Winning Our 4th National ADDY
Every year, there’s a healthy competition and a fair bit of anxiousness surrounding the ADDY Awards. Hosted by the American Advertising Federation, the ADDYs are among the most challenging gauntlets in our industry. An agency or production firm sees how their work stacks up - and potentially receive one of the most coveted recognitions in the advertising business! This is how the AAF describes the competition:
The American Advertising Awards is the advertising industry's largest and most representative competition, attracting nearly 35,000 entries every year in local AAF competitions. The mission of the American Advertising Awards is to recognize and reward the creative spirit of excellence in the art of advertising.
Conducted annually by the AAF, the local tier is the first of a three-tier, national competition. Concurrently, across the country, local entrants vie to receive an ADDY Award—recognition as the very best in their markets. At the second tier, local ADDY winners compete against winners from other local clubs in one of 15 district competitions. District ADDY winners are then forwarded to the third tier, the national stage of the American Advertising Awards. Entry in your local competition is the first step toward winning a national ADDY.
Entering the American Advertising Awards supports the entire advertising industry, because the AAF and its local and district affiliates use the proceeds to enhance advertising through programs such as public service, internships, advocacy groups, advertising education, and consumer awareness.
The entire judging process takes more than 6 months! For us, the ADDYs start with the country’s oldest Ad Club, a vibrant community of St. Louis Advertising Professionals. There’s a whole week full of workshops, lectures, and celebrations cleverly dubbed ADDY Week. We took home 10 total awards for our work across 5 projects, including 6 Gold Awards and a “Best of” award for Cinematography. Without a doubt, we had a fun night!
From there, we competed in AAF’s District 9 (unfortunately, no affiliation with the movie of the same name). We won 3 ADDY awards at the district level and the right to compete at the national level. We have won three times at the national level before. Each time has been a blast of a trip to the annual ADMERICA Conference, held at places like the Waldorf Astoria and Disney Land. We’re surrounded by wonderfully talented people representing agencies across the country. We sometimes see the familiar faces of friends from back home (this year, one other St. Louis agency was recognized).
This year was different, however. The live event was held virtually but allowed our entire team and partners to watch live. We are incredibly excited to announce our National-level Silver ADDY for Editing recognizing the craft and love we invested in our film for Allen Edmonds.
To date, that makes for 4 National ADDYs and 58 in total! Whew! And now, it won’t be long before it starts all over again…