Brand New Awards: No More

Usually, at the start of the year we open the call for entries for the Brand New Awards. Not this year. Nor the next. And most likely not again. We’ve made the decision to stop doing the Brand New Awards. It wasn’t an easy decision, mostly because we feel we had a unique enough approach to make it relevant. The biggest factor in our decision was the steep drop in entries submitted in 2014 (411) compared to the amount submitted in 2013 (714). This turns the BNAs into a potentially detrimental financial loss for us. Under 400 entries it starts to become a losing proposition and it’s not a gamble we were willing to take. Because of the way we do our judging — flying our five judges to Austin so that they can be in the same room at the same time and have an active inves