The Denver 50: Postmortem

By / December 3, 2008 /

We’re going to talk honestly here for a minute about Tuesday night’s New Denver Ad Club show. If your skin is thin, you should probably stop reading and jump back to whatever it was you were just doing.

For the rest of you, let’s get into this. We were amped for the show all day yesterday. None of us here at The Egotist are ad club members, but we were energized and motivated to push our readers hard not to miss it. We honestly thought it would be one of those do-not-miss type deals.

Forget the food and the music, the venue and the schmoozing. We realize a ton of work goes into that stuff from a ton of people, and we thank them for it. But we were there for one thing – to see the star of the show shining under spotlight: The Work.

The Denver 50 should have been The Denver 26 this year. There were 24 idea-less campaigns wilting underneath the spotlight at Mile High Station. This is a show that celebrates and honors IDEAS FIRST, after all. The instructions, verbatim, given to the judges for this year’s show were as follows: “The Denver 50 is about finding fresh, relevant ideas that connect brands and people. Please consider each entry based on how well it does that, judging it first on the “big idea” and second on the creative merit of the executions.” Not one of those 24 campaigns broke through the surface-level to unearth the big idea – the deeper, more meaningful, more original way to connect the brand with its audience. Not one.

The issue here is no different than when an agency or an individual is fashioning their own portfolio for public consumption. One bad egg spoils the whole bunch. And 24 bad eggs, well, that’s two dozen reasons to wonder whether Denver is moving forward or lost at sea.

There are so many questions we’re left with after Tuesday night’s show. Why don’t TDA, Cultivator and Crispin Porter + Bogusky – three of Colorado’s best – find value in entering their work in this show? It certainly would have strengthened the presentation and the impression of our city’s creative sophistication for outsiders looking in. Why did the judges reward three campaigns that are near duplicates of work that already exists out in the world today (look closely and you’ll find them)? What’s the impression when people see those campaigns printed in a book that’s supposed to encapsulate the best ideas in our market for AN ENTIRE YEAR? Hack city, man. When shops that are doing great, conceptual thinking see their ideas next to those bad eggs, what’s their impression? We bet they’re wondering whether this rinky-dink show is worth entering next year. Whether their money (and the results from it) might be better spent trying to crack the big national and international award shows.

Before you get up in our mugs about not presenting a solution to the problem, we already have. Just like the prestigious D&AD awards, next year’s Denver 50 shouldn’t give an award if the work isn’t good enough. If it becomes The Denver 5 next year, so be it. The year after, it might be The Denver 17. The point is, the judges should not be required to meet an awards quota. Because choosing 50 pieces is obviously requiring them to reward work that should not be recognized in a show that celebrates great thinking. And that’s our big idea for the day.