AWARD Awards 2009 Call for Entries now open – Craig Davis appointed Chairman of Judges
Craig Davis, former chief creative officer worldwide JWT and former regional ECD of Saatchi & Saatchi in Asia, has been appointedthe Chairman of Judges of this year’s AWARD Awards. Davis is one of the global advertising industry’s leadingand award-winning talents.
The AWARD Call For Entry opens today, May 19th – visit www.awardonline-cfe.com
AWARD Judging will be held in Sydney, September 8th until September18th. Finalists will be released in October, and the winners will beheralded at the AWARD Awards Presentation Evening on Thursday November12th at The Overseas Passenger Terminal, Sydney.
“Tobe the best regional show you need the best judges and it all startswith the Chairman. We’re obviously delighted to have someone of Craig’scalibre in that role”, says AWARD Chairman Richard Maddocks. “Craigwill bring both a wealth of experience and a global perspective to thejudging process. He’ll set the highest standard which is exactly whatAWARD is about.”
Davis graduated from AWARD School in Sydney and started his ownadvertising agency. After a few years, he sold his shares to hispartners and moved to Singapore as executive creative director ofSaatchi & Saatchi, following in the footsteps of Dave Droga. Withina year Davis was promoted to Regional ECD Asia/Africa and moved to HongKong. Under his leadership the agency won Regional Agency of the Year,and helped Saatchi’s win International Agency of the Year at Cannes andNetwork of the Year titles from both Ad Age and Adweek. In 2003 Daviswas named one of the world’s Top 100 advertising people by Ad Age andAdvertising Person of the Year by Campaign Brief.
The followingyear he joined JWT and moved to London as chief creative officer forEurope, Middle East and Africa. In 2005 Davis was given globalresponsibilities for the creative leadership of JWT’s 10,000 strongnetwork. He established JWT’s Worldwide Creative Council andintroduced a provocative communications philosophy around the value oftime that helps measure, benchmark and improve creative output acrossall media, old and new.
In his time with the company JWT made thebiggest upwards leap in the history of the Gunn Report and JWT’screative award tally at Cannes increased more than five-fold.
SaysDavis: “AWARD’s heart has always been in the right place – to recogniseand reward the highest levels of creative achievement in thecommunications industry. I’m delighted to be involved as Chairman ofJudges this year and I will be encouraging the jurors to find the verybest creative work without fear or favour. AWARD is now a far broaderchurch than it was ten years ago and I’m looking forward to seeing somegreat work in all categories including Design, Direct and Interactivethat everyone can worship”.
Over the past 18 months, besidesconstantly sweating JWT’s creative improvement, Davis has helped winthe global Nokia business, become the first ever guest editor of theGunn Report, worked as an advisor to the Berlin School of CreativeLeadership, spoken at the London SHOTS Forum, the Club de Creacion inSao Paulo, been invited to Google Zeitgeist, run innumerable creativeworkshops, served as President of the Cannes Film and Press juries in2008 and delivered the keynote address to the World Export DevelopmentForum in Switzerland last November.
In addition to this, he also became the fastest Australian to complete a marathon at the
NorthPole (Davis is pictured above). After 10 years away, Davis moved backto Sydney in 2009 with his wife and three children to begin a newadventure.