Judges selected for New Generation Awards

Judges will measure entries based on innovation, creativity, results, sales, reach, content, strategy, motivation, response time, net new customers and responder user comments, to name a few. Judges do not adjudicate any categories their agencies have entered and all judging is done anonymously online.

The selection included peer and client recommendations; if they were leaders within their fields; what they had achieved within their own industry; and if they were running successful businesses and winning awards. In addition, the following questions formed part of the selection criteria: What portfolios did they manage? What experience did they have across a variety of social media, digital marketing and online platforms? Were they entrepreneurial?

Judges

• Alex Honegger - Alex heads up the social media and digital marketing services at Cambial Communications, where he oversees strategy and implementation of digital campaigns and manages clients’ digital assets. Alex joined Cambial full-time, after working as a consultant for several years. He also has experience in e-commerce management where his management responsibilities spread from product procurement and supply chain agreements with international suppliers, order fulfilment, operational management and marketing. In his spare time, Alex can mostly be found on a golf course.

• Astrid Ascar - media personality. She is a digital marketing consultant, strategist and also heads up the IAB (digital industry body for SA) and Education and Transformation Council.

• Bokang Mabiletsa - co-founder and CEO of Mind Interactive with over 10 years in the web development industry. Mind Interactive serves clients such as Tiger Brands, Barloworld, Telkom and Bidvest Managing Solutions to name a few.

• Desirée Gullan - co-founder and creative director of G&G Digital. Having worked at the ‘Big Three’ advertising agencies in SA and proving her creative metal abroad, she has won multiple local and international awards for her work - including Cannes Lions and Clios. She believes in the importance of craftsmanship - that it’s not in the designing, but in the redesigning; not in the writing, but in the rewriting. She is at home in the breakneck creative environment of digital marketing and steers her team to craft breakthrough creative across all mediums. In 2006, she co-founded what is now G&G Digital - the fastest growing digital agency in South Africa

• Gillian Findlay - CEO at Cambial Communications and former chairman of the Public Relations Consultancy Chapter - (PRCC).

• Jeff Siepman - a multiple award winning designer with 20 years’ experience in both traditional and digital design. He is creative group head at Promise Digital. Brands serviced include Absa, Barclays, Jaguar Land Rover, Danone, Russell Hobbs, Cadbury and Telkom.

• Kenneth Garvie - MD at One over one and a multiple awarded individual, both locally and internationally. He has worked with a multitude of brands and industries, from fashion, FMCG, retail, finance and network providers, to name a few.

• Prakash Patel - a seasoned #TraDigitalist, now MD of Fogg Cape Town and previously CEO of Prezence Digital and CDO for FCB. Prior to coming to SA, Prakash was head of a number of leading network agencies in London and has worked extensively with global and local brands for over 20 years across all industry sectors. Prakash would describe himself as a strategist in a suit, an innovator and blue-sky thinker, a creative in disguise and a firm believer that all things are possible using technology as the enabler and creative as the idea-tor. Now trying to keep up with tomorrow today and helping brands add value in today's Digitally Connected Era.

• Tara Turkington - founded Flow Communications in 2005. It specialises in social media, content writing and editing, graphic design, web and app development, e-marketing, public relations and media training. Flow is one of South Africa’s largest communications companies, and today it has more than 150 clients that include the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Standard Bank, Hollard, Gauteng Tourism, Nelson Mandela Foundation and Sasol. Flow also has a number of international clients and has completed work in more than 30 countries. In the early part of her career, Tara was a journalist and university lecturer. Her dream is to continue creating meaningful jobs and to further develop Flow’s brand globally.

Entries to the awards close on 20 July 2016, with the awards’ gala ceremony on 29 September 2016 at Microsoft’s head office in Bryanston, Johannesburg. For more information, click here.