Make it happen

On Thursday evening I went along to the Hitwise Online Performance Awards. I leave off the word “ceremony” quite intentionally, there was none.

I observed a number of things at the Hitwise Awards:

1. As there are about a million categories, the Awards list must be read in a monotone in order to keep up the pace or nobody will stick around to the end. This problem could have been somewhat alleviated by allowing the audience to continue drinking through the presentation. Perhaps also having a whole slide per award, even if shown only for 2-3 seconds would help somewhat in promoting the brands on which the Awards (and thus, Hitwise) is standing. This would also help to maintain the sense of excitement by not allowing people to scan the 20 Awards presented at a time before they are even read out. It would also allow less time for the terrible jokes.
2. The only excitement was the pretty lady doing the presentation, but then she started talking. Oh, those jokes were terrible.
3. The Awards only exist to promote Hitwise through getting their badge on as many sites as possible. Although I have no problem with this in principle, it was way too obvious that they don’t take a lot of pride in those are supposedly proud of them and their badge.
4. The Hell Pizza website is still top of their category: Food & Beverage, Restaurants & Catering.
5. A lot of people don’t collect their framed Award certificates.
6. You need to be a Hitwise customer to be recognised in more than one category. So Trademe weren’t fairly recognised for the vast amount of traffic they attract.
7. The nibbles were pretty good.
8. Even a poor presentation can be a good networking opportunity. At least its a common conversation point.
9. Although friendly, the presenters were tired of giving the presentations and prepared to say so from the pulpit. Perhaps they should be spaced out further apart and/or the staff put up in nicer hotels.
10. What a bore it is when computers are the judge. There must be some way to present an element of human expertise or achievement worth celebrating?

Then, on Friday night I went along to the Marketing Association Direct & Interactive Awards Ceremony by invitation with Calcium, who were nominated or had clients nominated in several categories.

Again, I observed a number of things at the Marketing Association Awards:

1. There are a lot of very good looking people in the Marketing industry. Or at least they scrub up well.
2. The presenters were great; bantering between each other and mostly holding my interest for the whole evening.
3. The food was outstanding. The band was pretty good too. Oh yes, and the dancing entertainment was great.
4. What a strange but interesting prize draw from NZ Post, a limo full of alcohol from 11pm to 7am, must be taken on the night. Annoyingly, I couldn’t enter as I didn’t take in a pen and neither of the crappy NZ Post ones on the table could write on the entry card. Good thinking..
5. Perhaps there aren’t enough entries? The same companies kept winning everything. Good on them, and their entries looked great, but it got mildly tiresome toward the end. Well done to the winners who stood for each one. Presumably plenty of opportunity to win something with a good entry next year then?
6. The Awards are judged on their presentation and the results they achieved.
7. Its often risky to let a sponsor near the microphone, but NZ Post did a pretty good job.
8. Maybe Hitwise should aim to win one of these Awards by improving and entering their own Awards ceremony for a Marketing Association prize. After all, many of the nominations for the MA Awards were for organisations whose primary function is to collect and utilise data effectively.