IIS Creative Director, Olga Weiss, Judges ADDY Awards 2011

A few years ago, I was invited to judge ADDY Awards, the world’s largest advertising competition. The ADDY Awards is unique among other advertising creative competitions in that it is the only competition that includes three levels of judging: local, regional, and national.

My latest trip to judge Nebraska ADDY was a great experience. Our hosts in Omaha were wonderful; they were very attentive and made sure we had everything we needed and more. Even more importantly, the awards themselves were incredible as they featured thousands of entries from different agencies representing a variety of industries and a significant amount of outstanding print pieces and campaigns.

Myself and two other judges looked over a variety of print, interactive, sales materials, packaging, mixed media campaigns and broadcast work to determine who would win medals, and best of show. We even had a few select “Judge’s Picks”. I would have to say that all of us judges were drawn to the work that had a strong concept behind it and demonstrated unique and creative use of media.

Several pieces especially stood out from the crowd: Boing sister company presented a brochure made from metal that utilized a clever and funny Zombie concept, integrating excitement into an ad for a hardware company.

A recent study by comScore shows that creative execution had four times the impact of the media plan on overall campaign results. Now we have solid research that backs this up and shows that ads with good creative perform significantly better. Based on this study, we know that a good piece of creative might be the most important thing affecting the outcome of a campaign.

Olga Weiss