I keep up with advertising and marketing awards because I like to see what our competitors are doing and to see how we stack up with them.  However, I get more and more disheartened each time I see a list of the winners: They are all campaigns designed for established brands with huge budgets and plenty of traditional advertising and marketing campaigns.

That is not the majority of my client base.  My small business clients are great and wonderful companies that don't have big budgets and most have very small and unsophisticated traditional marketing campaigns.  In several cases we serve as the entire marketing department for our client.

In my opinion it is pretty easy to create some social media buzz for a large company like Coca-Cola, Home Depot, Domino's Pizza, and other huge brands in the social media space.  The reason is really simple: They have a recognizable brand, built-in platform, and known products.

If I was the social media director at Coca-Cola I could run a campaign to give away free cases of Coke to the first 100 people that send in a video of hitting themselves in the face with a whipped cream pie.  (Or something equally as crazy/silly/funny.) And word would get around on the popular blogs and through Twitter and Facebook very quickly.  They would get a lot of buzz and a ton of videos.  (What else do high school and college kids have to do during the Summer?)

I can't do that with my clients.  Odds are that to generate responses the value of the giveaway would have to be much more substantial than a $3.50 case of soft drinks to get the same reaction and the total number of participants would be small.  (But still really funny.)

The problem is that the advertising companies that come up with those stunts are winning awards for those campaigns, when in my opinion it is the previously established platform and traditional marketing presence that was the real driver of success behind the campaign.  (Or in some cases these major brands start their social media campaign with a media buy in a traditional outlet like TV or Newspaper)

I will say it is easier to get buy in for risky stuff from my small clients.  Once you have a huge brand the lawyers get involved and make it really hard to do the fun stuff before the opportunity to capitalize has passed.

So, where's the love for the successful small-business campaigns?  What do you think?  Easier to generate accolades from a big established brand campaign or about the same?