AME's Jury members are dedicated to effectiveness and understand the partnership between creativity and effectiveness. As results-driven creative strategists their campaigns for clients have built stronger brands and garnered awards. Their global perspective and years of industry experience ensure that work entered into AME is judged thoughtfully and fairly. Their stellar reputations and commitment to ground-breaking creative that moves the needle on behalf of the brand set the benchmark for innovation.

2025 AME Grand Jury member, Juan Pablo Garcia is Managing Director at DAVID Bogotá he brings creative and strategic leadership to the jury panel. Juan Pablo was responsible of the opening of DAVID Bogota in 2021. In just 3 years the agency became the most awarded in Cannes 2022, won aTitanium Lion in 2023, Top 3 Agency at Effie Awards, and have reached more than 150 awards in different festivals such us Clio, One Show, D&AD, Ojo de Iberoamerica, among many others, while becoming one the fastest start-up for DAVID. It is now one of the global agencies for Corona (AbInbev), with whom they won the first Titanium Lion for China. Lastly, they became Agency of the Year at Festival el Dorado 2023, being the most awarded agency in the festival history. .

In the interview below Juan Pablo shares his insights on the storytelling's role in effectiveness, the strategies brands are using to reach consumers directly, what defines award-winning work, and more.

AME Awards: From your perspective as a creative strategist, what standout qualities define award-winning, effective advertising today?

Juan Pablo Garcia: For sure not billions of impressions or the fact of using big words such as “first time in history” or “never seen before”. To judge the effectiveness nowadays is a difficult task because of the amount of information and data connected to a campaign or a project. So, for me, the key aspect is the right connect to the most specific and narrow problem of the brand. I don’t want to be disturb with a lot of information, that could help the brand in many other ways, but to be stick to the real challenge, the one the brand had previously wanted to avoid.

AME Awards: With the rise of e-commerce and direct-to-consumer channels, how are brands reshaping their advertising strategies to reach consumers directly?

Juan Pablo Garcia: We have seen how creative and innovative has become the commerce approach to consumers. From the last priority at the end of the funnel to become the core of the strategy and the creativity. The right combination of technology, storytelling and shopper insights from both B2B and B2C are bringing shine to the brands and becoming the reference of the work in our business.

AME Awards: Why are effectiveness competitions like the AME Awards essential for measuring impact and industry growth?

Juan Pablo Garcia: Because we all follow targets, KPI’s, results, but beyond that it’s key to understand what the creativity and the innovation is behind to exceed any metric. Because it has to know that great impact comes after a thinking, a process, and a clear ambitious from the brands. And we want to know those stories.

AME Awards: In your experience, what role does storytelling play in the effectiveness of a campaign? Are there elements of narrative or structure that make campaigns especially memorable or impactful?

Juan Pablo Garcia: Storytelling is almost everything for an effectiveness submission. We mostly judge as readers, and every word counts. From the importance of giving the right context when the problems are not connected to the juries’ realities, to the fact that more and more often people are not engaged with reading. We need to catch the reader with just the right number of words: enough to connect with the strategy and the idea, but not so many that they disconnect from the story.