NATIONAL
BAD DECISIONS
AWARDS.
A black tie ceremony honouring the spectacular failures, expensive mistakes and terrible ideas we all made anyway. Presented with complete sincerity. Held somewhere that couldn’t be more appropriate.
EVERYONE
KNOWS WHAT
THEY DID.
The National Bad Decisions Awards is a full black tie ceremony dedicated to the decisions that didn’t go to plan. The ones that seemed reasonable at the time. The ones that definitely seemed reasonable at the time. The ones that were clearly not reasonable at all but we did them anyway.
The format is built around the catharsis of collective failure — the recognition that everyone in the room has made mistakes worth talking about, and that laughing at yourself, with other people, in formal wear, is one of the better things you can do with an evening.
There’s darkness in it too. Not the sharp kind — the warm kind. The grief of a bad decision acknowledged, processed and finally given the ceremony it deserved. The location, which we’re keeping to ourselves for now, was chosen with more thought than immediately meets the eye.
FAILURE IS
UNIVERSAL.
CEREMONY
HELPS.
Confused? You should be — because we’re not giving the hook away yet. What we can say is that the location is in Scotland, it was chosen deliberately and when you find out where exactly, it will make the whole thing feel like it couldn’t have been held anywhere else.
Light Touch.
Real Weight.
This isn’t a roast and it isn’t a self-help seminar. It sits in a more interesting space — the genuine relief of having your worst decision acknowledged publicly, with good humour, in a room full of people who’ve been there too. The format requires that balance and is built specifically around it.
Ceremony
Done Properly
Black tie. A stage. A host. Categories. An acceptance speech. The full awards night architecture, applied to subject matter nobody has ever given this level of production to before. The contrast between the gravity of the format and the nature of the awards is where all the comedy — and all the emotion — lives.
Everyone
Qualifies
There is no entry requirement beyond having made a decision you regret — which covers every adult alive. The broad appeal is structural. The audience self-selects through a shared experience rather than a shared interest, which makes the room unusually connected from the moment people arrive.
NOMINEES.
SPEECHES.
WINNERS.
A full awards ceremony format — host, categories, nominees, presentations and acceptance speeches. Every element of a prestigious awards night, applied to decisions that genuinely should not have been made.
Public submissions open the field — nominees are real people who put themselves forward, which means the ceremony is built on genuine stories rather than constructed ones. The audience knows it’s real. That’s what makes it land.
Categories that reward specificity — from poor financial decisions to terrible date ideas, professional disasters to home improvement catastrophes. Each category has a natural brand position attached to it.
Full content capture across the evening — the speeches, the reactions, the acceptance moments. The format produces content that’s both genuinely funny and genuinely moving, often in the same clip.
There’s something that happens when a room full of people in formal wear agrees to be honest about their worst decisions. The defences come down. The laughter is louder. The emotion sits closer to the surface than anyone expected when they put on the bow tie.
The format is designed to hold both registers simultaneously — the comedy and the catharsis — without letting either one overwhelm the other. That tonal precision is what makes it shareable across audiences who don’t usually share the same content.
People leave having genuinely processed something, in a room full of strangers, in black tie, in Scotland. That’s a specific and rather wonderful thing to be part of.
EVERY
BAD
DECISION.
The category structure of the awards creates natural, non-competing brand positions — each tied to a specific type of bad decision. A brand whose entire reason for existing is to solve a particular kind of problem has never had a more native placement than a ceremony celebrating that problem at scale.
The Main Event
Naming rights across the full ceremony. The brand most associated with fixing things generally — insurance, financial recovery, home repair, legal support — has a headline position that writes its own narrative.
Own Your Category
Individual award categories are available for category-exclusive brand sponsorship. The Financial Decisions category. The Home Improvement category. The Career Blunder category. Each one has an obvious brand home.
The Drinks Reception
The pre-ceremony drinks, the interval bar, the post-show celebration. High dwell time and the specific warmth of an audience that’s just had a very honest evening together.
The Speeches Travel
Genuine acceptance speeches about real bad decisions, delivered in formal wear, to a live audience. The content outlives the event considerably — because the format produces moments people want to watch more than once.
FOR BRANDS
THAT MAKE
THINGS
BETTER.
The National Bad Decisions Awards is the most logical home ever constructed for brands in the repair, restoration and recovery space. The entire event is built around decisions that went wrong — and the natural next question is what you do about it.
Natural fits include insurance and financial services, home repair and renovation, legal and professional advice, health and wellbeing recovery, relationship and therapy services, vehicle repair, IT support and data recovery — and any brand whose product exists specifically because someone, somewhere, made a decision they later regretted.
Warm. Honest. Sharp.
The event has a specific emotional register — self-aware, forgiving, genuinely funny. Brands that match that tone will feel like part of the evening.
Universally Qualified
Everyone in the room has made a bad decision. That shared experience creates an unusually open, connected audience — receptive to brands that acknowledge real life rather than idealise it.
Speeches That Stick
Real people, real stories, formal wear, live audience. The content produced is neither scripted nor manufactured — which is exactly why it travels as well as it does.
Annual Property
The format is licensable and designed to repeat. A title sponsor who moves early builds a long-term association with a ceremony that grows in cultural recognition — and nominations — each year.