About the Judging Process

Each year, we get together the most excellent and brightest media minds from around the world to form the jury, who devote their time to our rigorous judging process.

We value the integrity of our Awards. We remove shortlist bias, consider the spread of work for different clients for the Grand Prix Awards, ensure that entries are judged in the first round based on the case studies not soley the creative and we allow debate - all of the judges will review the whole shortlist. Read what founder of the Festival of Media, Charlie Crowe has to say on Awards integrity and gain a little more insight into the judging process. Read it here.

The Festival of Media Awards jury is comprised of clients, agencies and specialist agencies. The chair of the jury is a senior advertiser and always will be and our panels will also always strive to have 20% client attendance. In addition, we also ensure that this mix of clients is not overtly connected to any one agency group.

Previous chairs of the jury:

2010 Bernhard Glock, senior partner, MediaLink

Bernhard Glock was integral to the launch of the Awards in 2009 and he took on the role of the Chair in it's second year. Bernhard has sat on every Festival of Media Awards judging panel since it's launch, which includes LatAm, Asia and Global. Formerly at P&G as the global media director, he now acts as the Chair Emeritus and provides valuable guidance and insight into year-on-year quality and trends.

"I see the awards as a quality benchmark for our media industry. Each advertiser and each agency should benchmark their own work against the Festival of Media award standards and thrive to achieve better results each and every year."

2011 Jenny Ashmore, global marketing capabilities officer, Mars Inc.

Jenny has worked for some of the biggest brands in the world, including Mars Inc, P&G and Yell. She was the Chair of the Jury in 2011, and she is passionate about the Festival of Media Awards because they recognise the best in class. She commented:

"Media is often seen as complex and geeky, as against the sexy and glamorous area of creative. This can mean that the water cooler conversation is not about the opportunities in the new communications routes that are opening up, or even in different ways of delivering through existing channels and platforms. So I am passionate about these awards - which recognise and reward best in class work, and ensure that we all push the boundaries and learn how we can better build our businesses."

2012 Michael Donnelly, worldwide interactive marketing director, The Coca-Cola Company

Last year's Chair of the Jury, Michael Donnelly, talked about the theme of legacy and integrity to ensure the most creative and innovative work is awarded. He described the judging experience as inspiring and rare experience to be able to sit with some of the best minds in media and marketing and share ideas.

"We laughed, learned, shared, debated, selected and celebrated some of the best media work from around the world to help enrich the innovative thinking in our evolving world of media…and we made some lifelong friends along the way…this is our legacy."

*Job titles correct at the time of judging.

The Festival of Media Global Awards 2013 judging panel will be announced soon.

Full list of judges (PDF) for 2012