Ad awards judging—how to get on a jury and what to expect

This is part of a recurring series of stories aimed at educating readers on how to break into advertising and marketing, or land a new position. Read the first installment here. If you are sitting on a jury at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity it’s unlikely you will see much of the Croisette or sip glasses of rosé on private yachts. Most of a juror’s time at the ad festival will be spent cordoned off in jury rooms deliberating the various awards before they are announced each night. Judging the Cannes Lions might not seem as glamorous as attending VIP parties and dinners that take place during the annual festival, but being on an industry awards show jury—especially one as prestigious as Cannes—is a coveted role for many advertisers and marketers. In general, serving as an awards show judge can help a professional boost their profile in the industry, grow their network, gain valuable inspiration for their own work and even earn the type of recognition they need to land other opportunities, such as a corporate board seat, according to nine executives who have sat on juries or have chosen judges for awards shows. Cannes Lions coverage See all of the Grand Prix winners here Top 5 Grand Prix campaigns “In many ways, you’re a part of history,” said Mel Routhier, global chief creative officer for VML Health + Wellness, who has judged various awards shows, including the Effie Awards, D&AD and three Cannes Lions. “I like to think that the work you’re a part of judging will be a time capsule for future ad nerds to look back on and learn from and, hopefully, be jealous of. As jurors, we’re the curators of the best of the best at that moment in time, in that particular category. It’s wildly fun to be a part of a group that gets to make that selection. And in doing so, you learn so much.” For those who haven’t sat on a jury, how to land a slot and what to expect once you do can be difficult to figure out. Below is some advice on how to navigate the world of awards show juries, from nine ad leaders who have served as judges or who are in charge of selecting the juries. How do you get selected to judge an awards show? Getting picked for an awards show jury can be seen as one of the “dark arts of the industry,” Mona Munayyer Gonzalez, Pereira O’Dell’s chief growth officer, said. “You want to have a seat at certain tables where you can have influence and a voice.” It’s not always clear to even the people selected as judges what got them there. When asked how Routhier landed her first judging role for the OBIE Awards, which evaluates creativity in out-of-home advertising design, she responded: “Maybe through a combination of people I knew, work I’d been a part of and pure opportunity my agency was helping make for me. When you’re getting your start judging, it helps to have all that on your side.” Most awards shows have a jury selection committee that sifts through pools of nominations to find the best fit for each category. If you’re an executive who wants to judge, you can get your company’s PR lead or another top executive to nominate you, some executives said. For Cannes Lions, people can also apply right on its website. The Effie Awards, which focuses on spotlighting the best use cases of marketing effectiveness, has a similar online application. But, really, these awards shows rely on nominations to build their juries. More: The 2024 Grand Effie and other Effie Award winners Effie Worldwide Chief Brand and Marketing Officer Juliet Haygarth said the show relies on recommendations from its board of directors as well as past judges, suggesting people who want to judge look through their LinkedIn connections to see who has been a juror and ask them for a recommendation. “We give [board members] a criteria that is loose. [Recommendations] used to be done by years of experience,” she said. “But now the industry is so fluid, it’s changing. What we will look for is people who have invested in the effectiveness of their teams … they lead teams, they have responsibility for budgets, ideally they’ve won awards in the past, ideally, they’ve won an Effie.” The Effie Awards will also balance each room to ensure they have “a mix of really experienced judges who are coming back amongst first time judges who may have had a bit of training,” Haygarth said. Diversity is always key for making jury selections across race and ethnicity, background, specialty and other areas, she added. “Whenever we have new categories coming up, too, we have to look for the experts in the field,” said Lauren Eberhardt, VP of programs and operations for Effie Worldwide, noting that this year they had to find experts in AI. “With the rooms, the balance is really important. For every demographic, we want to see people represented in the room.” Diversity is of utmost importance for Celeste Holt-Walters, founder and chief content officer of branding and ad firm Futura Collective, who both judges and has been on the committee to choose the juries for the AICP Awards, which recognizes outstanding