The AME Awards competition honors not just campaigns that are creative, but campaigns that hit the bullseye for brands, triumphing in both creativity and effectiveness and AME’s Grand Jury are the genius minds behind many of AME’s award-winning entries.

2020 AME Grand Jury Toshiya Kondo is Director, Strategy & Planning Division member for Dentsu Japan. He has 14+ years’ experience at Dentsu alone and is in charge of the broad area of integrated planning, with the experience of all types of client categories. “Communication prototyping”, which seeks for the best mixture of social-foresight/consumer-insight, internal/external branding, and online/offline execution, is my hometown, based on effective marketing goal settings.

Toshiya currently works on Suntory beverage and food, Honda, Nikon, Resona bank, Kabu.com securities, etc.

AME Awards: Tell us about your process of creating and delivering effective results.

Toshiya Kondo: Turning small brand-facts into the big news with understanding of social mechanism.

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

Toshiya Kondo: There are as many definitions of “effectiveness” as the juries gathering from around the world. That is the strong point of AME. I want to be a part of the history of AME.

AME Awards: What makes you share you time and energy to participate on the AME Grand Jury and what do you hope to learn?

Toshiya Kondo: Actually, I’ve started to cut into the deep side of global planning, compared to what I used to do.

AME Awards: What multi-channel techniques are being used most to strategically and effectively set apart brands from the pack?

Toshiya Kondo: New target, new technology. No doubts.

AME Awards: What cultural and/or social changes do you think will influence this year’s work?

Toshiya Kondo: Talking about Japan, everybody knows about the environmental change thanks to recurring climate hazards.

AME Awards: AME’s Grand Jury provides the opportunity to earn trophies within a region and on the global stage, what are the advantages for the opportunity to earn both a regional and an international award within the same competition?

Toshiya Kondo: There must be two motivations; one for candidates, and the other for visitors. Especially for visitors, they want to study both sides.