The hosts of the evening were Zizo Beda and John Vlismas, who gave an account of the perfect world where everyone gets along, but in reality things are different. “We need the world exactly as it is. We need variety, diversity, anger, frustration, discomfort, restlessness, anxiety and ambition, because those are signs of life, and life is creativity,” said Vlismas.

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They introduced the chairperson of the Loeries, Neo Mashigo, who stated how important it is to the captains of the industry to contribute to and build our regional and national agenda. The persistence of agencies is strong, even when they aren't navigating with GPS and have a vague idea of “tuning off”. Why persist? “Because we know that the navigation of this terrain is an investment we are making in the future of our children and the future of the entire globe.”

Mashigo then touched on a few changes that have taken place within the Loeries, like the transition from Cape Town to Durban, the growth of the award entries and the quality of work. An important change they’ve made is being more gender mixed in the judging panels and rotating judges in the different categories.

The Loeries will also be looking into increasing the amount of bursaries provided to students, “we want to focus on education. For our industry to transform, we need to give students the opportunity to join our industry.”

Transformation is a big topic within the industry at the moment and the crowd was thrilled when Mashigo announced the new chairperson of the Loeries – Suhana Gordhan, the creative director at FCB Africa. “The greatest challenge we face today is an industry which isn’t evolving fast enough,” she said.

Gordhan believes that the advertising is not progressive or appealing enough to young women talent, and stated how the desire to fix this is urgent enough in everyone. She says that it’s up to the industry leaders to build a bridge for the young women, so that they can become the same.

Suhana Gordhan - ©Gallo Images

“To the young women coming up, I ask this of you – be more demanding to us, ignore the crippling thoughts in your head, banish the subtleties and become more outspoken,” she said.

Gordhan stated that the Loeries is about honouring fresh, bold thinking. It’s about the power creativity has to shine a light on our people and culture. It’s about the work we can whole-heartedly believe in.

“Martin Luther King Jr. called it the ‘fierce urgency of now.’ Now is the time we build the bridges, now is the time when we rebuild the trust in the industry, now is when we update our ways of doing so that in the years to come the young women and all of us, have far better stories to tell,” says Gordhan.

She concluded by saying “that these stories need to be about great creativity, stories that will push us all forward, because great creativity is that which hates something, changes something and makes something better.”

View the full list of winners of the Saturday Awards evening.