The co-chairs of the 2011 Marketing Awards wanted to make this year’s judging process a bit more transparent than in previous years, and have begun blogging their judging experiences.
The full jury meets for the first time tomorrow to begin in-person deliberations, but the first round has already concluded online. Writing over the weekend, Shawn King, chief creative officer at Extreme Group, said this year’s jury has found a simpler way of narrowing the field during those first early stages.
“I’ve always hated having to score the first round,” King said. “I have no context and in most cases you’re even told to try not to score anything a 4, 5 or 6 on a scale of 1 to 10. The idea being if it’s above 6 it goes to the next round, and below 4 it’s out. I just think “in” or “out” is simpler. And it is – This morning we went through all the votes from the judges and anything that had a 50% or higher vote for “in” is going to the next round for scoring next week. So, at this point we at least know what’s moving on.”
Christina Brown, vice-president creative at Montreal’s Cloudraker, has taken a very personal approach to her first blog post because, as she wrote, “I tend to be a little leery of talking heads in our business (or any business for that matter) so I want to approach this blog with caution. Given the precarious nature of this era in our industry, a lot of people are coming out with a lot of theories about where things are going and an awful lot of it tends to be bound to self-interest. That’s why I am so excited to sit in on conversations over two days this week that will be about the actual work going on in this country.”
“I am not an expert in the new ways of the world,” she wrote later in her post. “All I know for sure is that I am actively seeking out and enjoying the new world and the challenges that come with it. To be completely honest, I kinda think anyone who claims to be an expert, given how quickly things are changing right now, is a little suspect. God knows, I am not doing everything right, but part of any new era is a whole lot of trial and error. Plus, I’m pretty sure I wasn’t doing everything right before ‘everything changed’ either.”
To follow Brown and King, visit A Brave New Blog.
