Entries now open for the 2012 APG Creative Strategy Awards – entries close 12pm Mon Sept 3
Entries are now open for the 2012 Account Planning Group (APG) Creative Strategy Awards. The awards celebrate the outstanding contribution planning makes to great creative work and showcase the diversity of thinking from creative, media, digital, research, experiential and PR agencies.
Built on the ‘Fulfil Your Prophecy’ idea, the call for entries campaign, developed by DDB, invites entrants to share the moment their brilliant insight came to them. At the heart of the campaign is a print execution of stain glass images that depict the ‘divine moment of revelation’ every planner experiences in developing a great idea.
Olly Taylor, chief strategy officer and partner at Host, winner of the inaugural APG Creative Strategy Award in 2004, and 2012 chairman of judges said the judges will be looking for moments of unexpected thinking.
Says Taylor: “We’ll be looking for thinking that turned the problem on its head. Not just doing due diligence or essentially the right thing, but instead, unearthing some strategic inspiration which made the creative work not just good, but great.”
This year also marks the launch of a new category, The Strategic Agency of the Year Award, recognising the collective efforts of an agency in developing planning talent and fostering growth in this discipline.
Sudeep Gohil, APG chairman and CEO of Droga5, said this new category is designed to recognise those agencies that support planning and are committed to improving standards across the board.
Says Gohil: “This is an exciting first for the APG and we look forward to entries from a number of agencies, big and small.”
In addition, special prizes will be awarded for best insight, best use of data and best approach to research, as well as best non-traditional thinking and best under $50k budget. The awards are open for anyone interested in showing off their talent for creative ideas, insights and storytelling.
Entrants will need to demonstrate how they have used planning to contribute to creative excellence for work created in the past two years. The deadline for entries is 12pm, Monday 3 September.
The awards are generously supported by our partners Sandy Oldham Consulting, GfK Blue Moon, BWM, DDB, The Digital Edge and The Inspire Foundatio.
7 Comments
Metaphors of Higher power notwithstanding, it’s reassuring to see that the planners, the little messianic creatures that they are, are staying true to type and drinking their own Kool-Aid again this season, even if it is intended to be tongue-in-cheek, or so we’re meant to believe. It’s always so hard to tell when the strategy department decides to try and be funny, or as they might say, ironical.
We can only pray for a Jonestown-like event at this year’s awards. Now that would be some ‘brilliant insight’. Sure would sort things out at most of the big agencies in town.
Like the old joke about lawyers, adapted here to fit, “What do you call a thousand planners lying motionless on the floor of auditorium?” . . .
How many planners does it take to have a ‘brilliant insight’?
Why did the planner cross the road?
He had a ‘brilliant insight’ resulting from his close relationship with and his keen understanding of the needs of the consumer.
Also, the travel was billable.
Q: How many planners does it take to change a light bulb?
A: Five. One to change the light bulb, the other four to stand around arguing whether he/she is taking the right approach.
‘Fulfil Your Profligacy’ by telling us all about you ‘divine moment of revocation’.
You know, when you decided to derail a genuine creative idea by presenting your self-proclaimed ‘brilliant insight’ derived from long hours of pouring over research data gathered from consumer responses in completely artificial circumstances? Data that had little or no bearing upon the success of the idea, but was championed by the ‘strategists’, when it succeeded, as the result of their fingers on the pulse of the consumer, and slammed by the same, when it failed, as weak creative that deviated from the planner’s brief?
So a priest, a rabbi, and a planner walk into a bar.
After a quick look at the menu, the two men of god try to order, but unsure that their congregations would approve of their personal choices, the planner sends it back to research.
Strategic Planner
[struh-tee-jik plan-er]
noun
1. A person with your opinion.