Entries open for 2015 Annual AdFocus Awards

The editorial theme of this year's Annual AdFocus publication is the growing importance of integration and collaboration in advertising and communications. There is growing acceptance that agencies do not have all the answers and need to look at outsourcing skills. Internally, many agencies are restructuring to achieve better cross-team collaboration.

The 2015 Awards are:

Agency Awards:

• Overall Agency of the Year (from any agency category)
  
• Small Advertising Agency of the Year
  
• Medium Advertising Agency of the Year
  
• Large Advertising Agency of the Year
  
• Media Agency of the Year
  
• Branding and Design Agency of the Year
  
• Digital Agency of the Year
  
• Specialist Agency of the Year
  
• African Agency Network of the Year

Individual Awards:

• Partnership of the Year
  
• Lifetime Achievement Award
  
• Industry Leader of the Year
  
• New Broom Award
  
• Student of the Year

The former Advertising Agency Award has been expanded into three categories: small, medium and large, which has been incorporated into a new award, for overall Agency of the Year.

Entries for agency awards will be judged on performance over the period July 2014-June 2015. The exception is Media Agency of the Year, for which the assessment period is May 2014-April 2015.

Judges

The jury chairman is Festus Masekwameng, managing partner of MKT Media and former chairman of the Loerie Awards.

Members of the main jury:

• Prof Nicola Kleyn - Dean, Gordon Institute of Business Science
  
• Gary Leih - CEO, OFyt
  
• Denford Magora - CEO, The Jupiter Drawing Room (Zimbabwe) & Partner
  
• Sean McCoy - CE, HKLM
  
• Zibusiso Mkhwanazi - CEO, Avatar
  
• Jerry Mpufane - Group MD, M&C Saatchi Abel
  
• Kagiso Musi - MD, Brand Union SA
  
• Julian Neuburger - CEO, Mediacom SA
  
• Emmet O'Hanlon - CEO, DDB SA
  
• Craig Page-Lee - MD, Posterscope SA
  
• Vanessa Pearson - ECD, House of Brave
  
• Richard Procter - Joint MD, Vizeum SA
  
• Thulani Sibeko - Managing executive, group marketing, communications and corporate affairs, Nedbank
  
• Andy Sutcliffe - CEO, 34 Degrees

As in previous years, agency awards will be scored on new business, business retention, client relationships, awards, industry recognition and transformation.

Specialist jurors will be added for two awards: Media Agency of the Year and Student of the Year. Patrick Conroy, MD of e.SAT TV, will sit on the media panel. The student jury will be joined by Pepe Marais, creative head of Joe Public, and Matthys Esterhuysen, senior strategist at Hellocomputer.

This year the AdFocus Awards will be project managed by Danette Breitenbach.

Questionnaires must be completed online and can be found here: www.adfocus.co.za.