Co-Creation of Award Winning Advertisements

Creativity awards have been used by agencies, clients, and academics as exemplary creative work and if the campaign is a winner, everyone has a hand in the co-creation process. However, there is surprisingly little research as to what co-creation elements they actually represent and the agencies functions needed to make this happen. Key agency executives were selected to assess their own campaigns in terms of originality and strategy, and were also queried about whether those campaigns would win creativity, and effectiveness, awards. Findings show that the campaigns deemed worthy of wining creativity award recognition are usually highly original. Yet most valued award winning work is rarely regarded as being highly strategic. These results are then used to better understand how co-creation elements within agencies can be managed to achieve different creative outcomes.