A couple of weeks ago, I joined the judging panel for Effie Awards Europe. It was my first time judging this show and I had the amazing job of judging multi-market and positive change entries.
Few things struck me:
🇺🇦 A lot of the work under the positive change category focussed on drawing attention to the war in Ukraine; it was incredibly moving to read about the power of creativity to stir public opinion, and illuminate the unimaginable humanitarian crisis on the ground there. I'd love to collaborate with any brands who are contemplating activating the advocate brand within as it's super inspiring work.
🎻 Execution-allly speaking, the diversity of channels was still quite limited. The entries that demonstrated how they orchestrated omni-channel strategy and even leveraged experimental channels saw that bet pay off in their results. Kudos to those who paid special attention to complexity, and fragmentation of their audience(s).
🎩 If I put my skeptical hat on for a minute, the first part of the entry is to establish the challenge and argue that the ambition, and subsequent objectives and KPIs are suitably challenging. This was probably the most underwhelming part of most papers... there were lots of arguments like "we did £10m in sales last year and times are tough so the challenge this year is to do £9M".. call me a harsh marker but aren't the Effies supposed to be for the 'most effective' creative work in our industry... not the 'sort of okay' work that may or may not have moved the needle..
We will have to wait and see who takes out the top gongs when the final round of judging is complete soon, but I'm hoping those businesses with the biggest ambitions and creativity win out.
#Creative #Effectiveness #Effies #PostiveChange
Marketing and media communications leader | Google Power for Partners 2024-2025 Mentor | Bloom member | ex-Spotify | ex-Sky
3wWooop- I am judging as well. Super excited, and hope to see you there.