Who’s been winning what, where?

As advertising fragments, so has the awards industry.

And every fragment has a show of its own.

Media, digital media, social media, web design, branded content, digital design, web experience, you name it and there's an award for it.

And a few for TV, press, radio and poster ads too.

Why so many?

Because, if Cannes and D&AD are too big and too expensive and too daunting, then you've always got a better chance at a smaller, more niche sort of show.

And awards are important.

Mostly they are important to creative people as a justification for the long evenings spent in the office, the weekends at work, the constant obsession with the job.

To work so hard with little emotional reward is not easy to sustain.

An award here and there keeps the flame burning, the desire to do something bolder and better next year.

So, from the dozens of shows we have looked at in 2017, many congratulations to the few winners randomly showcased here.

Together they give a sense of the breadth of creativity in marketing comms today – from the best example of branded content to the best new emoji of the year. Perhaps too these examples can also correct an impression, frequently voiced in 2017, that creativity is on its knees.

YouTube Ads Leaderboard. December 2017

The Leaderboard may not be an awards show, but it certainly means something to many agency creatives. Increasingly you'll see CVs in which the number of views is as important as the awards won.

The YouTube Leaderboard is interesting as it's based purely on data, the number of views the video has attracted.

Pretty ruthless way of measuring creativity.

It seems that what we want people to watch and what they actually watch are not the same.

1. Cheil India – Samsung – "Wherever You Are"
   173 million views. A four-minute epic, following a Samsung engineer as he goes the extra mile, literally, to fix a TV at school for the blind so they can hear one of the pupils as she sings on a talent show.
2. Barton F. Graf – Clash Royale – "The Last Second"
   112 million views. A 50-second commercial in which an archer looses off an arrow, which brings down the fort.
3. Weber Shandwick – Oreos – "Ping Pong Trick Shots 3"
   103 million views. 7 mins and 16 seconds, the Dude Perfect YouTubers involve Oreos in an amazing Rube Goldberg domino effect.
4. Dior – Miss Dior – "What Would You Do For Love?".
   47 million views. 45-second commercial. An attractive young woman runs on a beach, does doughnuts in an old Jaguar, lies in bed etc.
5. Anomaly – Budweiser – "Born The Hard Way".
   28 million views. Budweiser's 60-second Super Bowl commercial, the story of Adolphus Busch, who went through tough times when he emigrated to America, but ended up meeting Eberhard Anheuser and starting a brewery.
6. David & Goliath – Kia Motors – "Hero's Journey".
   25 million views. Kia's 60-second Super Bowl offering, featuring Melissa McCarthy as an eco-warrior.
7. Johannes Leonardo New York – Adidas Originals – "Original Is Never Finished".
   25 million views. 90-seconds showing influencers in the worlds of art, music, skate-boarding and sports.
8. Media Arts Lab – Apple India – "The Rock x Siri Dominate The Day".
   25 million views. 3 minutes and 45 seconds. The Rock gets through an incredible amount of activity in the course of a single day (including what looks like repainting the Sistine Chapel) thanks to Siri.
9. FCB West - Levi's - "Circles"
   22 million views. When people dance, they often form circles with an individual who takes the centre for a moment. Unity and individuality at the same time.
10. Leo Burnett Chicago – Mr. Clean – "Cleaner of Your Dreams"
    17 million views. 40 seconds. Mr. Clean's Super Bowl commercial. He cleans every room in the house.

AdAge's Top 50 creative people of the year. December 2017

AdAge used the word 'creative' in its widest sense to include in its list of movers-and-shakers the CEO of a start-up that makes it easy and fast to get to see a doctor, a YouTuber, Spotify's Global Head of Hip Hop (now that's a business card I'd love to have!), actors, designers and even a couple of advertising folk.

This is a fairly random selection of ten who seemed most interesting and/or relevant.

No.1. Terry Crews. American Football star, Old Spice frontman, actor, artist, designer. Polymath. He hit the news in Autumn 2017 when he confessed that he too had been sexually harassed by a "top Hollywood producer". Elsewhere in 2017, he designed a range of furniture and illustrated the front cover of Ad Age's December 18th issue.

No.9. Bruno Bertelli. Global Chief Creative Officer, Publicis Worldwide. Lots of good work has emerged from his leadership including Heineken's "The Candidate", The Wall of Opportunities" and the recent "Worlds Apart".

No.24. Eric Baldwin, Britton Taylor and Jason Kreher. Creative Directors at Wieden + Kennedy. These are the guys who have been transforming KFC with bold advertising across all the traditional channels as well as bringing a very knowing presence to social media as well.

No.21. Isabelle Olsson. Design Director, Home, Wearables & CMF at Google. This is the Swedish-born designer behind Google Glass and, this year, Google Home and Google Home Mini.

No.27. Kevin Hochman. Promoted from his job as CMO to President and Chief Concept Officer at KFC, it's great to see a client honoured for his/her contribution to creativity. The partnership with Wieden + Kennedy has seen an amazing turnaround of KFC's fortunes in the USA.

No.25. Alma Har'el. Alma Har'el is an Israeli/ American photographer and film director best known for the documentary "Bombay Beach". In 2016, she founded the 'Free The Bid' movement to encourage agencies to include at least one female director when they put a commercial out to production companies to quote. 40 agencies and 10 major brands signed up, leading to a 400% increase in ads shot by women.

No.35. Manish Vora and Maryellis Bunn. Less than two years ago, they opened their first Museum of Ice Cream in New York and in 2017 they opened up in Miami, L.A. and San Francisco. On Mother's Day, Beyoncé, Katy Perry and Gwyneth Paltrow all visited the L.A. venue. Mind you, party poopers in Miami have criticised the Museum for its fake sprinkles, which, they say, could be damaging to the environment.

