Inside the Jury Room: “Creativity Is the Answer to Every Question” in the First Ever Nordics Jury
As the second week of The Immortal Awards’ European jury sessions wrapped up, the first ever Nordics jury met for an online session to determine the inaugural Nordics Finalists.
The jury made its debut this year, bringing together brand, agency, production and post leaders from Denmark, Finland and Sweden.
When all was said and done, they’d managed to get a 15 strong shortlist down to a trio of Finalists - which now go on to compete against the best of the rest of Europe in the regional round of judging.
Those on the first ever Nordics jury were: Jonas Drehn, co-founder of BaconX; Linda Elers, creative director, co-lead and partner at M&C Saatchi Stockholm; Lia Eliasson, partner and executive producer at B-Reel Films and KINxyz.co; Adam Kerj, chief creative officer Europe at Accenture Song; Jyrki Poutanen, chief creative officer and founder of United Imaginations; Josefin Roxeheim, creative at Forsman & Bodenfors; Nic Taylor, SVP and head of agency at LEGO Group; and Tobias Wacker, executive creative director at hasan & partners.
On how the jury approached the day, Jyrki says: “In a category-free creative competition, we debated the notion of categories and quotas, for example considering the inclusion of a film on a shortlist just because it's "expected" (though no-one expected). I found it liberating to evaluate creative ideas solely on their impact, but realised I and we still often fell back on our customary thinking of categories.”
“It’s always a treat getting to spend time with brilliant people discussing interesting work,” says Linda. “What excited me was the range of work and the quality of it – from exciting activation ideas to beautifully crafted films. It showed that our region has a lot to bring to the table when it comes to creativity.”
Lia comments: “I’m proud to see that the level of work coming from the Nordics is so high, we’ve seen great ideas and all very well executed. I do feel we left out some great spots in the film genre in favour of smart and funny marketing ideas. Coming from film craft myself, I wished we left some of them in there to be compared against the other countries’ submissions as I do think they would compete quite well. All in all, I had a blast watching the amazing work and really enjoyed the discussions that came with it.
Adding to that, Jyrki says, “I witnessed quite a few really well crafted projects which could be 'filed under’ traditional advertising; ie. print, poster and film pieces that had truly been given some thought, time and love to become what they were. This is neither a negative nor positive thing, but just a bit of a surprising observation; especially coming from the Nordics where we usually see a lot of PR, digital etc. ideas. In a broader sense, it goes without saying, that the amount of societal and climate statements were largely visible, which is of course still, and always, a wonderful thing.”
Tobias reflected on his experience by saying, "Judging the Immortal Awards was a mix of excitement and tough choices, but always rewarding. The collective wisdom and diverse perspectives of fellow jurors made the task of selecting the work moving forward feel like a privilege. On a positive note, there was a significant amount of work leaning on humour, which was refreshing. In general, it would have been nice to see more work with creative brilliance for commercial cases."
“Creativity will always be formula resistant and that's why it was refreshing looking and discussing the diverse Immortals contenders. I mean who knows what ideas will stand the test of time. Probably very, very few when we look back in five years. Even fewer in ten,” concludes Adam. “The three finalists we unanimously chose to represent the Nordics is proof that human ingenuity goes beyond any specific category and that creativity is the answer to every question."
Check out the trio of Nordics Finalists here.
