LIA Integrated judging – JWT’s Tay Guan Hin gives insights into his judging experiences
Tay Guan Hin is the Regional ECD, SE Asia and Lux Global ECD based out of JWT Singapore. He has spent the past 3 days on the London International Award’s Integrated jury which is judging this week at the Encore Hotel in Las Vegas. Here Guan (pictured right in Las Vegas with Anna Fawcett from Filmgraphics) gives his thoughts on his experiences.
One of the best things about judging is the opportunity to view every agency’s creativity. Work that they deemed proud enough to submit.
This year, there were over 200 integrated campaigns. Compared to the usual “stuck in a dark room for hours sitting in office chairs”, we were comfortably sitting on sofas in a room with wall to ceiling windows. They arranged the sofas in a semi circle, much like a living room. This created such a conducive environment that when it came to debating the work, it felt like we were a bunch of friends talking, as opposed to fighting to get our points across.
A few days earlier, I was judging together with Amir Kassaei in Spikes Asia. I didn’t realize he was also the jury president for this panel until I finally saw the judge’s list in my hotel room.
Amir is an intense and no-nonsense kind of guy. Even though he was pretty opinionated, he listened intently when we gave our different points of view. At times, he posed thought provoking questions to think about before we finally made our decision.
When it came to punctuality, he was quite a strict headmaster. Because he was so efficient with the schedule that we finished a day earlier.
Not much Asian work made it thru the shortlist. Quite a few from Australasia.
Some of the Japanese and Korean campaigns which Amir and I were familiar with in Spikes, didn’t sit too well with the other judges. They either don’t quite understand or the insight and behavior of how Asian consumers react with the brand is far removed from reality.
The biggest debate we had wasn’t for a particular piece of work but the definition of the word “integrated”. Just because a campaign has 3 or more media channels doesn’t necessary make it integrated.
How can we define this in the future? How is this different from the “NEW” category that rewards innovative thinking? Can integration be defined as communication integrating into the country’s culture and society. Perhaps it’s not how many channels you use but how well you use them.
The final winners selected managed to actually do all of the above and more. My definition of a truly integrated campaign is when the sum of its parts build to form a bigger message that’s able to integrate with popular culture. Let’s see if you agree when the final winners are announced.