Gold star for new look IAB Awards
As we report in the news section, it was the revamped IAB Awards last night – and I thought they were a vast improvement on last year’s somewhat amateur effort.
With a new CEO, new categories, a new format and a new venue, it was always going to be different to the previous occasion, which felt like the organisers had gone stale and a little lazy.
I still remember newsreader Natarsha Belling ticking off the talking crowd like we were naughty schoolkids. At the time, the editor of B&T (which admittedly was me) described the event as the Inane Amateur and Boring Awards.
Last time round, the problems began before the event with what seemed like a random and slapdash judging process. Perhaps unsurprisingly, I wasn’t invited back to judge. But from those who were involved, I get the sense that there was more rigour this time round. The new scoring system and categories – adopted form the US’s MIXX Awards – have clearly helped a lot.
The biggest risk of last night’s event was doing away with the (expensive) sitdown dinner and switching to a cocktail format. It’s a big ask to keep a standing crowd’s attention, and I wouldn’t have done it. But host Adam Spencer just about kept control, and they raced through the categories.
There was one small trick missed: because the doors were all to one side of the stage, half the room was packed, the other almost empty. Positioning the drinks staff at the far end of the room to kick off with would have solved that one.
You can get a bit of a sense of the room from this video:
The venue – The Ivy, rather than Star City casino – did work though, even if the mealless event meant that the ceremony was over early, so it was a very long time until the afterparty.
But the people I spoke to had mainly good things to say, and most people seemed to be having a good time.
But from a previously tired event, this felt like a new start, and a good one at that.
Tim Burrowes founded Mumbrella in 2008. He worked on Mumbrella until 2021. At various points he was editor, content director and editor-at-large.
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Standing for hours on end in ‘cocktail’ wear = high heels….not fun. Whilst all else improved, I vote bring back the sit down tables.
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Ah, the perils of being a woman. I’d say the most dangerous thing was them closing the bar early on. I thought there would be a riot.
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