No.30. James Watt. Co-founder of Brewdog and author of "Business for Punks" started out in Scotland and is now making waves in the US. His philosophy is to create brands out of causes rather than from products. His latest beer is Make Earth Great Again, which is trying to raise awareness about climate change.

No.47. Tali Gumbiner and Lizzie Wilson. Creatives at McCann, New York, this is the team behind State Street Global's "Fearless Girl" sculpture, which appeared in Wall Street staring down the snorting bull and became a symbol of female empowerment.

No.42. Anselmo Ramos. Former Chief Creative Officer of David (Miami and Buenos Aires) had his name attached to two Grands Prix at Cannes this year. In the past he's been behind Dove "Sketches", GRAACC's "Bald Cartoons", Burger King's "Proud Whopper" campaign. One of the most awarded creative directors in the world, he's now starting up his own agency.

The 9th Annual Shorty Awards. April 2017

The Shorty Awards have been in existence since 2008. They recognise and reward the people and the companies that produce short-form content across Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Instagram, YouTube and the social web in general. What makes them interesting is that they are judged by a mixture of named tutors of the Real Time Academy and Joe Public. Anyone can vote, and the Shortys say that millions do. This means agencies try to influence the results by getting all their staff to get all their mates to go online and click favourably.

Emoji of the Year. Middle Finger
I have no idea who designed this, who entered this or who collected the award (because he was wearing a middle-finger suit) but I'm pretty sure it has been getting a lot of use.

GIF of the Year. Mr. Peanut's Dab, created by Adweek for Macy's.
As captured at the 91st annual Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade, where there were 3.1 million spectators and more than 50 million viewers across the USA.

Instagram Photo of the Year. Same but Different.
There are over 600 million Instagram users but in 2017 Tiziana Vergari, an iphoneography artist (her expression) came out tops.

Best Animal in Social Media. Crusoe the Celebrity Dachsund
Crusoe has had over 44 million views on his YouTube channel, he has 1.5 million Facebook followers, he has a New York Times best-selling book to his name, and despite surgery in August, he is the Shorty's top dog of 2017.

Best meme/Parody Account. Girl with No Job
Claudia Oshry got fired from her first internship after university and turned having no job into her job. She has 2.8 million followers on Instagram, two podcasts, and is a constant presence on Facebook, Snapchat and Twitter. In other words, the girl with no job works very, very hard. And a whole bunch of brands pay her to keep at it.

Best Muser. Jacob Sartorius
Child singer and internet star, 15-year-old Jacob started by lip-synching videos which he posted to musical.ly. His first single, "Sweatshirt", has had 48 million views on YouTube. A muser, by the way, is very specifically someone who is big on Musical.ly, which, at last time of looking, had 90 million active users.

Best YouTube Comedian. Andrew Lowe
In six years on YouTube, 19 year-old Andrew Lowe has racked up over 600,000 subscribers and some 40 million views of his videos, many of which featured his recently married "gay moms". He celebrated moving to L.A. with a music video "I Live Alone".

YouTuber of the Year. Colleen Ballinger
American comedian, actress, singer and creator of internet character Miranda Sings. The video of her transforming into Miranda on the Jimmy Fallon Show has had nearly 10 million views alone. Her YouTube channel, MirandaSings, has 8.5 million subscribers and PsychoSoprano has 5.3 million subscribers. She has posted over 400 videos as the talentless and kooky Miranda, a satirical take on the many enthusiastically narcissistic wannabe YouTubers.

Best Web Series. Camp Unplug
Less than a week after Vine announced that its users could upload video up to 140-seconds long, they released their first long-form series, "Camp Unplug". A series of 36 vines of different lengths tell the story of 13 Vine stars who are reluctantly made to endure a digital detox summer camp.

Most Weird category. Bread Face Blog
No-one knows who she is, which adds to the mystery of a girl who seems to like smooshing her face into bread and cakes of one sort or another. She started mushing bread in December 2015 and in October 2017 made it into Adweek when she created a video with Vice for Sydney Garber jewellery.

Global Effie Awards. May 2017

This is an awards show that's particularly mean with its awards. Only five handed out. Quite a lot of finalists but just two Golds and three Silvers.

So, winning one of these should feel special.

Especially if you're part of the BBDO Worldwide team that won two with "Feed The Good" for Pedigree.

What we like about The Effies here at Directory, and other effectiveness awards too, is they celebrate results. Usually measured in sales. Work that actually sells stuff. Hurrah. In 2017, out of 27 Grands Prix at Cannes, only three had an overt commercial purpose. Changing behaviour and raising awareness of the plight of certain disadvantaged peoples is all very well, but in 2017 $591 billion was spent on advertising and the bulk of those billions by brands hoping for a real and rapid return on investment. Such as the four here.

Global Multi-Region - Travel & Tourism Gold
Airbnb – Don't Go There, Live There
Agencies: TBWA\ Chiat Day\ L.A., Starcom

Global Multi-Region – FMCG Silver + Also Global Multi-Market – FMCG Silver
Pedigree – Feed the Good
Agencies: BBDO New York, Moscow, Clemenger BBDO Melbourne, Almap BBDO Sao Paulo

Global Multi-Market – FMCG Gold
P&G Always - #LikeAGirl – Girl Emojis
Agencies: Leo Burnett/Arc London, Starcom London, Starcom Chicago, MSLGROUP

Global Multi-Market – FMCG Silver
Unilever Lifebuoy – Help A Child Reach 5
Agencies: MullenLowe Singapore, MullenLowe India, MullenLowe SSP3 Colombia