

Interestingly, this year’s Lotus design and interactive judges were selected and judging criteria developed by experienced, award-winning members of the Vancouver design community, yet were themselves snubbed in many categories that apparently didn’t deserve a Lotus, receiving instead a pat on the back with a Merit.

The under representation of the design community is a reminder that the Lotus Awards have always been a competition run by advertisers for advertisers. Perhaps we should remind ourselves that there exists a fundamental difference between traditional advertising and graphic and interactive design. One is predicated on “the big idea”, designed to break through the media clutter at all costs, the other is a carefully composed visual language solution intended to communicate a message and elicit a response or emotive reaction using visual language such as image, user navigation and expressive typography. Why is this field being judged by an advertising association such as AAABC?

Perhaps it’s time to “ReThink” the Lotus Awards and either pull the design and interactive categories from the competition altogether, focusing on advertising alone, or have that segment of the awards be sponsored and managed by an association better suited, such as the Graphic Designers of Canada, who do a great job managing large national design competitions such as GDC’s Graphex. Certainly something to think about for future Lotus Awards if they’d like more smaller design studios to participate.

Posted by Kevin Broome

Tags: Advertising, Events, Industrial Brand, Vancouver