A fantastic week judging the Evolution and Creative use of Data categories at the LIA - London International Awards this year!
It was a privilege to discuss the work that is helping to shape the future of our industry. Spanning across Gaming, AI, technology, data, product development and more, I was blown away by the innovative uses of creativity in solving real problems that grow business and help humanity. In particular it was amazing to see how quickly our industry has embraced AI and is leveraging it to build valuable solutions beyond novel executions.
Thank you to our jury president Yasuharu Sasaki for the work in leading the team across the week, and to Tiffany Rolfe, Joey David-Tiempo, Jouke Vuurmans, Kaleeta McDade, Jimmy Smith, Lucia Orlandi, Carren O'Keefe and Toan Nguyen who I learnt so much from in seeing how you assess and analyse the work.
Last but not least, a big shout out to team Barbara Levy, Laurissa Levy, Christina Shaw, Patricia Censoprano and everyone else who ran such a smooth show. You’re the best in the business
There will always be people questioning the need to hand out awards in marketing. They probably don’t fully appreciate how award cases are critical tools for talent attracting, winning new business and for service development.
I’ve had the opportunity to judge LIA before, and it’s a great experience and learning opportunity. There is no pre-judging, so every piece of work will be viewed and discussed in the jury. We will have time to talk and to review all work. And it’s a good idea to be prepared, as it will take a lot of time to finish our job. We all know how much time and resources goes into submitting work, and we must treat the work accordingly.
Being on the jury is important work. Our job is to be curators; carefully selecting the pieces that not only outshines the rest in terms of strategy, creativity, execution and results, but also represent our time."
We had a long three days in the PR jury. But I think in the end, everyone in the group felt it was worth it.
The ambition was to look after the integrity of the jury, the integrity of the LIA, and the integrity of the PR discipline. And my feeling is that we got there. Everyone spoke their mind, all work was debated, and I didn’t experience any politics."