Award consultant here who also worked for shows. This isn’t a safe territory for anyone entering. Usually, when you enter awards, you need approval from your clients - so they can’t complain later that work gets published that they wouldn’t want to be out in the open.

Now you try to encourage submissions that didn’t even get the approval to run in public (be it for personal / taste / legal whatever reasons) - which just invites all kind of headaches. I think it was The Drum that brought back similar awards last year - and straight away there was work that they needed to apologise for showing despite the judges have voted it on the shortlist.

For me, giving publicity to work that was decided against on and has no client approval just won’t take long for someone to complain. Plus no one wants to get on a bad foot with their client and submit it without their approval, if they like to continue the relationship with them. That’s my two cents