When the press rewards creative prowess

The 2024 Epica Awards once again allowed a jury of leading journalists to celebrate creativity. Here are some of their choices.

por Mark Tungate , Adforum

As you can imagine, when you gather a bunch of journalists in a room to award prizes for creativity, they’re not just looking for ideas and impact, but great stories.

Take the Grand Prix for Innovation: using the fact that dogs are able to detect earthquakes in advance to create an early warning system is not only intriguing, but touching. How often is technology heartwarming?

The Digital Grand Prix also had a human – and very practical – goal: recruitment. Roblox players could show off their skills in an amazingly detailed virtual IKEA store and earn money at the same time. While there have been Roblox projects before, this one had a high PR value that captured media interest.

We’ve also seen rebranding exercises before, but Landor’s new look for the Orchestra Sinfonia di Milano was a creative concerto in its own right, blending Futurist art with architectural references to the Duomo cathedral. The jury rewarded it with the Design Grand Prix.

Case studies have many uses, but they are rarely spectacular snippets of entertainment that give you a genuine frisson. Stand by for this film from Serviceplan Germany, in which a surfer confronts a monster wave to demonstrate the “can do” spirit of a telecoms brand. This was a Gold for Serviceplan Germany, which dominated the awards this year.

This next campaign is pretty entertaining too, especially if you’re a watch nerd. To relaunch an IWC timepiece last seen in the 1970s, the agency Scholz & Friends plunged the brand’s communications into the past. A contender in the Luxury category, it won an appropriate Gold.

This next film is an Animation Gold and captures everything that’s wonderful about the category: precision and attention to detail combined with storytelling that takes us on a journey. The stop-motion animation was created using printouts from a supermarket ticket machine.

Sometimes you’re confronted with a project that’s downright weird. For this Gold in Creative Use of AI, Impact BBDO and the newspaper An Nahar resolved Lebanon’s lack of a President with the use of an emerging technology. No journalist could resist writing about such a potentially risky decision…

Of course the jury were fascinated by projects that had a direct impact on the media. Returning to the terrifying subject of earthquakes, this Gold for Havas Germany in the Responsibility (or good causes) category required an impressive amount of coordination.

Sometimes a campaign can slip through the net. This one from INNOCEAN Europe and Reporters Without Borders features “The First Speech” of an authoritarian figure – and all the promises that were not kept. It scored a Silver and perhaps deserved more. We’ll let you decide.

Finally, for some light relief, here is the Film Grand Prix. It’s unusual for an awards jury to give a big prize to a film promoting another award – and shows a generosity of spirit. The film from BBDFO New York is vibrant, well-acted and funny, especially for those of us who work in the creative industry.

 

TOPIC: EPICA AWARDS