PV Editor Ian Reynolds-Young, (pictured), on The Vendies 2015
And The Winner Did… What, Exactly?
Fate decreed that I was seated at a table adjacent to the Snack Time delegation at The Vendies Awards ceremony, so, ‘I was there’ when Lisa Blythe and Dave Bryant were named as winners and I watched each of them react. It’d been ages since I’d witnessed such unbridled joy.
For me, the trouble with The Vendies ceremony – and don’t get me wrong, I thought it was a cracking night out – was that none of us in the audience, save those in the Snack Time party, had any idea at all what it was that Lisa and Dave had achieved to earn themselves the right to be recognised as ‘the best in the business’. We had no idea how they came to be chosen, (in this case, it turns out, in a secret ballot of colleagues); we had no idea where they came from or what their patches were or, well…
In a word, we were clueless.
At the Oscars, at least you get to see clips from the short-listed movies before the envelopes are opened. So, how about this? What if each nominee’s line-manager was allocated 60 seconds – an elevator pitch – to explain to the audience what it is that makes his or her colleague so deserving of ‘the industry’s most coveted award’? It wouldn’t cost anybody anything and this way, at least the rest of us would be engaged and
Chinese Whispers
… it’d be more about the individuals involved and less about the companies they work for.
The judges in any competition can only base their decisions on the submissions they receive, can’t they? Planet Vending can vouch for the integrity of the entire process from start to finish, because our Publisher Yvonne Reynolds-Young was on the judging panel. She was there. Whenever there was a potential conflict of interests, the judge so affected stepped down from voting in that particular category. Thus, Gillian White, whose connection to Snack Time is well-known, (and has since ended), neither voted for, nor had any influence in, Dave’s or Lisa’s success. Fact.
Worthy Winners
And so, after the dust had settled, it fell to Planet Vending to offer Snack Time MD Mark Stone a platform upon which to celebrate the award-winning achievements of two of his most popular team members. (You can refresh your memory here).
With so many awards at The Vendies being won by inanimate objects, it’s a pity that, when the rank-and-file soldiers of the vending business are on parade, although we stand and applaud, we onlookers have no idea what they’ve been fighting for.
At the end of the day, the trouble with awards is that as organiser, whoever you are, whatever you do; no matter how hard you try, you will never, ever please everybody.