production work. “I tend to nominate a lot of freelancers, people from smaller companies and people from companies that I’ve worked with outside of the country because the way that judging is really successful is the diversity in our brains,” Holt-Walters said. “Everybody from New York sees the same work. Not only is it important to have work from all over the world and work from diverse backgrounds, but the people who are judging that work need to have the same broad range of experience. The things that their culture particularly loves or doesn’t love, it makes for a really enriching experience, especially for the awards that you actually get to get together and discuss the work.” Gaining experience judging a smaller, local awards show could provide the training ground for someone to eventually make the leap to a bigger festival such as Cannes Lions, said Paul Hirsch, CEO and chief creative officer of Doremus+Co, Omnicom’s business-to-business specialty shop. Hirsch was the inaugural Cannes Lions jury president for the creative B2B category in 2022. He has judged various other shows including The One Show and the Addys and got his start judging a regional show in eastern Oregon in the mid-1990s where, Hirsch recalled, the awards were called “The Woodies.” “That is certainly a way that people can start to judge or hopefully get invited to judge is that small, you know, toe in the water,” Hirsch said. Ad Age Small Agency Conference & Awards Join us July 23 & 24 in Boston Learn more here Once you judge one show, the more you’ll get called to judge others, said Julie Scelzo, chief creative officer, Chicago and global accounts, Dentsu Creative. She has judged awards shows such as the Clios in the past and is judging her first Cannes Lions, in the creative B2B category, this year. “This is my first year judging Cannes and I’ve been in this industry for a long time,” Scelzo said, noting that what she felt has helped her land on juries is her broad career experience working at agencies, on in-house brand marketing teams including Pandora Music and for tech companies such as Meta. “It gives me a little bit of a different perspective than let’s say somebody who’s been at advertising agencies their whole career.” Still, nothing beats the power of networking and using social media to promote your work to get on the radar of a jury committee, Hirsch said. “The more good work you do, the more people you meet, the more likely you are to be selected for a jury.” Read more: How to get a mentor How much time will you have to dedicate to judging? However long a member of an awards show tells you it will take to complete judging, “double it,” Holt-Walters advised. “You have to commit to sitting in front of your computer looking through that work for hours and hours.” Each awards show operates slightly differently, but one thing that is consistent across them all is how time-consuming judging is—typically, there is a first round of judging that is done online individually; judges must read through sometimes hundreds of entries, depending on the category and show, to get to a shortlist. The Effie Awards breaks it up by having a first-round jury decide the shortlist and then a final-round jury that decides on the winning work. Holt-Walters said she tries to break up the entries, taking on a handful each day, so she can give each the due diligence and scrutiny it deserves. “It takes me a good 6-8 hours to get through it all sufficiently [and] responsibly, where I’m not watching half and moving on,” she said. Many of the people interviewed agreed that the most time-consuming part is going through the first round of entries individually. “A lot of it is making sure that I’m in a room by myself, that someone doesn’t need a snack, that there is space to actually focus on it,” said Scelzo, who has two kids. “The amount of energy, time and money that is put into these entries is real. I want to give the work and the people who have submitted the work the time that it’s due, the time that it deserves.” Scelzo said that for the Cannes Lions creative B2B category she’s judging this year, she and the other jurors decided to do some virtual, pre-judging meetings together ahead of their in-person sessions to figure out the criteria they were looking for in winning work so when they get together, “we’re having the real discussions.” Figuring out the criteria for winning work is something that’s been difficult in judging such a new category as creative B2B, Scelzo added. “The lead-up to it has been a lot more communication than I expected. We feel the pressure to really start to continue the standard, but also really [for] setting the foundation for years to come.” While pandemic-related lockdowns forced many awards shows to go virtual in 2020 and 2021, most now have an in-person session for the final rounds. For Cannes Lions, that happens during the week of the festival. How much time a juror has depends on when an award is being announced that week. “It was days of commitment when you’re there,” said Marc Maleh, global chief technology officer