While many agencies have frozen everything they possibly can, including their awards budgets, we want to offer a tiny bit of human warmth during these difficult times in the ad world.
That is why we have decided that while other awards canceling until 2021, we are going ahead with The Caples Awards 2020. But we’re making it a competition that is now completely free to enter.
And here is why
We’re going ahead because:
- We’d hate people to look back and see a black hole where creativity in 2019-20
should have been. We want our Book of the Show 2020 to be as crammed with great
work as it would in any year. - We have assembled a team of fantastic judges from around the world, who are keen
to meet up and talk about the wonderful world of ideas, even if it’s in Zoom. - You may want to show us some love next year and enter everything you can think of
(when we’ll be charging entry fees again).
Respect
Some creative people won’t want to submit to The Caples, this is because even great advertising looks pretty trivial when there are people fighting for their lives.
We respect that position. Arriving at ours has not been easy.
It’s defiance, really. We want to keep up some semblance of normality in the hope that we can all recover from the ravages of Coronavirus sooner rather than later.
There’s fear, too
Can the business survive till next year? (Yes, probably.)
Will we be able to cope this year if we get a massive number of entries? (Yes, definitely.)
What else would we do in April? (Drive each other nuts.)
We are also creatives
We say that The Caples is an awards show run by creative people for creative people. We want to demonstrate that we mean it.
This is now an awards show you can enter if you don’t enter awards shows. Maybe this is an opportunity for small agencies, who have been intimidated by the costs of awards to see how they measure up against the big players?
Maybe it’s an opportunity for the big players to show us exactly why they are the big players?
Maybe it’s a time ‘unfashionable’ work can become fashionable again? On the jury, there are creative directors who know how difficult it is to write a brilliant piece of direct mail. Or
put together an email campaign. Or a series of ads for digital display.
If it’s ingenious, if it’s crafted, let us see it, please.
Please support The Caples Awards with your work. In so doing we hope you will feel you are also supporting your peers, our industry, creativity itself.
For more info, go to caples.org for details of categories and how to enter. The closing date remains unchanged at May 1st.
