A Judge’s Notes: Inside the Creative Circle Awards Film Jury

As a first-timer judging the Creative Circle awards – the oldest advertising awards body in Europe – it was eye-opening getting a front row seat at the proceedings. Representing the best of British creativity, the awards have been around in various iterations since 1945, conceived to ‘not only provide a forum for creatives, but also contribute to raising the status of advertising as a profession.’ 

This year, I joined fellow judges from Uncommon, Saatchi & Saatchi, VMLY&R, BBC Creative, Wonderhood, TBWA, Brave, Brothers & Sisters and Motel to review the Film category. It was clear from the outset that the pivotal question we would all be asking ourselves was how the entries would stand up against a wider standard of creativity in the industry and whether, for a coveted Gold award, an entry was truly representative of the best in the business. 

Whilst the standard was set high from the get go, what was heartening, having been on the flipside as an awards entrant previously, was how much deliberating took place for each entry and how discerning each member of the jury was in determining the right award was given. I even surprised myself by making an impassioned case for Asda’s Elf Christmas ad to win top brass in one of the categories (a fun, silly, populist winner, in my view!). It was handy to return to our earlier decisions to sense check they still felt right in light of the subsequent entries we’d judged. Elf got bumped up after all and I went home vindicated. 

The judging criteria wasn’t set in stone but materialised through our discussions and as the caffeine kicked in. Each judge had their own defining quirks and sensibilities that formed the foundation of what they were looking for, and ultimately the following became our informal anchor points:

There were some noteworthy scene-stealers in this year’s shortlist that locked in on a singular scene and let the narrative do the work. Bitesize kitchen sink dramas with characters that felt real and compelling to watch. Two memorable examples we shortlisted – utterly, uniquely British in style and substance – were ITV’s The Break Through and Cadbury’s Garage.

The best work we saw combined great creative with great execution. We saw brilliant ideas fall apart when the production wasn’t quite an equal match; whilst at the same time, ads with high production values but light on the ideas front also didn’t hit the mark. Calm’s Last Photo campaign showed how a straightforward production approach using heartbreaking UGC footage can be exceptionally effective in bringing the crux of a beautifully simple idea to life.

It’s an obvious one, but always the most important, is originality – fresh ideas that have no identifiable resemblance to anything that has gone before it. The conundrum is that nothing is new of course, and yet, ‘the new’ is what gets tails wagging. In a hyper-saturated content landscape and with most juries being encyclopedic ‘hive minds’ of adverts both past and present, it’s exceptionally hard to achieve ‘pure originality’. But when it’s there, it wins.

CALM - The Last Photo 

Cadbury - Garage

BBC News - Trust is Earned

Apple - The Greatest

B&Q - Flip

McDonald's - Raise Your Arches

ITV - Breakthrough