So many advertising awards shows have their work judged by industry insiders and peers. While that has worked for the most part, it can lead to some crying foul when snubbed entrants think the judging was biased.
A new campaign for the Epica Awards from Cloudfactory sets out to assure potential entrants that the show won’t have that problem, since it’s judged by journalists, not other creatives. The Amsterdam-based agency peppered in a touch of humor and a speck of irony to remind entrants that the show is not judged by their cutthroat creative rivals in other networks.
A series of images and GIFs shows anonymous pixilated agency people stating a series of excuses why their creative didn’t win an award, including “Our idea was clearly better, but there was a guy on the jury who doesn’t like me.” All are tagged with the line “No Bias. No Excuses,” pointing out that agencies can’t blame biased jurors or network politics if they fail to win at Epica.
View this post on Instagram
Cloudfactory creative team Julio Alvarez and César Garcia, along with managing director Sandeep Chawla, explained the thinking behind the campaign.
“As far as most awards shows go, the advertising industry seems to be the only one where we insist on judging ourselves,” Garcia said in a statement. “We wanted to point out the absurdity of this while also explaining why Epica is different.”
Alvarez added: “One of the things we like about the campaign is that it reflects a reality. As creatives we do actually use excuses like ‘most of the jury was from a rival network’. So we thought we could have fun with that and be a little provocative at the same time.”
Epica Awards campaign from Cloudfactory
Production company Be Sweet Films is helping the agency bring the campaign to life with a series of short films on the same theme.
Alvarez and Garcia recently came to Cloudfactory from TBWA\Neboko and helped reboot the agency, which was founded in 2012 but has remained somewhat under the radar.
“We consider ourselves activists because we want to help reset the industry as well as the agency,” said Alvarez, in reference to the fact that the two refer to themselves as “creative activists,” because their goal is to liberate brands’ creativity.
The Epica Awards are now open for entries until October 8.