The entry site for the 2010 Media Innovation Awards is now up and running, with a bunch of new options for media companies, suppliers, agencies and marketers looking to earn some glory for their innovative work over the last year.
Deadline for entries is Sept. 13 with the Media Innovation Awards gala Nov. 18 in Toronto.
The Media Innovation Awards is Canada’s premier media planning and buying awards program, honouring the great and growing role that media plays in marketing, and the strategic and innovative ways media professionals enhance advertiser’s messages.
Michael Girgis, CEO and president of Onestop Media Group, and Mark Sherman, founder and CEO of Media Experts, are serving as co-chairs of the 2010 judging process with their jury to be announced shortly.
Last year, the MIAs marked their 10th anniversary and over their first decade, they have grown in stature and popularity to become the most important media event in Canada each year.
“But to mark the beginning of the second decade we wanted to really shake things up,” said Girgis. “Not just change for the sake of change, but change that will benefit the industry and hopefully inspire even better work that competes and wins on the world stage.”
“Aside from celebrating the country’s best work, the MIAs should set benchmarks that push everyone in the industry to go further, aim higher and do better and better work year after year,” said Sherman.
A fundamental overhaul of the categories for 2010 sees some categories eliminated completely, others changed slightly and renamed, and a handful of entirely new categories.
The media industry has gone through unprecedented change in the past few years and both Sherman and Girgis felt the industry’s top awards show could change to reflect that.
“The categories as they existed effectively precluded some of the great work being done in digital, with social media and other non-traditional platforms. Out of home, for example, has become so much more than traditional billboards, and we wanted the MIAs to reflect that,” said Girgis.
The co-chairs also wanted the MIA categories to more closely reflect those used at the International Advertising Festival in Cannes each year, which meant a shift from demographic categories to product categories.
Aligning with Cannes should have the practical impact of making it easier to enter both shows, but should also get industry leaders across Canada thinking about and comparing themselves to the worlds best media work, said Sherman.
“We’re still going to be very demanding but the new categories should deliver at least a few more winners,” he added. “And more winners encourages people to take more risk, do different and innovative work.”
“We realize this is a big change, and at first we wanted to match the categories completely to what is done in Cannes, but the team at Marketing talked us into reluctantly scaling it back slightly,” said Girgis.
Visit Marketing’s MIAs site now to see the complete list of categories, get more information about the awards and enter your work
