It is nearly that time when awards competitions, resembling middle school essay contests, are drummed up to push publications’ (and other institutions’) brands at a slew of industry events. So, in light of the forthcoming flood of etched glass statues, BillingViews presents its first annual Pre-Awards Season BSS/OSS Honors.
The Rules
Our rules are simple.
1) Anyone in the space is eligible to win.
2) No one is allowed to apply.
3) There are no entries or nominations, so there are no entry or nomination fees.
4) We decide who wins because, well, we feel like it.
5) Some of our awards are serious. Some are tongue in cheek. All are meant to entertain.
6) We don’t give any trophies or graphics to add to a web page. Winners just get to feel honored that someone with a heavily read web publication is paying attention to them.
Our Stance on Industry Awards
If you have a paid awards competition, then what you really have is an advertising contest. The downside is, if you don’t win, then at best you’ve subsidized someone else’s advertising. At worst, you’ve been had. In what other areas of your business would you pay thousands of dollars with the expectation that you are likely to get absolutely nothing in return?
While paid awards are clearly abhorrent, entry- or application-driven awards aren’t much better. Think about it – Did Daniel Day Lewis win the Oscar for Lincoln because his publicist wrote a really great description of the film? No. The members of the academy who vote for the awards saw the movie, as well as just about every other movie that was released in the past year, and most agreed that DDL was the best. Imagine if his executive team decided it didn’t have time to approve his entry; Bradley Cooper’s entry was lost in cyberspace; Denzel decided he’d won before, so, forget it; Joaquin Phoenix forgot what the Oscars were; and Hugh Jackman was so mesmerized by his own gold lamé pants that he failed to enter…and then somehow Matthew McConaughey won. You wouldn’t think too highly of the Oscars then, would you? You get the point. Most industry awards, by design, struggle to be either inclusive or impartial. So, they deserve to be satirized.
Our “Awards”
Without further ado, here are our BillingViews awards and winners for 2013:
The Costa Rican Giant Stone Balls Award goes to…
RedKnee CEO Lucas Skoczkowski, for pulling off the NSN acquisition.
The Smartest Billing Scheme Since Friends & Family Award goes to…
Verizon Wireless, for introducing its “Share Everything” plans that shifted the market for mobile broadband services and acknowledged that devices aren’t customers, but rather people – and groups of people – are customers with multiple devices.
The Quote-in-a-Can Award goes to…
Heavy Reading’s Ari Banerjee, for seeming to have the most press release quotes attributed to any one person that were never actually uttered in real life.
The Henry Miller Tropic of Cancer Award goes to…
TM Forum Chairman Keith Willetts, for publishing the book with the most erotic title – Unzipping the Digital World
The Charles Dickens “Best and Worst” Award goes to…
Light Reading’s Ray LeMaistre, awarded the Worst Acronym for SPIT, but also the Best Awards Award for his Best In Show awards.
We offer a hearty congratulations to all of our winners and best of luck to everyone in this year’s plethora of middle school essay contests.
p.s. We forgive our own Tony Poulos for hosting TelecomAsia’s industry awards; Tony gets the “Maroon 5 Overexposed Award” for having the most publicized mug in the industry.
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