IAB SA Bookmark Awards 2017 judging begins

CEO of IAB SA, Josephine Buys says "This year’s judging team has expanded to include essential players in the digital landscape including gamers, innovators, engineers and social media experts.”

Dixon has previously served as Jury President of the Bookmark Awards and brings extensive industry experience, including as a board member of the Association of Communication Agencies (ACA), and participant on the Financial Mail Adfocus and Finweek AdReview jury panels, to the process.

Each category will be led by:

• The Marketing Jury will be led by Gareth McPherson, executive director at Publicis Machine.
  
• The Builders Jury Chair is Claire Cobbledick, head of SA marketing for Gumtree South Africa.
  
• The Publishers Jury Chair, Izak Minnaar, is editor of digital news for SABC.
  
• Gamers Jury Chair Johann von Backstrom is business owner at Inside Half Productions
  
• The Innovators and Engineers Jury will be led by Graham Talbot, technical director at Gloo.
  
• The Special Honours panel will be led by Miles Murphy, owner & managing partner of Liquorice.

The first round of judging takes place remotely from 25 January until 13 February, with the second round taking place on 24 & 25 February.

Entries will be scored as follows in round two:

General Criteria
Creativity/Innovation: 30%
Technical Accomplishment: 30%
Results Achieved: 40%

Craft Criteria
Quality of Work Produced: 60%
Technical Difficulty or Accomplishment: 40%

At the final stage, judges will view the material on a screen, discuss the entry and then vote on a handheld device, allocating a percentage to the criteria above.
The system ignores the highest and lowest votes and averages out the rest, assuring fairness and credibility. Each entry gets a percentage, with the final scores being verified and signed off by the Jury President.

Buys concludes, “We are privileged to work with judges that bring an impressive depth of expertise and experience. Each campaign is not only assessed on its creativity factor, but its real business impact. The time and thought they commit to judging ensures the best in digital are awarded, and sets the bar for interactive excellence in South Africa.”