Swiss Gold Initiative in Amsterdam
The Epica Awards are on a path of global growth. As a sign of this, the jury recently met in Amsterdam. Switzerland was successful, winning eleven awards.
No Grand Prix went to Switzerland. Nevertheless, the local agencies can look back on a successful competition in Amsterdam: eleven awards were won by Leo Burnett Switzerland, Ruf Lanz, FCB Zurich, Saatchi & Saatchi Switzerland, Havas Worldwide Zurich and Advico Y&R. (The works are available via here (ff.)). With two Gold Epicas and a bronze award, Zurich-based Leo Burnett is not only the most successful agency in Switzerland in the 2014 competition. The creatives on Aemtlerstrasse also belong to the most award-winning network: Leo Burnett won 92 awards, 26 of which were Gold. The most successful agency in 2014 is Adam & Eve DDB: 30 awards - 15 of them gold - went to London. With 18 awards, Germany won only 7 more than Switzerland. It should be put into perspective that not all German agencies have rejoined Epica as a result of an ongoing change in the weighting of the ranking. On the other hand, acceptance of the competition is clearly growing in many other countries.
163 submissions from 11 agencies in Switzerland competed against 3422 submissions from 585 international agencies. Editors from over 40 trade journals from all over the world rate the submissions with marks between 1 and 10. After introductory explanations, the work and usually a case movie are projected. The jury members then have five seconds to form their opinion on a voting console. This is a fair system, as in reality the advertising subjects are hardly given any more time to win over the target audience. Nevertheless, there is of course enough room to bring any overlooked ideas back into play before the plenum in a "wildcard" discussion. This has also led to two Grand Prix being awarded in the Digital category in Amsterdam, as the number of entries in this area has grown disproportionately compared to traditional advertising. As a result, the Epica Awards are planning to introduce additional categories for digital forms of advertising in the future. Epica was founded in 1987 by Andrew Rawlins as a European competition. He sold his life's work to Ad Forum in 2012. The new owners want to re-establish the award around the globe.
Andreas Panzeri
WW: This year was the first time that Epica was judged in Amsterdam instead of Paris. Why was that?
Philippe Paget: Amsterdam is a very important location for international advertising. For me, it is definitely the most creative hub in Europe. I hope that we can stay in Amsterdam for at least two years. Then we could move every two years. London, for example, will certainly be a possible destination.
Epica wants to have a global say in the future. How is it positioned compared to Cannes?
We don't want to copy Cannes. We are completely different. Cannes is big business, an industry. We need Cannes. But Epica can analyze the award-winning works there from a different perspective. Our jury is not made up of star creatives who travel from one competition to another as jury members. Our jurors, who all come from international trade journals, perhaps see the work more closely from the consumer's point of view. I am convinced that agencies and advertisers should be more and more interested in such an outside perspective.
What are your other plans?
Two years ago, we opened up from Europe to the wider world. We are still in the process of convincing a few important international networks of our competition. We want to work with even more partners around the world. The specialist media are not yet sufficiently aware of how influential they can be when they work together. We already have over 40 Epica partners in the media world. Together, that makes for a very strong voice. pan
