On a Saturday afternoon, you’ll see them at any food festival in Britain little laminated cards that are tacked to the front of a burger van or placed opposite jars of chutney and proclaim some products to be award winning. Nowadays, the phrase is so often used that it hardly stands out. Something was won by a jar of marmalade. The best in class vote went to a sausage roll. Someone who may or may not have sampled three hundred other cheeses that week awarded a gold star to a particular cheese. It’s difficult to avoid wondering what any of it really means.
The food awards sector has expanded into a vast, independent ecosystem. The infrastructure is massive, ranging from the Great American Beer Festival, which currently accepts almost 10,000 beer submissions from over 2,100 breweries, to the Great Taste Awards in the UK, which review thousands of goods each year. Ribbons are distributed at festivals. Trophies are given out by trade associations. Reader surveys are conducted by consumer publications. Entry fees are a well known mechanism that underlies the majority of these schemes. Someone is paying to be taken into consideration, and the industry has been plagued for years by the question of whether this payment purchases merit or just access.
| Detail | Information |
|---|---|
| Topic | Food Awards and Their Role as Marketing Tools |
| Industry | Food & Beverage, Hospitality, Branding & Design |
| Key Agency Featured | Robot Food — Leeds, UK |
| Founded | 2009 |
| Founder | Simon Forster, Executive Creative Director |
| Notable Stance | 15 consecutive years of not entering paid awards |
| Key Awards Referenced | D&AD Pencils, DBA Design Effectiveness, Guild of Fine Food, Great American Beer Festival |
| Key Poll Result | 87.4% of respondents said “awards suck” in a Creative Boom survey |
| Reference Website | Creative Boom |
Simon Forster doesn’t appear to be all that conflicted. Not so long ago, the founder of Robot Food, a branding firm located in Leeds, revealed on LinkedIn that his company had not been shortlisted for any design awards for the fifteenth year in a row because they had not paid to enter any. Rather, they each gave £1,000 to five different charities. It was an astounding response. The position was praised by hundreds of colleagues. Around the same time, a survey revealed that 87.4% of participants thought that prizes are terrible. Only roughly one in eight believed they were truly valuable. That is a startling denial of what has long been accepted as gospel in the industry.
Design isn’t the only thing being criticized. The dynamics are remarkably similar in the food industry. Major competition entry fees can amount to hundreds of pounds per product, each category. The math doesn’t work for a family run bakery in rural Scotland or a small batch hot sauce manufacturer in Devon. It could cost more than a week’s profit to enter three or four categories at a national competition. Additionally, there is a persistent assumption that companies with the biggest budgets, rather than necessarily the greatest cuisine, are the ones that win the most accolades.
This suspicion is expressed subtly at trade events and occasionally loudly on social media. According to Simon Forster of Robot Food, one firm effectively constructed its whole business development strategy around winning more DBA awards than anybody else. This agency called itself the most effective in the world. They were also members of the association’s board. Forster described it as fanciful.
A self reinforcing loop seems to be created by the paid entry approach. To enter, you must pay. If you succeed, you promote yourself as award winning. Customers are drawn in by that marketing. You can use the money you make from those clients or customers to enter other awards. Continue indefinitely. For the organizers of the awards, it’s an excellent business strategy. The managing director of Robot Food, Dave Timothy, acknowledged this. He pointed out that the trophies go out of date as soon as they are given out, so in order to have the label, you have to keep entering, spending, and winning.
However, it would be unfair and too simple to write off all food awards as unscrupulous marketing gimmicks. Even doubters find it difficult to dispute the real advantages. As a former award winning merchant who currently serves as a judge for the Guild of Fine Food’s Shop of the Year program, Edward Berry has seen both sides of the debate. He admits that there are too many awards, too many categories, and the term award winning appears so frequently that it hardly registers.
However, he also talks about the practical boost that a good award may bring, such as a tiny farm shop in Fife being mentioned in the House of Commons, staff morale rising, and consumer foot traffic increasing. That is not insignificant. An impartial endorsement from someone who really tasted the product and strolled the aisles can be crucial for a small business competing with supermarkets.
Here, food festivals provide an intriguing case study. Vendors benefit greatly from the best run programs, such as the Taste of Charlotte in North Carolina, where judges meticulously sample more than a hundred menu items for hours. More valuable than a plaque, a family run taco restaurant that wins Best Dish gains reputation, media attention, and social proof that lasts for months. Participation through People’s Choice voting makes the entire event more interesting. The room is full of energy. Vendors exert more pressure. Everyone’s experience gets better. These are not insignificant results, and it’s probable that the issue isn’t with the awards per such, but rather with the way the industry has spread.
Ben Brears, the creative director of Robot Food, noted that the ethos of awards as an unquestionable duty struck a chord outside of the design industry. According to him, it begins in college. You are taught that obtaining this trophy is a requirement for legitimacy and that doing so is a sign of seriousness about your craft. No one pauses to wonder why. Similar to smoking, you just keep doing it until someone asks, Why the hell are we doing this?
That analogy hurts because it’s true. Instead of carefully considering the return on investment, many food producers compete out of habit or out of fear of being left out. The cost of admission mounts. The case studies require refinement. The submissions must be managed by someone. For small teams, it’s a real waste of time and money that could be used for things like creating a new product or improving employee compensation.
Who the awards serve is the source of this deeper tension. The program begins to feel like true quality recognition when a festival creates transparent criteria and makes them public, such as giving 50% of the score to flavor, 20% to technique, and 15% each to presentation and inventiveness. It starts to feel like something completely different when the judges are anonymous, the criteria are ambiguous, and the same well funded outfits consistently win. Simon Forster of Robot Food posed a thought provoking query if several agencies have received gold awards, what sets them apart? Ironically, he said, his agency stood out for not playing the game at all.
It’s still uncertain if the food business will experience the same level of disappointment that appears to be permeating branding and design. Perhaps the awards ecosystem is too well established, too lucrative for the organizers, and too fulfilling for the winners to ever really fall apart. However, the fissures are becoming apparent. The value proposition is being openly questioned by more producers. The term award winning on packaging is becoming less appealing to customers. And somewhere in Leeds, a branding agency is resting soundly at night while making charitable donations rather than paying admission fees. There’s a suspicion that the true prize, the one that truly counts, could be a consumer who returns the following week without requiring a gold sticker to explain why.
i) https://www.5wpr.com/new/awards-experts-and-media-validation-in-food-marketing/
ii) https://www.janemilton.com/5-tips-on-entering-food-awards/
iii) https://www.artauk.com/blog/benefits-of-winning-a-restaurant-award-for-your-business/
iv) https://www.contentmarketinginstitute.com/content-marketing-strategy/awards-marketing-strategy