London International Awards judging: What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas (well, except for Campaign Brief’s obligatory photos!)

The 2009 London International Awards judging has concluded in Las Vegas. This year is the first year that the organisers of the London International Awards made the welcomed decision to assemble a jury in the same place to judge the awards. Judging was held within the best hotel on the Las Vegas strip – the magnificent Wynn Hotel. LIA President Barbara Levy told Campaign Brief the decision to bring all the judges together to judge was made to take the international awards show to a higher level. Going on the results of this year’s judging this aim has certainly been achieved. This year’s panels were headed by Jeremy Craigen, ECD at DDB London, Tham Khai Meng, Worldwide Creative Director of Ogilvy & Mather and Faris Yakob  EVP/Chief Technology Strategist at McCann Worldgroup, New York (Pictured above, Right to Left).

The results of the awards will be released in November but it is notgiving away too much to report that all juries were brutally tough.Gold and Silver Statues are way down on previous years and so detailedwere the jury discussions that many of the first round finalists foundthemselves discarded in the final deliberations.

The result,according to Print and Poster and Billboard and Non-Traditional JuryPresident Jeremy Craigen, will be “a very nice awards annual that onlyincludes international standard winners. If you win a LIA award thisyear you can be incredibly proud”. Craigen’s view was echoed by ThamKhai Meng who said his jury was one of the best he had ever judged withand the panel was meticulous in making sure only worthy work remainedat the end of the five day judging process. Both praised the LIA’sjudging process, organisation and the exceptional hospitality they andtheir juries received.

This year London International Awards received 13117 entries from 78 countries.

Nextyear’s judging will be again held in Vegas at the Wynn Hotel. This willagain be one judging gig everyone will want to get on. “You can expectthings to be even bigger and better for our 25th Anniversary nextyear,” said Barbara Levy.

See last week’s Campaign Brief coverage of this year’s LIA judging HERE. And below are some of the ‘after-hours’ photos from a few of the evenings out that could easily made it into The Hangover – Part 2.