Warc has just launched its 2017 Innovation Awards, a global search for effective innovation in marketing with a $10,000 cash prize fund for the winning papers.
The Warc Innovation Awards seek innovative strategies that might use new technology, or familiar technology in a new way. A winning entry might show how a brand’s products or services were transformed, or show how innovative thinking disrupted category conventions.
“The need for brands to evolve and innovate has never been more critical,” according to Jeremy Basset, head of Unilever Foundry and chair of last year’s judging panel.
Now in its fifth year, the competition is free to enter and open to all forms of marketing and communications from any country. Entrants must submit a case study of marketing innovation that delivered tangible results for a brand.
Several judges have already been appointed to this year’s panel, including:
Bill Cecil, Director, Silicon Valley Office at State Farm Mutual Automobile Insurance Company, USA
Frances Ralston-Good, CEO, Hearts & Science, United Kingdom
Lizzie Shupak, Head of Innovation, DigitasLBi, United Kingdom
Lucie Greene, Worldwide Director, The Innovation Group at J. Walter Thompson New York, USA
Mike Medeiros, SVP, Executive Strategy Director at McCann New York, USA
Roland Harwood, Co-founder and Managing Director of 100%Open, United Kingdom
Will Harvey, Innovation Lead for VCCP Partnership, United Kingdom
Will Higham, behavioural futurist and founder of Next Big Thing, United Kingdom
More judges will be announced in coming months. They will decide which entries will be awarded Gold, Silver and Bronze awards. The Grand Prix for the best overall paper will receive $5,000. Warc will also present five $1,000 Special Awards that recognise specific areas of excellence: innovation in a product or service, channel innovation, category innovation, co-created innovation and innovation in a not-profit-campaign. For additional information on the judges, visit here
“The Innovation Awards is an exciting global competition that recognises the role played by innovative thinking in achieving best business results,” says Lucy Aitken, Case Study Editor at Warc.
All winning entries will be published and promoted in the Warc Innovation Casebook 2017, Warc’s annual report on the world’s freshest communication ideas.
The 2016 Innovation Awards Grand Prix was won by Bediz Eker and Arif Emre Perçin of Y&R Team Red Istanbul for ‘Between Us’, a campaign for Vodafone Turkey which addressed the issue of domestic violence, and which the judges described as clever, powerful and true innovation.