Vanity Awards: harmless ego boost or costly mistake?

Romey Norton | 4 min read | Awards Writers 

If you run a business, there’s a good chance your inbox has received one of those emails. Congratulations, you’ve been “handpicked” by a panel of experts for a prestigious award, one you’ve never heard of, celebrating a success you didn’t know you’d achieved. All you need to do to claim it is pay a “small administration fee” to get your trophy. Welcome to the world of vanity awards. 

As award writers, we spend our working lives helping businesses enter, and win, genuinely credible awards. So, we know the awards landscape inside out, including the murkier corners of it. Here’s our honest take on vanity awards: what they are, why they exist, and whether they’re ever worth your money. 

What exactly is a vanity award? 

In short, it’s a scheme where the winning has very little to do with merit and a lot to do with your willingness to pay. There’s rarely an independent judging panel; usually it’s staff from the company running the scheme. Categories tend to sound impressive and vague (“Global Excellence in…”), winner lists run into double and treble figures, and the recognisable household names are conspicuously absent. 

The business model is simple: flatter you into thinking you’ve achieved something special, then charge you to “activate” that recognition through a trophy, a listing, a press package, or a slot in a magazine with a suspiciously small readership. 

The (very limited) case for vanity awards 

We’re not going to pretend there’s zero upside, because a handful of legitimate arguments do get made in favour of these schemes: 

• A logo is a logo. For a business without much else in the marketing armoury, a shiny badge on a website can create a flicker of trust with a visitor who doesn’t do any further research into what it is 

• Team morale. A certificate on the wall can feel like a nice pat on the back for staff, regardless of how it was earned 

• Low effort. Unlike a proper award entry, there’s usually no lengthy written submission or evidence-gathering involved, just a form and a payment

The cons of entering vanity awards 

• It can damage your credibility, not build it. Increasingly, potential customers and clients, journalists, and investors know how to spot a pay-to-win scheme. A quick look at the winners page, often alphabetical, is usually all it takes 

• It costs real money for little return. Fees can run into thousands of pounds for a trophy, a magazine spread nobody reads, or exposure that’s impossible to verify 

• There’s no genuine benchmarking value. A properly judged award gives you honest, independent feedback on how you compare to your industry peers. A vanity award tells you nothing except that you paid an invoice 

• The tactics can be manipulative. Flattering, out-of-the-blue emails implying you were nominated by a colleague, pressure to pay quickly, and a lack of transparency about who’s actually judging are all common red flags 

• You could end up funding the same organisation twice – or more! Many of these schemes run dozens of near-identical award “brands” from the same small team, harvesting fees from unsuspecting businesses across multiple sectors 

How do you tell the difference between genuine and vanity awards? 

A few quick checks go a long way. Genuine, reputable awards will publish their judging panel and criteria openly, won’t ask for payment beyond a fair entry fee, won’t demand you buy tickets, trophies or PR packages to ‘claim’ your win, and will have winner lists you can recognise. If a scheme contacts you unprompted claiming you’ve already been shortlisted for something you never entered, treat that as your first warning sign.  

The good news is that credible awards are exactly where your time and budget are best spent. They’re harder to win, which is precisely why winning one means something. 

Let’s help you win an award that matters 

At Award Writers, we help businesses find and enter the awards that will genuinely make an impact; the ones with real judging panels, real prestige, and real commercial value. We’ll help you shape a compelling entry, gather the right evidence, and put your best case forward, so the recognition you win is recognition you can be proud of. 

Thinking about which awards are worth your time this year? Get in touch with our team for a free, no-obligation chat about your award strategy, no flattering emails or mystery invoices involved.