Since 1994, New York Festivals AME Awards has honored international work that demonstrates ground-breaking solutions to challenging marketing problems. AME’s regional Grand Jury looks to assure that all entries are judged with cultural relevance within their own region.
“Regional judging is the foundation of which our Grand Jury is built. For 2018, the AME Awards has recruited 108 planners, strategists and marketing executives from 41 countries in 5 regions around the globe who will participate in a three-stage judging process. The prestigious regional juries are looking forward to seeing the best marketing work created in 2017,” said Michael Demetriades, President and Executive Director of New York Festivals AME Awards.
With an eye towards judging this year’s competition, which is currently open for entries, two of this year’s Grand Jury members that included nine jurors from the Middle East & North Africa (MENA) region, weigh in on judging the awards.
Carl Bou Abdallah, Senior Brand Planner, FP7/Lebanon said, “Each campaign has its own metrics of success on the award-winning level. It depends on the brand, product, culture, the idea, how relatable it is, how liquid it is to transform and adapt to different media platforms, how much it generated talk… But the most important, close to being common, trait an award-winning campaign needs to have, is its ability to solve a problem in people’s lives.”
Entries differ from country to country. Cultural and social change influence regional work. The impact of these changes affects the creative direction and strategy of the campaign and the consumers that the campaign engages.
“Social and cultural changes affect people’s behavior. These behaviors manifest themselves when it comes to purchases, online behavior and media consumption. If these behaviors are taken into consideration, they will definitely influence the tone and/or execution of a marketing or communication campaign,” said Newton Rebello, Group Account Director for Blue Apple Advertising, Dubai.
The AME Judging process provides jurors with a global view of the most innovative and strategically effective creative work the world has to offer and an awareness of the evolution of the industry. Being part of both a regional and a global judging panel gives the jury a front row seat to emerging trends and new technologies that engage consumers.
“AI and automation has caught up with the world. There’s no denying this. Uber has just purchased tons of driverless cars from Volvo, programmatic buying is now capable to come up with the ad by itself and update it every five seconds based on people’s real live interaction with it, McCann Japan has their own AI powered creative director. We live in a world where everything is being, seamlessly affected by automation,” Mr Abdallah added.
AME’s judging process uses four specific criteria, the diverse regional AME Jury evaluates entries weighted by importance: Challenge/Strategy/Objectives (20%), Creativity (25%), Execution (25%) and Results/Effectiveness (30%).
The regional AME Jury’s collective votes, truly non-partial and world class, result in Gold, Silver, Bronze and the AME Green Award are determined in the first two rounds of judging. All Gold-winning work from all regions is judged by the full international Grand Jury in the final round to determine a Platinum Award for each of the five regions.
