Entry Criteria for The Crème of the Best
The Crème of the Best categories include agency professional development, strategic thinking, long term effectiveness and overall success for outstanding top agencies or breakthrough new agencies.
Additionally, the Best Consumer Campaign will publicly champion your biggest agency idea. Guardian readers will have the final vote via online polling.
The Best Development of Agency Talent and Best Youth Initiative will showcase how agencies are getting innovative minds into agencies and keeping the talent pool on top form.
Client judges will also choose one of the most outstanding pieces of work as the best overall campaign, selected from the Campaign categories or Best Strategic Thinking for a Campaign. This will be genuinely innovative or demonstrate original thinking, and will be supported by high quality execution and results.
Awarded to the consumer campaign which in the opinion of Guardian readers has innovated in its market and truly engaged the British population with the brand. Agencies should write for a broad public audience and demonstrate clear results. Final votes will be submitted by readers via online polling. You will be required to supply an edited documentary video for the Guardian website (120 secs max).
This award is for an agency to demonstrate innovation and success in terms of developing its people. It could be a single event, a series of activities or an overall talent development strategy.
This award will demonstrate how an agency is committed to bringing fresh young talent into the industry. It could be evidenced through college/undergraduate initiatives or placements and/or how widely an agency scouts for unusual and innovative young talent. Success needs to be evidenced through time.
Awarded by a dedicated account planning team, this award will reflect where the key insights for the campaign activity have been highlighted through excellence in planning. Essentially this is defining the strategic insight that helped unlock the platform for the creative work. It could be from a planner or indeed any other member of the strategy team. An insight is generally when different pieces of information are combined to create an original perspective. This is often based on a deep understanding of a target consumer’s attitudes and beliefs, which connect at an emotional level with the consumer, provoking a clear response which has the power to change their behaviour. It is the ‘aha’ moment in the strategy/brief/research process; ultimately that moment which gives the team a new angle. On the brief it could come from anywhere; an insightful description of the business problem, or the target audience, or an original proposition. Judges will be looking for the story of how this insight was discovered, how it unlocked the brief and inspired the creative work. Key performance indicators and results should demonstrate effectiveness.
Awarded to the best long term campaign, which through qualified evidence from the client has demonstrated a long term impact on the strategic development and growth of a brand. This should be measured against a long term set of objectives. It should be a series of two or more campaigns within a three year operating period that can demonstrate strategic evolution to build consistent momentum for a brand in its market place.
Best newcomer applications will be new start-ups less than 36 months old and not newly merged organisations with prior trading history. Judges will be looking for future thinking and innovation in the way a new agency is modelled and evidenced through early significant client wins relative to staff numbers and qualified testimonials. Final judging decisions are made by a dedicated MAA Best Awards panel.
Judges are looking for the top consultancy that represents the best industry exemplar to both clients and other agencies, reflecting MAA’s position of championing future thinking integrated agencies. Agency submission papers should include commitment to professional agency development, particularly including wider areas such as employee cultivation and environmental/social responsibility. Also included should be league table recognition, evidence of significant client wins, internal growth/reconfiguring investment and performance information, expertise in multi-discipline experience evidenced by award wins (in various national schemes of status). Final judging decisions are made by a dedicated MAA Best Awards panel.