L-R: Jacqueline Franco, Jack Shearring, James Ganio, Julian Smith
In today’s competitive advertising landscape, crafting a standout media award blends clarity, creativity, and compelling storytelling. Recently, a number of MediaSense client leaders participated in a series of prestigious industry judging panels including Media Week, The Drum & M&M Global Awards. Here Jacqueline Franco, James Ganio, Jack Shearring and Julian Smith share their insights and key take-outs from the awards.
What were some of the key standout themes from the award nominations you evaluated?
Jacqueline Franco: Within the categories I judged, many of these campaigns were cause-driven, with much smaller budgets that required greater creativity and resourcefulness to ensure messages landed. Interestingly, they leaned heavily into more cost-effective non-traditional media channels, from a guerilla WhatsApp campaign to creation of a story book with a dual message aimed at both parents and their children.
James Ganio: This year showcased a wealth of outstanding ideas, particularly in the ‘Innovation & Creative Excellence’ category, which I had the privilege to review. From unique ad funded programmes, and bespoke games within Fortnite through to discrete creative designed to reach niche audiences, it was encouraging to see the strength of ideas coming from both media agencies & vendors alike.
Jack Shearring: Judging the media category is always a pleasure, as we get entries that document a campaign from inception, through to planning and all the way to measurement. This year there was a definite focus on proving the effectiveness of the entries – they didn’t necessarily need to equate to sales, but there was certainly an emphasis on proving the business impact of their entry.
Julian Smith: The majority of the entries I judged demonstrated a powerful combination of media planning qualitive, data led/evidence-based quantitative and good old-fashioned ideas. It was refreshing to see that the craft of media strategy and planning was far from dead and that in the decade of the algorithm and automation, smart thinking and activation were still very much to the fore.
Considering the award-winning entries, what do you think it takes to win?
JF: Work that cuts through is based on a clear, single-minded strategy, well (and often simply) executed, delivering compelling results against the briefed KPIs. Judges see a lot of award entries and it is easy to get lost in the pack if your narrative is unclear. Being able to translate your campaign into an engaging story from brief through to results into an engaging way (think humour, emotion) will help the key messages land with the judges and remain memorable well beyond the judging session.
JG: Ultimately the proof is in the pudding and any entries that could clearly demonstrate positive shifts in marketing KPIs and business results stood out. Interestingly, very few of the entries could demonstrate the latter which in some cases could be forgiven due to marketing KPIs forming the core objective. Results aside, a clear narrative that illustrates the task at hand, an understanding of the target audience, a strategy and excellent creative made for a good entry. Simple, right?!
JS: The industry is not short of exceptional, award-worthy work, but communicating the work’s success is a skill in itself. Successful entries clearly demonstrate how the media strategy supports business objectives, driving tangible growth impact like brand uplift, sales, lifetime value etc. A strong and cohesive narrative will also set the entry apart – judges have 100s of entries to review, so standing out with your description will get you noticed.
JS: Primarily being able to explain and articulate the media solution, to what is, in many cases, highly complex business and strategic problems, in a simple and cogent way. Those that stood out avoided jargon, kept hyperbole to an absolute minimum, and presented the ideas in a way that my Mum could quickly understand and appreciate.
Can you share an example of a submission that stood out to you?
JF: ‘The Hidden Story’ by L’Enfant Bleu was awarded 2 ‘gold’ and 3 ‘highly commended’. The campaign addressed the issue of ‘sharenting’ using a multi-layered strategy to raise awareness of this sensitive topic. The campaign went back to basics to create a story book which had a dual story, one that parents could read to their children and one that had a hidden meaning for them about sharing child imagery online. In addition, it brought the issue quite literally into the home in a moment where parents were bonding with their children to really heighten the emotion around the topic.
JG: ‘If You’re Into It, It’s In The V&A’ campaign where the aim was to reach audiences that didn’t realise the museum was a place for them and in fact contained collections that appealed to their interests. The agency undertook deep research of the target audience, uncovered their passions and, with museum curators, identified objects that matched them. These matches formed the creative that ran in broad reach media but they also had fun with more niche executions, for example: Placing flyers in DePop purchases to target fashion lovers and tell them about clothing collections available to view. Great planning and clever creative led to positive results.
JS: My favourite award entry was Sela and RNID’s campaign ‘Unsilence the Crowd’ which marketed technology to increase accessibility for deaf football fans. They partnered with Newcastle United to create a custom-built football shirt that incorporated technology that produced real-time touch sensations to allow deaf fans and fans with hearing loss to ‘feel the noise’ of the crowd. The campaign was so effective that when Dan Burn scored, he celebrated by doing sign language into the TV cameras! I still think about that campaign today, the execution was superb.
JS: The clear stand-out for me was the Age UK/Big Brother ‘Uncomfortable reality’ campaign. The partnership was anchored by a very powerful idea – the uncomfortable reality of loneliness among older people. This was matched with a very brave creative treatment (30” of being alone in the Big Brother house without audio on primetime TV is unsettling) to create impact and cut-through. The results spoke for themselves.
What did you personally take away from your judging experience?
JF: Beyond being inspired by (some) interesting and creative campaigns and challenged to understand the merit of others, part of the honour of judging was being in a room with clever industry peers to debate the strength of the insights and execution of the ideas into a campaign that is award-winning. Sharing different points of view from across the industry is refreshing, as is the ability to be ‘close to the work’ again and seeing how our industry has a tangible impact on a brand’s bottom line.
JG: It was great see the work that ultimately drives the industry forward and meet talented individuals from a variety of backgrounds to debate the nominations. I also attended the awards which was the most attended since the pandemic and had a real energy about it. From both these experiences I took huge confidence that the industry is in fine form with plenty more to come.
JS: Judging awards gives you access to work you would have never seen before. It’s easy to sit back and just see the work being produced by my clients, but this is a blinkered view of the industry. Judging has given me a nudge to spend more time reading the trade press and seeing the brands putting out exceptional creative work. These are the brands we want to work with.
JS: That there is a lot of very good work being produced, from some exceptional agency folk. There is an abundance of talent. We mainly get to see a shop window version of agencies when they’re pitching for our client business. Judging these awards allowed me to really see what their output, the value they bring to the work they do on behalf of their clients.