The U.S. Hispanic Idea Awards are being revamped this year as an October awards show after being held for the last four years during the annual April conference of AHAA: The Voice of Hispanic Marketing.
The awards will take place in Miami on Oct.12, after a full-day program that will include Philip Thomas, CEO of the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity, as one of the keynote speakers.
The awards are being moved partly to take advantage of fresher work that breaks later in the year and missed the earlier deadlines of previous years when the show happened in April. Luis Miguel Messianu, creative chairman and CEO of Hispanic shop Alma and also chairman of Circulo Creativo, which organizes the awards, said there is "clearly a gap" between April and June, a period when agencies prepare a lot of new work to send to the Cannes festival.
The call for entries for the U.S.H. Idea Awards will open this summer for work by Hispanic shops and general market agencies targeting Hispanic consumers.
Circulo Creativo acknowledged at last year's show the total absence of women on the 22-person jury and promised to do better this year. In addition to adding female judges, this year's jury president will be Fernanda Romano, founder and creative partner at Malagueta Group.
Ms. Romano worked as a digital creative at DM9 DDB in her native Brazil before joining Lowe New York as executive creative director in 2005, then held global creative director positions at several agencies in Madrid and London before moving back to New York. In 2012 she took on a dual role at Naked Communications, building a content offering in New York while opening a Brazil office as partner and chief creative officer.
Ms. Romano has been a Cyber Grand Prix winner at the Cannes Lions festival, She was named one of Ad Age's Women to Watch in 2007, and one of Ad Age's 100 Most Influential Women in the last 100 years in 2012. When Ad Age's editorial partner Meio & Mensagem launched Women to Watch Brazil in 2013, Ms. Romano was one of the honorees, making her the first person to be named one of Ad Age's Women to Watch in more than one country.
Circulo always names an international creative leader who is not part of the U.S. Hispanic market as the jury president; last year Jaime Rosado, regional creative director at JWT Puerto Rico, and Cesar Agost Carreno, regional creative director and creative VP at Ogilvy Latin America, shared that role.
Gustavo Lauria, co-founder of New York startup We Believers and president of Circulo Creativo, said there were about 60 winners at last year's U.S.H. Idea awards. A main feature of the awards is the jury's selection from among the winners of the top five ideas of the year. Last year's top five ideas came from four U.S. Hispanic shops: independents Grupo Gallegos and We Believers, Saatchi & Saatchi's Conill and Leo Burnett's Lapiz.
Separately, the call for entries has opened for U.S. Hispanic agencies to enter the Wave Festival for Latin America. The deadline is March 25. (Ad Age participates in the Wave Festival, organized in Rio de Janeiro by Ad Age's partner in Brazil, Meio & Mensagem). Read more about the Wave here and enter the Wave here.
