Germany Leads Shortlist as Eurobest Opens

Eurobest, the European Festival of Creativity, has today opened its doors to more than 2,000 creatives and industry specialists. Over the next few days delegates will immerse themselves in 48 hours of content, delivered by 96 speakers, while the specialist juries will work through 4,811 entries to decide on Europe’s best in creative brand communications.

Shortlists have been released in 14 categories and are now available to view online at www.eurobest.com. Germany are currently leading with 174 entries shortlisted and are followed by France and the UK. Ami Hasan, Chairman, hasan & partners/Perfect Fools, Finland, who is leading the Direct and Promo & Activation jury commented that, “There is a good feeling in the jury room. The jury is very professional and very experienced and we are looking forward to the discussions over the shortlist and awards. I think we have enough good work to make a healthy shortlist and luckily there are no beaches outside to tempt the Jury away from the room!”

In the media category, jury president Mike Holden, Worldwide Planning & Strategy Director, PHD added that “This is not going to be easy. The quality is high across the board with a number of outstanding pieces of work. 2014 is looking likely to be a vintage year for media at Eurobest.”

As people go from huddles, to seminars and practicals to workshops, the content programme has already seen interesting debate on how creative organisations – brands and agencies – are responding to the challenges presented by both global socio-economic conditions and unprecedented technological advances.

In the opening keynote, Karri Knuuttila, Chief Enthusiast, Finland ReDesign unveiled a new national identity for Eurobest 2014’s host country which was, somewhat ironically, developed by Henrik Nygren-Design in Sweden. He commented, “Only by collaboration can we use creativity to improve life. That’s the reason why we are here today, why this Festival even exists.”

Two following seminars, by Guy Abrahams, Global Strategic Planning Director, ZenithOptimedia and Lassi Kurkijarvi, Director of Innovation, SanomaLab, brought unique perspectives on the complex and urgent need for organisations to adapt to meet fundamental generational attitude shifts. Sharing recent research about Millennials, Guy Abrahams observed, “When I was young we stuck it to The Man, this generation [Millennials] they need The Man.[…] For this generation, if you haven’t taken a photo of it, it probably hasn’t happened”.

Elsewhere, Lassi Kurkijarvi challenged the delegates to consider their own attitude to the pace of change by saying, “You can take any industry, you can be pretty sure we have reached the end of relative certainty. The question is, what are you doing about this?” Adding that the industry has a responsibility to “Build the world that you wish to live in.”