Judges Comments
See what our judges had to say about the 2010 LIA Awards and don't forget to check out their accompanying videos!Now before you accuse my jury of being a bunch of mean Prix for again not awarding a Grand LIA, let me explain. The overall standard was excellent but after discussing each of the beautifully executed Gold winning ideas, a ‘best of the best’ was one of the few things we couldn’t agree on.
Radio is a beautifully simple medium and the calibre of an idea is exposed whether you like it or not. This can frustrate the hell out of some creatives as there isn’t much apparent opportunity to innovate. However, be encouraged to hear that others are bravely challenging the conventions of radio and advertising.
Sure, radio will always be dominated by spots and ad-breaks – the model ain’t broke and doesn’t need fixing. But an increasing number of advertisers are finding innovative ways to integrate their message within other parts of the station programming. Many are succeeding and you will notice this year’s Innovative Use of Radio category has a lovely golden hue about it.
Thanks to LIA for organizing a terrific judging experience and to the radio jury for taking the task in hand so personally. Well it is radio.
THE NEW
The NEW category is always slightly ahead and behind itself.
Every year the industry [and the world around it] evolves and things that once were NEW become established – or fade away.
Thus the NEW may become a petri dish for new categories to be grown from.
The LIAs look to reflect the changes in our industry’s output and so new categories may be created to reflect trends in the NEW.
This is the category for things that don't fit in other categories – anomalies that may contain the DNA of future species of advertising.
As ever, we spent a lot of time debating the nature of the NEW. We put a few stakes in the ground: New ways to tell stories, to connect businesses to people, to change behavior or society, to build businesses, or even to build a better future.
The Gold winners all pushed the industry out of comfortable advertising solutions: a file format you can’t print, a payment platform for digital goods, a product: dynamic participatory systems that hint at new roles agencies can play, new ways to think about what we do for clients.
Above it all, Small Business Saturday made an old trick new, creating a holiday that works for the brand, its customers, and the country.
And then we come to the Morgan Spurlock documentary The Greatest Movie Ever Sold into it. Even in a category for things that don't fit elsewhere, it didn't seem to fit.
Pom Wonderful presents The Greatest Movie Ever Sold is a documentary about product placement, paid for entirely by product placement in it, which details the process of getting sponsors on board and the marketing deployed to promote the film.
It didn't seem to sit comfortably alongside the other ideas being judged, but it did seem interesting and directional for the industry to discuss and highlight.
Therefore, in the spirit of recognizing that, the jury decided to create a special award to recognize it, outside of The NEW Category.
[I had to abstain from this discussion, as I was involved in the film.]
In the spirit in which Morgan made the film, the jury would like this award to be offered up for sponsorship. Real estate on the award itself is available for branding, just as it was in the film itself: The Greatest Award Ever Sold.
[Hurry while stocks last!]
My thanks go to the jury for their passion and diligence in what is a very hard category to judge - Chloe Gottlieb [R/GA], Ben Richards [Ogilvy], Anthony Nelson [DraftFCB] and John Wilshire [founder of Smithery] - and for teaching and inspiring me and making the NEW better.
LIA was once again one of the most well organized award shows I had the privilege to judge. Special thanks to Barbara, Patricia, Wayne and Tony for hosting and organizing this great venue. Special thanks should also go out to my jury who quite honestly were and I guess still are better creatives than myself. It's been an honor kids!
As we realized over the past years, classifying digital executions by certain criteria just didn't make sense anymore. So we decided to just group the work into single and campaign executions and judge accordingly.
We judged roughly 600 entries during pre-judging remotely, then the top 200 entries in Good old Las Vegas. During the first day we narrowed it down to the roughly top 60 entries and kept the final 2 days for hours of discussing the work.
Questions from "Is it a big idea?" or "Is the idea relevant to the brand?" and "Is it executed beautifully? to "What's the value to the consumer" or "How does it change people's behavior". All these great questions we tried to answer truthfully.
And at the end of the day, I think we did a great job.
Overall I found the work to be of an extremely high and inspiring standard. I felt the jury passionately interrogated the ideas and I think did well to see past the usual award entry film hype.
My first trip to Vegas didn’t disappoint either and was exactly how I imagined it. The only thing missing was the Tiger in the bathroom.
Judge hard. Play hard.
Those seem to be the rules since the LIA went to Las Vegas.
And I must say the work got a lot more respect than our livers.
We went over and over the Winners time and time again, ensuring that the
work that got in the book really did deserve to be there.
I hope you agree.
