As part of our Inside the Jury Room series, we interviewed David Noonan, Retail Communications Manager, for Ford Motor Company to hear their perspective as a judge this year for the Festival of Media APAC Awards 2026.
In the interview, David takes a deep dive into how the role of media has evolved in shaping consumer behaviour in recent years and what excites them most about the Festival of Media APAC Award entries this year.
Which campaigns or brands do you think have set new benchmarks recently in the
APAC media industry?
- Aldi (Australia’s) Good Different remains a stand out expression of Benchmark brand positioning in recent years. Not just for their ability to cut-thru in a market dominated by Coles and Woolworths, rather for their ability to stick around beyond the usual ‘Campaign-length Period’, when patience levels grow thin and the easiest thing to change is the brand direction. Recent years have seen brands move away from the inclusion of a traditional tagline circumnavigating their logo. Aldi has stuck firm and embraced. Good Different appears 100% rooted in customer insight. Rock-solid flexibility, application across complex channels appearing pre-considered, a baseline foundation to launch everything from empowering customer competitions like AldiCore to ingesting pre-existing templates like the Online (and physical) weekly catalogue. It all makes sense, even if ‘Good Different’ is not omni-present, it is understood. Aldi understands their customer, quirks and all. It all feels so simple when it’s done right.
- So why does this matter? In a world where phrases like ‘AI’, ‘programmatic’, ‘automation’ populates our daily word-soup, and everything starts feeling ‘formulaic’, brands like Aldi have taken a ‘good different’ approach to reminding us that we are human afterall, and we’re all a little different, positively.
What excites you most about this year’s Festival of Media APAC Awards entries?
- There are brands and campaigns that know what they stand for and clearly understand their customer narrative. And there are brands who are pioneering at embracing tech for efficiency in communications. There are very few brands who have nailed the combination. This year, I’m excited to see which brands have got their ingredients right and are pioneering change, while still bringing their brand’s character for a walk.
What advice would you give to entrants of the Festival of Media APAC Awards who want to
impress the jury this year?
- Demonstrate how well you know your own brand and its connection to your audience
- Demonstrate genuine integration across all channels being executed
- Demonstrate strategic robustness from brief through to creative execution.
- Acts of Novelty are short-term and need to tie back to a deeper considered platform approach.
- Holistic Effectiveness > Buying efficiency.
How has the role of media evolved in shaping consumer behaviour in recent years?
I’ve been curiously following how AI based search is quickly establishing as the go-to search solution. This means that more and more customers will be expect their answers off-plaform, nicely wrapped up in a conversational bow, no further clicks required. In this evolution, a new bar has been set for search based answers. Customers get answers easier, faster and more holistically with seemingly less bias in the result.
The opportunity for brands is to figure out how and where to play in this new search solution dynamic. Resources are always limited and brands will have to make decisions on where they invest time and energy. The biggest opportunity for media is balancing the strength of the known channels while realising the power of the new channels.
