Award Shows Are Weird and Why Winning Still Feels Good

What winning an ADDY means beyond the trophy

Good Video wins a Addy and looks dapper doing it.

Award shows are weird. You get dressed up in a suit that doesn’t fit, stuff your face with tater tots and beer, and pretend not to care if your name doesn’t get called. But then it does, and suddenly you are gripping a shiny trophy like it is the Lombardi.

That was us last Thursday.

A commercial campaign we did for Albaugh & Sons took home an American Advertising Award, aka an ADDY, and for a few hours we got to stand in a room full of agencies, production companies, and very polished people and act like this sort of thing happens to us all the time.

It does not. In fact, this is our very first ADDY in Good Video’s nine-month existence. And the feeling was pretty damn sweet!

Not just because trophies are nice, but because of what this one was attached to. A local home services campaign with backyard chaos, flying props, and a client willing to trust something funnier and more alive than the usual slow pan across a newly finished deck, complete with the obligatory handshake between contractor and homeowner.

Because the truth is, clients do not hire us for a trophy. They hire us because they want people to remember them. They want the phones to ring. They want to stop blending into the wallpaper of safe, perfectly reasonable ads that all look like cousins of each other.

So no, the ADDY is not the point. But it is a nice little signal that the point got through.

Albaugh & Sons could have made the standard version of this spot. Instead, they trusted us to make something with a pulse, and that trust is a big reason the campaign worked. It is also probably a big reason it won. Because when people talk about award-winning work, they sometimes make it sound like the trophy floated down from the sky and was bestowed upon them. But it’s rarely that. It’s usually because the work had an actual idea. A point of view. A reason to exist beyond “the client needed a commercial.”

That’s what Good Video is always chasing.

Not weird for the sake of weird. Not “creative” in the self-congratulatory sense. Just work that has enough life in it that somebody might actually remember it tomorrow.

And yes, it is worth saying out loud, awards are not magic. They do not fix a bad strategy. They do not replace sales. They do not mean every person who sees the ad will suddenly sprint to buy a fence. But they can tell you something useful. They can tell you that a room full of people who watch and make ads for a living saw yours and thought, “That one had something.”

For a local brand, that matters. For Good Video, that matters too.

It is a reminder that you do not need a massive national budget or a celebrity cameo to make work that stands out. You need a client willing to go past the safest possible version. You need a clear idea. You need enough conviction to let the thing be what it wants to be.

Albaugh & Sons gave us that room. And we are genuinely grateful for it.

So yes, award shows are weird, and adults handing trophies to other adults for commercials is still pretty funny. But let’s not pretend it doesn’t mean anything, because it does. This one meant a lot.

Watch the award winning campaign here.

If you want work with a pulse, not just another polite ad in your category, contact us at hello@goodvideo.co for a complimentary consultation.