McCannâ€™s Harjot Singh among 6 Special Awards Convenors for WARC Awards

To honour particular areas of expertise, 18 Special Awards will be presented at the inaugural WARC Awards for Effectiveness, in association with LIONS, the new global competition awarding the best marketing campaigns that deliver business results.

Alongside the Grands Prix, Gold, Silver and Bronze accolades, three special awards for each of the six categories will be selected at the judges’ discretion, from the entries submitted for the main Awards.

Whilst the judging process for the main awards will be led by the jury chairs - Dhiren Amin of The Kraft Heinz Company, Nadja Bellan-White of VICE Media Group, Tati Lindenberg of Unilever, Corinne Sklar of IBM iX, Brent Smart of IAG, and Dara Treseder of Peloton - the jury discussions for the Special Awards will be led by different members of the juries, appointed as the Special Awards Convenors.

Paul Coxhill, Managing Director, WARC, said, “We have appointed Special Awards Convenors to not only guide these particular jury discussions, but to also help us uncover trends and themes that these specific awards may indicate. We will also be working closely with the juries and the jury chairs, in particular, to bring to light insights and lessons from these new awards that we can share with the industry to ensure that effective marketing prevails.”

The Special Awards and the Special Awards Convenors are:

Customer Experience category: led by Bessie Lee, Founder, Withinlink, China

Best Use of Tech - for an experience that deployed tech in an original way to connect with a target audience.
Best Home Experience - for a purely digital experience at home that successfully resonated with audiences and drove effectiveness.
Personalisation & Insight Award - how a new approach to insight informed an effective customer experience

Collaboration & Culture category: led by Meghan Wolf, Manager, Global Social Business & Transformation, IBM

The Culture-Creator Award - for an effective strategy based on a brand creating its own content.
Best Community-Builder Award - for an effective strategy that resonated with a particular community.
Social Data Award - for how data and insights gleaned from social platforms informed an effective collaboration/culture strategy.

Sustained Growth category: led by Andrew Geoghegan, Global Customer Planning Director, Diageo

Reinvention Award - for the best example of a brand successfully modernising an existing communications platform or positioning.
Data Application Award - for a campaign that applied data and insight in an effective way, or took a new approach to measurement.
Global Growth Award - for the best multimarket brand-building campaign.

Instant Impact category: led by Nicole Kane, Head of Precision & Digital Marketing, North America, MolsonCoors

Creative Catalyst Award - rewarding a tactical idea that complemented more long-term brand activity and showed a demonstrable sales spike.
Original Promotional Idea - for a campaign that deployed an original promotional mechanic.
Data-Driven Impact - for how data-led insight helped achieve short-term results.

Brand Purpose category: led by Harjot Singh, Global Chief Strategy Officer, McCann

Sustainability Award - for a brand that has replaced a strategy or business practice with a more sustainable alternative and can prove that it has contributed to long-term brand health.
Data & Evaluation Award - for a brand purpose strategy that has gone the extra mile in measuring both commercial and societal impact.
Employee Engagement Award - rewarding a purpose-led strategy for consistency both inside and outside an organisation.

Business-to-Business category: led by Antonia Wade, CMO, Capita

Virtual Experience Award - for business-to-business brands that have created engaging virtual experiences for their audiences that have delivered impact and commercial results.
Audience Award - for effective marketing built on fresh audience insight.
Partnership Award - for a collaborative approach that unlocked effectiveness.

All entries submitted across the six categories of the WARC Awards for Effectiveness will be judged by international high-calibre panels made up of 128 leading marketers from some of the world's biggest brands as well as top agency professionals and specialists from around the globe.

Taking on the role of Judging Consultant, James Hurman, Founding Partner of Previously Unavailable, who co-developed the WARC/LIONS Creative Effectiveness Ladder, will be on hand to help with the use of the Ladder as a guiding framework during the judging process to provide a global standard.

Shortlisted and winning entrants will receive feedback about their work, using the WARC/LIONS Creative Effectiveness Ladder as the benchmark.

Entries to the WARC Awards for Effectiveness can be submitted until April 1. To help entrants, three Tips and Tricks videos providing guidance on writing a good effectiveness awards submission are available to view featuring award-winning strategists and jury members Agathe Guerrier of TBWAWorldwide, Andreas Krasser of DDB Hong Kong, and Andy Nairn of Lucky Generals.

The winners will be announced on Monday, June 21, at the Cannes Lions festival.