LIA Judging in Las Vegas: Ralph van Dijk shares his views on standards in the ‘Blurry Jury’

This year’s Radio category at the London International Awards was presided over by Ralph van Dijk, co-founder and creative director of Eardrum Sydney. Here van Dijk (pictured second on the right) gives an account of the judging process, that concluded a few days ago at the Encore Hotel in Las Vegas.

The Blurry Jury – First a rant. Entry videos for radio ads? Really? Listening to 600 radio ads in a day is hard enough without having to sit through an emotional video explaining how listeners were ‘moved’, ‘enthralled’ and ‘couldn’t believe what they were hearing’. Forget cigarettes, I’m voting to introduce plain packaging for award entries, so judges can suck it and see for themselves.

2011 saw many of the big award winning campaigns try to follow up the success of previous years. Some managed to take their original campaign to greater heights, demonstrating the strength of the original idea. However, others clearly struggled with their ‘tricky second album’, with scripts that weren’t as well crafted and lazy execution.

It was an intense three days, especially the first ‘in/out’ session. Yes I know, we were judging in the luxury of one of the swankiest hotels in the world’s most entertaining city, but 600 international radio ads in one day can break a man.

Australia was very well represented in the selection of entries that made the initial cut, and these ads were then scored 1-10.  The results were analyzed and debate commenced. We had a lot of work in the mix this year, so I had to spend rather a lot of time out of the judging room. Needless to say my eardrums were burning.

My fellow jurors were a mixed bunch. They spanned ages, nationalities and disciplines – rather like radio listeners. But we all shared a passion for the medium and took our job seriously.

Once we had sorted the wheat from the scam (believe me, they stick out a mile) we discussed, listened to and voted on every ad that made the cut. The most common remarks were ‘great gag – completely irrelevant’ or ‘great idea, shame about the execution’.

But overall the standard was very good and any LIAA Finalist should be very satisfied with their achievement.

The ‘most innovative use of radio’ category showed the potential for brands to integrate (or ideally mess with) the radio station’s programming. Something we’ve been pushing for years. It’s worth going to the LIAA website to check out the finalists in this category – you’ll be inspired.

Final word; LIAA is one to enter.