It is with considerable pleasure that we announce the conclusion of the 15th American Business Communicators Annual Report Competition.
In the 16 years since this exercise began, we’ve noticed a marked improvement in the overall quality of the reports submitted for evaluation. This year’s reports, both winners and also-rans, were almost uniformly excellent. Fortunately, that “almost” provided us with sufficient room to proceed with the judging, and judge we did.
The competition is structured to give smaller firms the opportunity to be recognized without having to compete directly against those whose budgets are, for all practical purposes, unlimited. That said, the overall level of creativity and quality we encountered was very high, and didn’t necessarily correlate to a production budget.
As you might expect, much of the work submitted by "heavy-hitter" agencies such as Addison, Paragraphs, and Ideas on Purpose could serve as textbook examples in a course on annual report design. It must be said, though, that we were also very impressed with the work of many much smaller outfits, which sometimes live and die by the efforts expended on just a few projects.
It’s also worth noting that in-house production teams are capable of putting out wonderful work. Many of the in-house reports we looked at demonstrated that the relatively insular environment in which they were produced needn’t stifle creativity or innovation.
The structure of the competition is such that many reports are entered only in the overall competition. We sometimes encounter (for example) a so-so report whose cover design is truly spectacular, but which is otherwise middle-of-the-road. Had the entrant asked that the cover be evaluated separately, that report might have earned a first place certificate. As it turned out, the cover's contribution to the overall evaluation wasn't sufficient to garner an award.
Finally, we’d like to clarify the meaning of those awards that fall outside the self-explanatory first-second-third place range. We’ve long felt it appropriate to honor reports capable of surviving the first two or (depending on the category) three stages of the process of elimination. Given the quality of the field, achieving this semi-finalist status is a noteworthy accomplishment. Honorable Mention is the phrase usually associated with that status, but we prefer the somewhat more vibrant Outstanding Achievement.
The Outstanding Creativity award is less straightforward, and considerably more arbitrary. It’s granted when a judge steps outside the process and says, in essence, “wow... get a load of this!” The object of that judge’s admiration might or might not receive acknowledgment as a result of the standard evaluation process.
Then there’s the Founders Award. A few years ago the founding members of ABC let themselves into the judges’ chambers after the judges had finished for the day. The next morning the judges found a note which read, in essence, “here’s a list of reports that get the Founders Award, for no other reason than we say so.” The Founders Award has become a tradition, albeit one that no longer involves tip-toeing in the dead of night.
The results of the competition may be seen here.