at Huge, who has judged various awards shows but spoke specifically of his experience as a past Cannes Lions creative data jury president and juror. “I did not go to any events. I did not get to go to any panels. You are locked in that room and if you don’t finish within the time frame, you stay the night and you continue to deliberate. You have to get it done.” Maleh said there are perks, though, such as being invited to certain exclusive events including ones that showcase the top junior talent in the industry. “If you’re hiring, you’re like, ‘These are some of the best people in the industry right now,’” he said.More from Ad Age: Agencies’ succession hurdles Tips on identifying winning work When it comes to actually judging the work, Maleh often advises jurors to pay close attention to some of the smaller-scale work being done in countries outside their own. “There’s something really interesting about opening your eyes to amazing work coming out of smaller categories and smaller markets that you’re just like, ‘Oh my God, that’s actually really brilliant,” he said. Maleh was on a 2016 jury that awarded a Grand Prix to “The Next Rembrandt,” a project for Dutch bank ING from JWT Amsterdam, that used machine learning and 3D printing to revive the 17th-century painting “Rembrandt van Rijn.” “It was amazing; artwork meets technology data,” Maleh said. He added that judges must also be cautious of reading through some of the buzzwords in entries. Even back in 2016, Maleh said entrants were throwing out the word “artificial intelligence” far too liberally. “This year that’s probably going to be also important,” Maleh said. “We’re going to see a lot of submissions around artificial intelligence and Gen AI.” Munayyer Gonzalez said judges also need to learn to lean into their individual strengths to find their place in a jury room. “I was in a jury with data analysts, people from media, people from production companies,” she said. “I knew I was representing an independent creative agency.” Representing a creative agency point of view means she often focuses on “the story arc” when judging, Munayyer Gonzalez said, advising others that a selection committee chose you as the judge for your particular perspective, whether it be data or creativity, so don’t shy away from that. Hirsch said he always looks to award work that is going to “kick, pull or drag the category forward; something that’s truly unique, something that’s usually special, that can hopefully inspire and influence other people.” Objectivity is also key. There really seems to be only one universal rule when it comes to judging: Jurors must recuse themselves from judging an entry that either they or their company was involved in. “People should come with a clear head, be prepared to read and ready to have a rich discussion,” said Wanda Pogue, chief strategy officer at VaynerMedia, who has judged various awards shows. “No matter how much you like the creative, remember to keep an objective and open mind, and never lose sight of the results.” Advice for the jury rooms Being in a room with some of the biggest names in the industry and having to debate winning work can also be intimidating for some people. Hirsch said it’s important for jurors to be well informed of the entries and ready to defend their point of view, but at the same time to keep an open mind to other people’s perspectives. “If you are going to stand up for work, you have to be ready to defend it in no uncertain terms,” he said, while adding “people bring their own points of view. Some people may think something’s great and someone else may think something else is great. I don’t think everybody is sometimes happy with the final choice.” Munayyer Gonzalez advised a first-time judge to truly try to focus on what others are saying versus just thinking about what you’re going to say after. “If someone else has said it, don’t say it again,” she said. Also, try to turn off any distractions including phones and messaging notifications, Munayyer Gonzalez said. “If you can truly tune everything out, that is an incredible skill.” She added that there are often representatives for the awards show in the room watching and making sure everything stays civil. If you want to be invited back, you want to show up in the best light, Munayyer Gonzalez said. Haygarth and Eberhardt both said Effie Awards representatives are looking for judges in the room who are both leading the conversation but being respectful of everyone’s opinions, in order for them to be called back. “It’s almost like that high school feeling when you start talking out loud for the first time when the teacher asks a question,” Eberhardt said. “It’s silent and [everyone] just kind of looks at each other then you get the one person who starts the conversation off and then everyone just kind of talks. Don’t be afraid to speak. You’re in a room full of professionals. Everyone’s opinion is valid. You’re invited to a room to have your opinion.”

Ad awards judging—how to get on a jury and what to expect

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