Welcome to AME's exclusive interview series shining a spotlight on the celebrated AME Awards Grand Jury. These seasoned strategists, with their wealth of experience and keen insights, form the backbone of the AME Awards judging panel. Award-winners themselves, they are are known for consistently delivering creative and strategic campaigns that move the needle for global brands. Join us as we explore the intersection of creativity, strategy, and effectiveness that defines the excellence celebrated by the AME Awards.

2024 AME Grand Jury member Christian Budtz is the Executive Strategy Director at Accenture Song, where he leads brand planning and creative strategy across the Nordics. He has an international agency background, having worked at NordDDB Stockholm and DDB Canada, where he led key clients and managed strategy teams. Driven by a firm belief that creativity can move people and businesses, Christian has directed brand work for companies such as McDonald's, Adidas, LEGO, HBO, and Carlsberg. His efforts have been recognized at Cannes Lions and, most recently, at the 2023 Euro Effies for creative effectiveness.

In the interview below Christian shares his perspective on how brands are communicating their values and societal contributions within their marketing, future forward trends, stand out attributes in award-winning creative and effective advertising and more.

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

Christian Budtz: Creativity is increasingly recognized as a skill that is vital to future commercial success, according to global leaders at The World Economic Forum. Yet, professionals in the creative industry – both agencies and CMOs – are still feeling the daily struggle of convincing skeptical CEOs and CFOs of creativity’s commercial value as a driver of business growth. Effectiveness competitions like the AME are crucial to changing this conversation because they provide tangible cases that help marketers build the business case for creativity.

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

Christian Budtz: Originality and bravery. Most businesses are not wired for risk – and while originality and bravery can feel risky, it’s riskier to go for creative solutions that feel safe. Originality and bravery are more likely capture attention, excite and engage people –and, hence, drive effectiveness. Award-winning work often takes an unexpected approach to the real-life problem it aims to solve. It has a juicy human or cultural tension at the core and is executed in a way that makes the idea unignorable.

AME Awards: What future forward trends and innovations are brands embracing for 2024?

Christian Budtz: Amid “shrinkflation” and cost of living crisis, many brands have neglected customer service. However, in 2024 brands will be looking to boost their brand experience to strengthen bonds with customers and providing real value. Furthermore, in the quest for new pockets of growth, brands will pursue more radical and unexpected collaborations and partnerships. This will enable them to tackle more meaningful real-life problems and gain an edge the market. Lastly, in 2024 brands will experiment extensively with AI to explore how it can be integrated as an organizational skill, whether for optimizing processes, supercharging content production, or utilizing synthetic data to inform strategy.

AME Awards: With an increasing emphasis on corporate social responsibility, how do brands effectively communicate their values and societal contributions in their marketing strategies?

Christian Budtz: We’ve long entered an era of brand action, both in terms of corporate sustainability and social responsibility. It’s less about communicating what you do – people have become immune to these claims. Rather, it’s about demonstrating what the brand stands for through concrete actions and initiatives that engage consumers and the community in an authentic and relevant way. The story needs to be baked into these actions. An example is strategic partnerships - like the one between Nike and Dove to launch “Body Confident Sport” a coaching program that provide coaches tools to instill confidence in young female athletes, to help prevent that 45% of girls drop out of sports by age 14.