AME's Grand Jury members include some of the world’s most creative and strategic minds in advertising, marketing communications, and brand building from agencies around the globe. The men and women of the AME jury panel are respected worldwide for their awarding-winning campaigns and commitment to ground-breaking effective work. Their global reputaton as innovators and their ability to deliver distinctive and effective results for global brands ensure that the entries they judge are reviewed with attention and with an international perspective of industry standards and trends.

2021 AME Grand Jury member Raymond Chin is Chief Experience Officer at Accenture ASEAN.  In his current role at Accenture Interactive, he works closely with Droga5, while shaping a practice that is part creative marketing and part customer experience, helping brands modernize their marketing with innovations powered by data and experience thinking. He also works with C-suite level clients to develop new products, services, platforms to ultimately help brands make bigger positive impact on the consumers they serve, giving actual meaning to their brand purpose.

He has cut his teeth in some of the best agencies in the world, such as Wieden + Kennedy, JWT, TBWA and Fallon, always exploring new ways of storytelling and making experiences feel like magic.

AME Awards: As a strategic creative, what stand-out attributes do you recognize in award-winning creative effective advertising?

Raymond Chin: I think the best ones combine storytelling and experience design seamlessly. So you have something that is very attractive and eye-catching up front that directs you down the journey to a personalized engagement or ecommerce component that has an experience that is just as magical.

AME Awards: Why are effectiveness competitions like the AME Awards important?

Raymond Chin: This is about showcasing the real power of what creativity and innovation can do for brands. In a world where everyone has access to the same data tools and the same experience best practices, how can a brand be even more differentiating? Creativity is an intangible and subjective component, but it is also the secret sauce that will differentiate your brand and experience from the competitions’. By celebrating and putting a dollar amount on how much creativity has helped a brand grow and created value for its consumers is more important than ever before.

AME Awards: How has the brand’s voice changed since the pandemic confinement measures? Speak to the evolution of brand positioning, values, and tone of voice during COVID.

Raymond Chin: In times like these consumers are less attentive to brand comms and are more sensitive about what brands can actually do for them. They will look at brands beyond the promise made, but also the experiences, products and services created in bringing their promises to life. I think this is a new normal that is here to stay, and in many ways, this is a good thing, because brand efforts are now more measurable than ever, and consumers will also benefit from more tangible innovations than brands bring into their lives. The key challenge is how we help the C-suite pivot in meaningful ways to meet these needs.

AME Awards: What will advertising look like next year? What brands have evolved and succeeded during this year and why?

Raymond Chin: Advertising should not look like advertising anymore. Because the new generation of consumers are now getting their first exposure to brands in so many other different ways such as ecommerce PDPs, social influencers or even inside a mobile game. So brands need to evolve into all-encompassing experiences and eco-systems, based on a brand belief system that consumers buy into. There are actually two meanings to the word “Agency”. One, as a business organization providing services to another business i.e. Advertising Agency. The second meaning is having the power and capacity to make an impact. And now more than ever we need to help brands by being their Agency.

AME Awards: What innovations are changing the way agencies create on behalf of brands or launch new products?  Does big data and AI play an even bigger role today?

Raymond Chin: Data informs and empowers. In informs how brands need to evolve to meet changing consumer needs, it informs how we rethink brand purposes, reimagine products, services and experiences. Data also empowers, if we use the data consumers give us, help them make sense of it, reward them with personalized experiences, and help them create experiences that improves their own lives, it will become the underpinning engine of what creativity can do for brands.

AI as a tool will free up agencies from menial design work such as creating personalized comms asset at scale. It will let agency minds be better used for solving higher order problems for the client such as creating innovations for branded products, services and experiences. It will also be a partner for creative thinkers, by helping them form new hypothesis of what brands can do and also help them validate new creative proof of concepts.