London International Awards judging: What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas (well, except for Campaign Brief’s obligatory photos!)

The2009 London International Awards judging has concluded in Las Vegas.This year is the first year that the organisers made the welcomed decision to assemble a jury inthe same place to judge the awards. Judging was held within the best venue on the Las Vegas strip – the magnificent Wynn Hotel. LIAPresident Barbara Levy told Campaign Brief the decision to bring allthe judges together to judge was made to take the international awardsshow to a higher level. Going on the results of this year’s judgingthis aim has certainly been achieved. This year’s panels were headed byJeremy Craigen, ECD at DDB London (pictured above right), Tham Khai Meng, worldwide creative director of Ogilvy & Mather (centre) and Faris Yakob, former digital ninja at Naked, Sydney, now EVP/chief technology strategist at McCann Worldgroup, New York (left).

Australian creatives on the panels were David Bowman of Saatchi & Saatchi,Sydney and expat Sarah Barclay from JWT New York. New Zealand wasrepresented by Adam Kanzer from DDB Auckland.

The results of the awards will be released in November but it is notgiving away too much to report that all juries were brutally tough.Gold and Silver Statues are way down on previous years and so detailedwere the jury discussions that many of the first round finalists foundthemselves discarded in the final deliberations.

The result,according to Print and Poster and Billboard and Non-Traditional JuryPresident Jeremy Craigen, will be “a very nice awards annual that onlyincludes international standard winners. If you win a LIA award thisyear you can be incredibly proud”. Craigen’s view was echoed by ThamKhai Meng who said his jury was one of the best he had ever judged withand the panel was meticulous in making sure only worthy work remainedat the end of the five day judging process. Both praised the LIA’sjudging process, organisation and the exceptional hospitality they andtheir juries received.

This year London International Awards received 13117 entries from 78 countries.

Nextyear’s judging will be again held in Vegas at the Wynn Hotel. This willagain be one judging gig everyone will want to get on. “You can expectthings to be even bigger and better for our 25th Anniversary nextyear,” said Barbara Levy.

See last week’s Campaign Brief Asia coverage of this year’s LIA judging HERE. And below are some of the ‘after-hours’ photos from a few of the evenings out that could easily made it into The Hangover – Part 2.