New York Advertising Festival and its plans for the new season
This is how you combine local spirit and global representation
New York Advertising Festival 2020 submissions are now open bringing the best of the most engaging and interactive campaigns in the country and around the world.
The festival has definitely one of the most representative jury list uniting more than 400 professionals with Alex Schill, Global CCO & Partner of Serviceplan Group, heading the Executive Jury board this year.
In December we’ve had the pleasure to interview Scott Rose, Executive Director of New York Festivals, on his plans for content creating and exciting initiative of offering free entries for this year’s award show.
Mad for this Ad initiative is something new for international festivals. You’re giving free entries to the selected works — why are you doing it?
Our company is all about facilitating a highly competitive, transparent competition that puts the best work in front of the best Creatives. Being a jury member, whether online in the 400 + member Grand Jury or the 20+ live Executive Jury, requires filtering their expertise of craft, business and art through an objective lens in order to award the year’s best work. Mad For This Ad allows some very notable Creatives to drop the objective lens and elevate work that they find personally enjoyable. It’s just saying “I dig this and I want other people to know about it.”
If you had to choose one campaign for Mad For this Ad, what would it be?
The only rule we gave to the “Adhunters” was that the work has to have been created within the eligibility window of the 2020 competition. I prefer to remain impartial and neutral as entries are coming in and I have not yet seen all of the work. I will say some of my favorite Ads of all time were the Lil’ Penny Nike Ads with Chris Rock.
A little bird told us that you’re launching a new project and stepping on the territory of content production. Can you tell us a bit more about your new interview show? Who’s the host and who are the guests?
YES! We’re very excited to be collaborating with, Advertising Innovator and WPP Senior Advisor, David Sable on a video interview series called “Creativity From The Other Side”. Each episode will be a 15–20 minute interview with creative people from all different areas of art and business. We’re keeping a lid on who the guests are for now, but in the interviews David learns how they got to where they are, what drives them, and how they stay creative within the constraints of business. They’re all in NYC and we get to tour their creative spaces, too.
NY Festivals have an Advisory Board consisting of a team of creatives from agencies all around the world. How do you select people for your Advisory board and what’s their task?
We love our Advisory board! They are all high level, incredibly accomplished, award winning, Creatives, who have been on our highly selective Executive Jury. We’re honored to have them helping us achieve our goal of facilitating a highly competitive, relevant and transparent competition. I added “relevant” to the description of what we do, because that is their task. They are our ear to the ground of what’s going on in the industry, what’s the next hot thing that needs its own Category, if not a Category Group. They make sure we run a competition that is keeping pace with what agencies and the people who work at agencies want to enter and gain recognition for.
New York Advertising Festival is not only connected with the city through the name. You also award the projects that use the image of NYC and its people. What is your favourite project of all the winners and entrants of New York City Award?
That’s correct. It’s not just a name. We are all proud to live and work in this city. There’s an energy here that we are trying to channel into the competition, which is exactly why The New York City Award was started last year. It’s an exciting category and was very well received. Last year’s winner was amazing, gutsy, gritty, and incredibly diverse. Truly capturing the essence of NYC. You can see it on our website here.
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PS from The Spotlight team: Creativity From The Other Side with David Sable is now available online (and we like it so much!). The first episodes feature Nili Lotan, Israeli-born and New York-based ready-to-wear fashion designer and bitforms gallery Founder and Director Steven Sacks:
https://www.nyfadvertising.com/home/preview/a3cc557b-ee1c-4755-9a4e-efa271a94ad0
The Spotlight Team
