AME’s Grand Jury is the powerhouse behind the prestigious AME Awards, their high standard of excellence ensures that AME’s 26-year legacy is upheld and respected globally both by winners and industry reports measuring creative distinction.

Grand Jury member, Anders Holmberg Lange  brings 15 years of experience working with major global brands and taking them from digital transformation to digital strategy to digital excellence and delivering double digits growth rates across the board.

He’s worked in industries like fashion, banking, entertainment and leisure companies and from fortune 500 to startups, but always building his approach around a gamification approach creating win-win strategies.

Today he is the Co-Founder of Entername, a company with the core belief that strategy should be simple, understandable and evolving. Designing 360 digital campaigns and leading selected clients from digital transformation to digital excellence in Marketing, business and sales.

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

Anders Holmberg Lange: My process is simple; I remove the idea of a result and focus on the process. Today’s companies have become too focused on what is the end result instead of looking at the process. What can we do better next? By using the process as a focus point instead of the results, you create an agile working process and you keep focus on “how can we do better?” instead of “we need to meet the goal”.

AME Awards: As a strategic creative, what do ads that have taken the brief and turned it into a campaign that transforms opinions, evokes action and raises the bar for the brand have in common?

Anders Holmberg Lange: Being driven by a connection to the 10 basic emotions:

Interest

Happiness/Joy

Irritation/anger

Sadness

Anxiety

Envy/jealousy

Shame

Fault/Blame

proximity/tenderness

Disgust/contempt

We all know it: if we can connect to a feeling, the viewer will engage with the campaign. You can see the campaign as a movie, book or game, we need something to connect with a personality driven by an emotion.

Connection with more then one emotion, done in the right manner, makes the campaign go viral, engaging and connecting people across borders and culture

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

Anders Holmberg Lange: We like to be the best and to show that we are.  Competitions like AME allow us to show off. You can ask the same question, why are the Oscars important? It is about showing our colleagues that they need to do better and need to up their game every year.

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

Anders Holmberg Lange: The why is easy, I want to meet and see the best the world has to offer! I want to be part of the community that does not accept “Good Enough”. This is my way of saying, you are good, but he is better, and you can beat him next year. This is the battle of the ages, we have always been competitors, but the rise of globalization and digitalization has pushed limits and I want to meet the companies that do that and tell them “You can do it better”!

I hope to learn new ways of doing things and why they are done this way. The future lays in understanding and connecting. I come from Denmark, where we share in order to improve!

AME Awards: What is your favorite most effective ad and why does it hit the bullseye for the brand?

Anders Holmberg Lange: First, I believe ads became an old fashion term. We are no longer making ads, we are creating omnichannel campaigns and, to hit the bullseye, you have to connect everything or else it leaves an empty feeling.

Currently, I love the campaign Nørgård Mikkelsen just did. It was about stopping violence against women. It connects with the issue and the emotion of the topic and it is very well executed. 

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

Anders Holmberg Lange: That is a big question, since it depends on the digital maturity of each business segment. But I will tell you, that we arrived at a point where the world needs companies to stop thinking multichannel and think personal channel and how they are positioned to execute personal campaigns.

If not ready for that, then start taking AR seriously when it comes to launching campaigns globally. You can create an offline experience by using AR, so offline and online will work together in an omnichannel campaign.

AME Awards: In your opinion, which brands are doing the most effective millennial friendly creative?

Anders Holmberg Lange: I think we need to look to the US. Brands like Fenty by Rihanna is one of the brands that truly will challenge the world of beauty. The Millennials are still not being handled and we are getting so much information about how and who they are as customers. Stop thinking generation and start thinking people!

AME Awards: What campaign or campaigns are you most proud of and how did it move the needle for the brand?

Anders Holmberg Lange: I never look back for a simple reason: The world has already forgotten the work and the world has changed since the campaign/campaign ran. I will take the experience and knowledge about the process I had on to the next project, but never the campaign.

AME Awards: Any advice for entrants? Will you share your tips for entry success?

Anders Holmberg Lange: I will not be impressed if the campaign is only run on a few channels in different media sizes. For me, a successful campaign needs to take in consideration that the world is connected, and each part of the world has a different culture and that culture needs to be addressed by it.

I will be more impressed if it is a brand that runs a campaign vs one ran by an agency.

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

Anders Holmberg Lange: I hope to see the state of the world influencing the campaigns. Brands and campaigns that take on the battle of the suitability to the consumer or addressing the growth of the alienation of the people and cultures. Breaking barriers and attacking taboos!

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?

It is one thing to be the best in Europa or the best in the US. It is always better to be able to say, “I am the best in the world”. It sends a strong signal to competitors to do better and provides a better signal to the new clients: “You can trust us”!

AME Awards: What do you do keep your creative and strategic juices flowing?

My strategic thinking and creativity are coming from gaming. I have always been fascinated about the way games can draw you in and keep you there. The triggers they use is a wonderful way of find inspiration on how to engage the consumer. The game is like a black hole, it takes you in and never lets go.

I have a background in Counterstrike, back in early 2000s, the way and hours spent in that game has given me a unique strategic way of thinking. Always thinking as a team and what is the process of getting the job done. But most important, when to fall back and regroup. I use games today to keep my mind sharp.

AME Awards: Who is your inspiration and how has this philosophy made you who you are today?

It might sound corny, but my grandfather and father, both working class men who always put family first and then own ambitions; there have been some hard choices, but you could always count on them. Today, when I work with people, I put them first and me later and you can always count on when it comes to delivering results.

But Warren Buffet is always the cool guy and love his way of living!

“Without Passion, you do not have energy. Without energy, you have nothing” Warren Buffet