World’s most awarded creative Erik Vervroegen to chair this year’s AWARD awards in February
Erik Vervroegen from Goodby, Silverstein & Partners in San Francisco – the most awarded creative in the world over the last decade – will head up this year’s AWARD jury which will meet in Sydney in February.
Vervroegen – who at Goodby’s is the ECD on the Commonwealth Bank account – is regarded as one of the most gifted creatives in the industry, known for his passion, vision and provocative work.
He has led agencies in South Africa, Paris and New York and has over 70 Cannes Lions to his name, awarded for his work on iconic brands such as Nissan, Playstation 2, McDonalds, The New York Times, Excedrin, BMW, Wonderbra, and Land Rover.
Under Vervroegen’s creative leadership, TBWA Paris took out the Cannes Agency of the Year title three years in a row.
Craig Davis, AWARD chairman, said that Vervroegen’s international perspective and insights would be welcomed at a critical time in the Australian industry: “We have a phenomenal opportunity to turn creativity into a powerful force in Australia, and elevate its role in enterprise,” he said. “To have attracted someone of Erik’s calibre to be part of AWARD is unprecedented.”
The AWARD programme has this year undergone significant changes, with the creation of several new categories to reflect how communications have evolved and are evolving.
AWARD awards are hotly contested by Australasian creatives and Vervroegen will oversee the judging of more than 2000 entries from around the region, in categories that include music video, applications, social media, environmental design, and branded content. There is also a newly-created award for Creative Innovation.
The Annual AWARD Awards will take place on February 25 at Sydney’s CarriageWorks. Tickets are on sale now.
15 Comments
70 Lions? That’s just greedy.
So I guess that means not many AWARD awards will be handed out then.
be interested to know if he thinks his CBA work is good?
@ 3:14 PM
“And you fuck one goat”
Even though he encouraged his creatives to do scams, he did push boundaries and will be interesting to see what he does with real clients at goodby. So far quite average.
Has anyone had a good look at the website for the new Circus week? You’d think for the communications industry they could have found a decent DM expert and a halfway decent designer to put this sell and site together. It’s a bloody sham. All that work that has been done to put a great event for the industry together, and it’s completely let down by a really bad design and sell job. You’d think the Communications industry could get this act together?!
You’d also think that given the recent furores over the role of scam ads in the award shows around the world, AWARD might have played just a slight amount of lip service to the notion that we are not just doing this shit so we can shove statues up our arses.
Eric has indeed done some iconic campaigns. But not for clients who actually ran the ads with their own money. Certainly none of the Playstation stuff ever ran properly.
The Com Bank stuff is eloquent.
If this is the signal AWARD wishes to send after last years huge drop in entries due to the combo of GFC and harsher entry diligence, then fine.
But if we wish to be taken seriously as an award, and if we actually are going to try and stamp out scams, appointing the fox to mind the chooks is a tad nutty.
If our agency had known this, we’d have entered even fewer campaigns than we did.
Does anyone know if we have to pay for the whole ‘circus’ thing just to go to the awards evening?
No discounted or early release tickets for members either?
The full $990 is a bit steep.
The comm bank stuff is garbage
So, let me see if I’ve got this right.
i have to ay $990 to listen to the guy who does the CommBank ads tell me how to do great advertising.
Sounds like a circus to me.
I thought I would write to correct some of the wrong assumptions that have been made by anonymous posters.
The AWARD Awards tickets are available for $242 for members. There is no obligation to purchase a full Circus ticket, however, we believe the quality of the program speaks for itself and it is something worth considering.
You will see a flurry of communications roll out relating to Circus in the coming days and weeks – including the official Circus website which will be launched soon.
We take scam ads seriously and have introduced client sign off to submissions for the first time this year to minimise the potential for scam ads to be entered.
Our website contains all the event information with tickets for AWARD Awards and Circus available for purchase: http://www.communicationscouncil.org.au.
I hope you will join us at this important industry event.
Scam or not this guys is a bloody genius.
I’m sure all you anonymous tossers would give your left testicle to work with him.
Daniel, why would you ask a guy who was renowned for doing multi-award-winning DPS ads at Cannes for the likes of AIDES, Music Piracy Awareness, Hansaplast Condoms and Ear Buds, Naturoptic Binoculars, MAPA rubber gloves, Archive and the Art Directors Club to run a show that is trying to stamp out these sorts of ads?
A person whose fame owes much to what we often call ‘scam’ ads.
7:26pm is right – sounds like a circus to me.
He even has the smile of someone who knows.