Australia’s marketers challenged to show how they’re ‘outsmarting COVID’ as ACA calls for entries into the 2021 Australian Effie Awards

Advertising Council Australia has today launched the 2021 Australian Effie Awards, issuing the marketing community with a challenge to demonstrate its resourcefulness, resilience and the power of great advertising in the teeth of the COVID pandemic.

Says Tony Hale, CEO, ACA: “The 2021 Effie Awards promise to be one of the most important we have ever held. Every single campaign will have been impacted by COVID-19 in some way and the entry forms across all categories have been adjusted to accommodate the challenges that were confronted.

“But it’s also a golden opportunity to enhance our collective marketing knowledge. We have not had a recession since 1990 nor been significantly impacted by a pandemic since the Spanish Flu. This is a chance to understand who really have emerged as the winners in this recession.

“With this in mind, ACA has thrown out a challenge to the marketing community by adding a special new category: ‘Outsmarting COVID’.”

The new ‘Outsmarting COVID’ category has been created for advertising that has resulted in a genuine and demonstrable contribution to the industry’s collective marketing knowledge in response to the pandemic. Entries are eligible from a very wide range of advertising activity including, but not limited to, information campaigns, crisis management, opportunistic campaigns that turned the pandemic to commercial advantage or defended an advertiser’s position during enforced lockdowns. They might be for the development of new distribution models or how to recover quickly from the recession.

A  ‘Jumpstart’ category has also been added to encourage advertisers/agencies that haven’t entered the Effies for the past five years, or never before. ‘Jumpstart’ is intended for potential entrants who might feel they don’t possess all the campaign data to compete on level terms with the usual Effie entrants and past winners. This category is specifically designed to help make the Effies more accessible to the broader marketing community.

In addition to the creation of the new categories, Effie Australia has reviewed all existing categories and as part of this process, the ‘Best Smaller State Campaign’ category has been changed. The category cannot be entered directly, however eligible Smaller State entries in other categories that score highly in Round One of judging will be entered into the ‘Best Smaller State Campaign’ category automatically – and for free.

The changes mean that 25 categories are available to enter this year: full details on categories and all other information about the 2021 Effie Awards can be found here.

The initial Call for Entries deadline is Thursday 3 June. An extended and final deadline of Thursday 17 June will be available but will incur a late entry fee.

Round One judging will take place online from 12 to 16 July, with finalists announced on 28 July.

Round Two Judging is set for 7 September.

All Effies winners will be announced at an awards dinner and presentation in Sydney on Wednesday 20 October. Details of the event will be announced soon.

Advertising Council Australia would like to thank its Marquee Sponsor, Think TV, for its ongoing support which has been integral to the elevated status of the Effies. ACA would also like to thank its other sponsors AdStandards, Google and UnLtd.

For full information about the Effie program and to enter the Effie Awards 2021, click here.