Yesterday I attended Tony Koenderman’s breakfast session, it was specifically to discuss the upcoming AdReview awards that take place on the 24th April 2008. There were a variety of people, from stand-alone digital agencies to the in-house divisions of some of the large Advertising agencies.
It is always great to get together with others who share the same passion for digital and to know that there are so many other like-minded professionals out there.
One of the discussion points that came up and is always a sore point for us digital geeks is “who has been selected to the panel to judge the digital agency of the year award”.
It is a sore point because the traditional advertsing industry stalwarts are usually judges and they do not have the “big picture” on what digital is all about… if the entrants submit really “cool looking” websites and you “win lots of awards” for them then that Agency gets the most votes… no one takes into account the fact that most of these websites cant be found by the search engines as they are developed in flash; that “best practice” hasnt been applied for usability and, navigation is extremely time-consuming…. the end result of which is Client’s disappointment of the website’s performance and a reluctance to spend any further budget online. We have to educate, educate, educate that whilst “good looks” count for everything in traditional advertising, digital is primarily about the “inner” which is content, content, content; locating the content you require as quickly as possible and as easily as possible.

So Tony being the amazingly progressive man that he is, asked for suggestions as to who could be approached to sit on the panel so that “best-practice” for digital design is taken into account. It gives great comfort to know that the “industry greats” are so committed to ensuring we move in the right-direction to excellence in this medium.