Why Industry Awards Do Not Reward Merit
Adrian J Cotterill, Editor-in-Chief
Proving that most award ceremonies are not worth a jot was the news a few days ago that the so-called Digital Screenmedia Association (DSA) presented two Industry Excellence Awards to Broadcast International (BCST.OB) – one of which was for its “first-of-its-kind” Managed Media Services Network; a digital signage network designed to accommodate the multi-channel marketing needs of financial institutions”.
Our weekly columnist Manolo Almagro wrote about what he saw Broadcast International demonstrate at #dse2012 back in March (in a now redacted post) and it was fairly simple, hardly revolutionary and most definitely not ‘first-of-its-kind’ in any way shape or form!
We can think of scores of companies who did financial digital signage software solutions well in the past; John Ryan Performance, Scala+VARs as well as folks more recently such as STRATACACHE who have deals with those who matter like Bloomberg.
The English writer Michael Moorcock once said “The book trade invented literary prizes to stimulate sales, not to reward merit” and so it surely is in our industry that it is ‘associations’ and events that all seemingly must have awards and an award ceremony. We have too many, they are often ill-judged and typically do not reward the right people.
We will return to this subject over the next couple of weeks.
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