110 strong jury to judge 40th AWARD Awards
The Australasian Writers and Art Directors Association (AWARD) has today announced the full line up of jurors for the 40th AWARD Awards – an annual celebration of the most outstanding creative communications work in the Asia-Pacific region.
A total of 110 creatives will be tasked with selecting the 40th AWARD Award winners, with online pre-judging from 1 February to 8 February 2019 and in-room judging 14 to 27 February 2019.
This year’s jury chairs are:
David Park, Creative Director, Maud
Noah Regan, Creative Director, DDB
Stephen De Wolf, Executive Creative Director, Clemenger BBDO
Micah Walker, Executive Creative Director, 72andSunny
Ant White, Chief Creative Officer, CHE Proximity
Claire Salvetti, Chief Executive Officer, One Green Bean
Martha Coleman, Producer/Partner Revlover
Hamish Stewart, Creative Consultant
Jen Speirs, Deputy Executive Creative Director, BMF
Pip Smart, Executive Producer, Revolver
Damon Stapleton, Chief Creative Officer, DDB
Says Mike Spirkovski, chair of AWARD: “Running for 40 years, the AWARD Awards has become a huge annual celebration and a respected benchmark for creative excellence in our region. Each year, we rely on the support of our industry’s top talent to help identify and set those standards, and as anyone who has judged in the AWARD Awards before will understand, it is no quick and easy task – we delivered a total of 290 pencils last year alone. I would therefore like to thank our impressive list of judges in advance, for what will be a rigorous few weeks ahead.”
The annual AWARD Awards presentation will take place on Thursday 11 April 2019 at the Australian Technology Park.
23 Comments
Sad to see the film and video categories so full of agency people and production company heads, with little representation from those of us who actually make the work.
The same old people
Agreed. This could be a list of jurors from 2014.
No wonder the same old type of things win, and the industry produces the same old things year on year, as we have the same old people deciding what wins/gets recognition. *yawn*
Every year…the same people….zz.z..z.z.z.z…zz..z.z..
Mate, where’s mine….
Good to see some freelance people getting opportunity to judge.
Anyone under the age of a thousand on this list? Someone get me something to scrape the crust off.
I completely agree. Change the guard. And hopefully the industry will change with it.
I think this is some of the most appalling commentary I’ve read on the blog in about 20 years.
This is a great bunch of people.
If you didn’t make the jury, or know someone that didn’t make, just work hard to stay relevant rather than hatchet your peers.
Weak.
Well done to those making the cut. Good to see more freelancers, less head hunters and some fresh consulting types.
I know the commentary looks shit but unfortunately it’s probably accurate.
You say “if you didn’t make a jury, work harder and stay relevant”. We’ve got a couple of entries in Radio and another category I won’t mention and both those categories are being judged by creatives who the 90% majority haven’t won anything in the last year maybe two. And there’s only two pieces of stand out work between them.
The awards given will reflect the taste of a generation that has struggled to stay relevant and that will lead to more work that attempts to win these awards. End result will be Australia treading water even though we have the talent to be a superpower like our cousin across the ditch.
Very true and staying relevant in Award means having a membership – no membership = irrelevant.
Its 98% heads of big agencies and heads of production companies. Where is the representation from the smaller, more innovative companies who are producing work twice as good with half the overheads?
Oh of course… being kept out by the old guard. The old guard (in the juries here) won’t award the new, smaller, smarter players, which keeps up the appearance of these dinosaurs being somehow “more creative”. The winners are just those companies with enough funds to shotgun blast as many entries as they can to see how many get through, judged by the people they went to school with 30 years ago.
I have to back the above comments. I’ve had work entered that picked up nothing at AWARD, then went on to crush it at Cannes and other great shows. Why? Cause the work came of an agency that wasn’t in “the club”.
Drain the swamp
Have you taken a good look? There are a lot of jurors here who have picked up at Cannes over the past two years. And there are also a good swag from smaller shops. Just saying.
These comments are so whingy and typical. You want experienced talent as your jury – people who know their stuff, have a database of what ideas have won awards for the last 20 years or so in their minds, and can articulate their reasoning why something deserves to win to a room full of minds who also know their shit. Original, smart work wins, not stuff that your mate made or stuff that won at some other awards show. Quit crying already.
My point exactly. Thank you.
Sadly true
Wow! I’m astounded by these comments. Having a successful career as a creative means having to consistently produce the goods. I’m struggling to see many people on this list who haven’t consistently managed to do this.
The criticism above says a hell of a lot about the state of advertising.
We’re down with car salesmen and real estate agents in the eyes of the world.
Except we’re way more nasty about it.
Awards in any other industry are judged by the most experienced. The legends or soon to be.
If you can’t see that this bunch don’t realise what good work is even though they didn’t win anything since 2015 you can seriously fuck right off.
Experienced? Just because they’ve been around a long time doesn’t mean they know what good work is. I know plenty of people who own the production company but don’t have a creative bone in their body and still can’t articulate why a piece of work is successful after 20 years in business.
They’ve been around a long time not because of their creative ideas or because they can craft something or their ability to win a client over to their way of thinking, but because they’re good at running a business, hiring people who DO know how to do those things, and making us fight each other for recognition, stay late and work weekends, for the chance at some piece of gold spraypainted plastic.
I could own a great fish shop if I employed the right fishermen and chefs, but personally I can’t tell the difference between flake and haddock on a plate and I wouldn’t be a good judge of the best fish. Knowing who to employ and what client to take to lunch is unrelated to the production of good ideas.
I remember having bitter thoughts like this when I was a baby and couldn’t get on any awards juries.
Keep your head down, do the work, your day will come.
110 people? Isn’t this somewhat ludicrous?
Many comments here are just bitter whiners who are happy to slag off someone else’s jury nod. Why not send a list of suggestions to Spirko, Cam, Tara etc in time for inclusion next year. And by all means include your own name if you think you should be picked.