It’s a long way until the New Year honours are meant to be announced, but press releases have already arrived from recipients announcing they’ve been awarded an OBE. Their message comes with a glowing tribute to themselves, along with links promoting their business ventures.
This is a very long way from the understated tradition of pretending to be surprised when the awards are finally revealed. Another sign of changed attitudes is that application forms for awards now ask people to declare if they have used a fee-charging agency.
These are companies that help with nominations for an honour, with price menus between £2,500 and £40,000 for applications for awards such as a CBE (Commander of the British Empire), MBE (Member of the British Empire) or OBE (Officer of the British Empire).
In the case of the press release, the name of the recipient is embargoed - but it is a significant stretch from the longstanding practice of modest secrecy ahead of the announcement, even though award winners will have known for weeks.
In the case of those jumping the gun with a celebratory press release, royal commentator Prof Pauline Maclaran detects a cultural change in the readiness to show off. She likens it to entrepreneurial television programme The Apprentice, where achievements are “personal branding”. (1) But the difficulty, she says, is that this celebrity-style approach is not really in keeping with the spirit of public service.
“The quest for self-promotion contradicts the idea of the honours,” Prof Maclaran says.
Such an appetite for public recognition is also a business opportunity.
The awards agency, Awards Intelligence, claims it has a 65% success rate for people using its services for help with honours applications. Mark Llewellyn Slade, the firm’s founder, says that’s because he dissuades people who don’t stand much chance - and also because they’ve put in more than 1,500 applications and “learned what works and doesn’t work”. The company uses professional writers for nomination forms and he says the service is a way of “demystifying” the honours system.
There are different degrees of time and support for applications, with packages such as the “Windsor”, “Balmoral” and “Sandringham”, on a sliding scale between £4,900 and £40,000.
Mr Llewellyn-Slade likens it to some families being able to boost their children’s exam chances by paying for a personal tutor. “With money comes choices,” he says, and receiving an award is “one of the most powerful pieces of PR”.
(1) The failed achievers probably become “influencers” … any occupation that’s all about “me, me, me” … 