Celebrating Innovation or Balance Sheets? Gaming Award Shows

Posted by Darren on Jan 10, 2009 • (Comments)

I’m a huge fan of celebrating superior products, services, and people.  Last night was the Crunchies – an award ceremony for industry achievement within digital media.  Cnet has a very nice writeup.  I wasn’t able to attend due to some client meetings that I had to be in New York for, but was able to participate both through voting prior and caught the Ustream feed during.  Overall, I was impressed with the event itself and how all the partners came together and made it happen.  I could nitpick but I’ll leave that up to the other bloggers around the world.

What I don’t like about award shows inclusive of The Crunchies and any other show (e.g. the MIXX Awards) is that they typically neglect to account for the real business behind the product, service, company, or campaign.  We celebrate some big or creative ideas but in many cases, it doesn’t translate into business sense.

An example of what I’m trying to say is celebrating a social media campaign for say a brand.  While the campaign may have achieve buzz or made the front page of Digg/NY Times, did it actually produce sales for the client or shift positive perception of the brand?    More often than not, voting is tied to buzz surrounding a particular company.  Just think of the movie industry, the movies that the studios select as their best always come out around the time for nominations of the Oscars, as they want the population to vote for them.

Gaming awards shows?

In the digital media space, there were many companies at the Crunchies who have a lot of buzz surrounding them but when you meet with them and get under the hood for business purposes, they are fairly empty.  We’re celebrating their slick interface or the parties they throw in the valley, but other than that, what else do they provide us?   There are many companies in digital media across the world who may not be sexy, but may have a much stronger balance sheet.

I may be going off on a rant, but I hope that what I’m trying to say comes trough.  I don’t have a solution for change but know that we should be celebrating real businesses, not smoke & mirrors.  CenterNetworks Allen Stern was an inspiration for this post.

Tagged as , , , , , , , + Categorized as Advertising & Marketing
  • Darren, I completely agree with this. People think that winning an awards show like the Crunchies makes them a success...false. Along those lines SO many people consider getting a solid round of venture funding a success...false again.

    Why or how is it that a company can be successful without making money (or, creating value)? If you sell your company to Google or Oracle or whoever, then you're a success. You've created an entity that creates value enough for another entity to spend $$$ for what you've created. Similarly, if you create an entity that creates value so that consumers or other businesses purchase your product so much so that you can cover the costs to create that product, you're a success. This is business success.

    The notion of winning a venture round = business success is still being carried over from the internet bubble of 2001 and the sooner it dies the better off entrepreneurs and vc's will be.

    Great thoughts and would love to connect sometime.
  • Gabe
    Yeah - the problem with the Crunchies is that the very definition for most of the award categories is vacuous.

    What exactly does "best start-up" mean? All start-ups are businesses and the primary function of a business is to generate profits. By that handy measure, you can judge all companies regardless of sector or country by objective criteria. The Wall Street Journal and other media publish quarterly rankings of investment banks for various categories (M&A; IPO's) - there's no awards show - it's simply a list in descending order of which banks have had the biggest deal flow. [ex.http://www.thedeal.com/dealscape/2008/04/ma_quarterly_report_investment.php]

    Admittedly, this is not practical in the world of private start-ups, which do not generally disclose financial information.

    Still, in what business-minded universe does Mark Zuckerberg, of money-losing Facebook, come out ahead of Tony Hsieh, of profit-generating Zappos, as best CEO?

    I could go through the list and attack the void of meaning within most of the award categories. Only a few of the awards make any obvious sense to me (e.g., best design).

    There are other criteria besides profits by which to judge a company (e.g., design) but if that's the case - you need to state the criteria. To define the category in general terms, e.g., "Best Mobile Start-Up", and not have the criterion be profits either a) misconstrues the business of business or b) allows the judges to frame their own definitions and criteria, thereby rendering the results meaningless.

    ---

    Also, agreed - the hermetic geographic scope is almost comical. Looks like a Bay area circle jerk.
  • All extremely great points. Zappos has built a nice little business :)
  • Gabe
    this advances the discussion a bit further still (found via techmeme):
    http://www.drama20show.com/2009/01/09/web-20-revenue-models-and-profitability/
  • Alicia
    How do you feel about traditional Hollywood award shows? How about an awards show for online entertainment, a la The Streamy Awards (www.streamys.org)?
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