And so the Epica Awards of which this blog is a member of the jury are out. There are indeed too many categories to count, and this year's results read like a bulletproof expected winners - I am not here to disagree with the other phyical jury members but some campaigns were obviously designed for the awards season. Pity a lot of gems were sidelined for the "expected" ones. I, for one, still favour simple and effective ads.
Here's a sample of the Gold winners who will be competing for the Grand Prix:
For the World Cup category NCDV won for its abuse series:
For the topical and real-time advertising, thankfully, they picked the lovely Aldi fresh prints ad:
For the retail services how about this funny one from Ex Libris bookstores?
For the restaurants, bars & cafes McDonald's wins it with this cute one (there was another gold for Burger King funnily!):
In the public relations category, the Price of our Lives (the symbol for the March of our Lives in the US - or how much the National Rifle Association is paying per politician per state) won:
In the print craft section, we have this lovely effort from Sweden:
In the packaging design Le Beck wins with this lovely one:
Lacoste wins the premium and luxury brands category with its "save our species":
Actually list goes on and on and on.... Let us see who will win the Grand Prix. My own favorites did not make it however. Here's what my assessment was for this year (and considering Epica is a major reflexion of the state of the advertising in the world today) "how desperate can one be?" Indeed, too many campaigns erred on the side of the "wow" only to end up as "meh" (some of the winners I did not even bother cover as I felt they belonged to that category). People, let's get back to basic: Doing ads that are catchy, lovely, instead of focusing on mechanisms so complex and outright silly they make our adds just for today, yet tomorrow completely forgettable.
