Lindsay Troy on being part of the 100-wattaren jury

The 100 Wattaren is Sveriges Annonsörer's annual awards competition put in place to champion campaigns of any media or discipline that can demonstrate 'proven effect through high creativity'. Having spent a large part of the last 16 years of my life evaluating and helping clients develop more effective advertising I was excited to be asked to be part of the jury for this year's competition and we completed the judging last week. The experience of being part of the jury didn't disappoint and while I obviously won’t reveal any details on the winners here, I felt inspired enough by the experience to write about what I learned.

At its heart the 100 Wattaren is an effectiveness awards - in contrast to say Cannes Lions or Guldägget where the prizes are dished out primarily on the basis of pushing the boundaries of creativity.This is of course is not to say that creativity doesn't play a role in the 100 Wattaren - it explicitly forms half of the judging criteria - but in any case, if there's one thing I've learned working with 100s of campaigns over the years it's that creativity in some shape or form is essential to effective advertising.The most effective campaigns always surprise, delight or interest us in some way..They have to, to get us to notice them and to affect how we feel or think about the brand - even if that's just making the brand more present in our minds.

So what did I learn from being part of the jury?

Firstly that there's a lot of very creative, very successful work out there being produced in Sweden.

Secondly, I learned that it's not a simple task to decide upon the winning cases.Despite effectiveness being a crucial decision criteria, which means that at least in principle there is something objective to base decisions on, it quickly became clear reading the cases that it's far from a simple exercise.For example how do you separate great from merely good business gains when you're comparing across dynamic and more stable categories? between large and small companies? public service vs private sector? between wildly differing levels of marketing support?And between the many different metrics included in the cases?But this is of course a large part of what makes the judging so interesting and what stimulated a large part of the lively debate that we had.

When it comes to judging creativity it's perhaps even harder to decide.Do you reward something that has broken new boundaries?Or is it just as hard to create a campaign that perhaps fits within the frameworks of what's been done before but that does it brilliantly. I still don't know the answer to that but for me I felt most comfortable judging effectiveness than I did applying what felt for me like some kind of subjective judgement on the merits of the creative solution.If it’s brilliantly effective then isn’t it brilliant creative?I suspect this view reflects by background as a researcher rather than creator of advertising but it’s something I will ask my fellow jurors about when we next meet.

But probably most clearly of all, I learned what makes a great 100 Wattaren case and what doesn't.The first requirement of course is a highly successful campaign!But there is definitely a skill in conveying how and why it was such a success.And as part of this making sure to demonstrate that business effects are attributable solely (or at least mainly) to the campaign, rather than, for example, to a great sales team, the weather, unusually heavy media spend or any other factor that might have played a role.We discussed at some lengths the merits and demerits of submissions based on the absence of proof or link from the campaign to the demonstrated business gains.The question raised more than once was 'is the link missing because there is no evidence or because the writer didn't think to include it?'We suspected a bit of both was at play depending on the case.

So overall then, being part of the jury was an inspiring and educational experience and one that I felt a privilege to be involved in.And if you’re looking for a jury members perspective on how to write a compelling paper for next year then you know where to find me…

The nominees for this year’s awards will be revealed on 23 October and the awards ceremony takes place on 4 December. Visit http://www.annons.se/100-wattaren for more details.

For more info, contact:
Lindsay Troy, Lindsay.Troy@ipsos.com
Business Development Director, Ipsos Connect