INTRODUCTION

The AME Awards 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 associated with many of AME’s award-winning entries.

AME’s Grand Jury’s high standard of excellence ensures that AME’s 25-year legacy is upheld and respected globally both by winners and industry reports measuring creative distinction. With a world-wide reputation for innovation, creative excellence, strategic prowess, and the ability to deliver distinctive and effective results for global brands, their dedication results in truly award-worthy work being recognized

2019 AME Grand Jury member Priscilla Ceruti is Head of Strategy at Dentsu Brazil. Previously she led a Strategic Brand Group at Leo Burnett in Sao Paulo responsible for brands as Bradesco, Ferrero and Heineken’s Brazilian Brands Portfolio.

During her career she has worked with global, regional and local projects for clients such as Modelez, Unilever, Caterpillar, Pernod Ricard, Coca-Cola, AB InBev, Kimberly-Clark, P&G, Siemens, Burger King amongst others.

Priscilla’s work has been recognized by Jay Chiat Award and the Effie Awards. A Graduate in Social Communication, with emphasis on Marketing, Priscilla has also worked at Ogilvy & Mather São Paulo and 9ine Sports & Entertainment from WPP. Nowadays she also teaches in local communication schools and is Jury for the Brazilian Effie College.

Keep reading to learn more about Priscilla including what award-worthy work has in common, guidelines for entrants, why effectiveness competitions are so important and much more.

INTERVIEW

AME Awards: AME’s winners and entrants are behind some of the most innovative leading-edge creative work on the planet that delivers the most impactful result. Tell us about your process of creating and delivering creative and effective results. Are your ideas inspired or do they come together as the result of a collective brainstorming session with your team?

Priscilla Ceruti: From my perspective process always change from project to project due to the people involved, time constrains, information available and the brand challenge itself. Anyway, for me it always sounds more productive when we can gather different perspectives around the same subject and therefore, I'm a big fan of well conducted brainstorms across agency teams.

AME Awards: As a strategic creative, what stand-out attributes do you recognize in award-winning creative and effective advertising…what do ads that have taken the brief and turned it into campaign that transforms opinions, evokes action and raises the bar for the brand have in common?

Priscilla Ceruti: For me this is a simple answer: guts. It takes a lot of courage in every stage of the process to make standout-ideas come to life - courage from the team to present the idea and particularly from the client side in believing and make it happens.

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

Priscilla Ceruti: We're going through a moment in our industry where a lot has been challenged. Agency business models are going through reinvention, production houses are being challenged to do a lot more with less, media concepts are changing constantly in a dynamic landscape forcing us to review our beliefs and researches. In between all of these agency-client partnerships sometimes are not as solid as they used to be and effectiveness competitions like AME Awards take us back to remember two main things: the importance of creativity will only grow in this constant changing world and it is only able to do a real change when there is a real team work between client and agency to make it goes in the right direction. That is a fundamental learning for all the marketing and creativity industry that AME Awards helps us remember. 

AME Awards: Why did you agree to participate on this year’s AME Grand Jury and what do you hope to learn by viewing entries into this competition?

Priscilla Ceruti: It is wonderful to be able to see so many interesting thinking coming from every part of the world. Let's say for me AME Awards is a curator for the great strategic creative work that's happening in the world. Being part of the jury makes me part of a privileged group of people able to see these ideas in detail and learn a lot from them and using them as benchmark for me on clients along the year.

AME Awards: In your personal work what are the hallmarks of creative and strategic success? What campaign or campaigns are you most proud of? 

Priscilla Ceruti: I'm always too excited about the work I'm doing right now. In that sense I'm very proud of our latest achievements with our client Nissin Cup Noodles brand locally in Brazil. With this brand we're forced to deal with a digital native target and we have been able make Cup Noodles brand follow the insanity and the speed of the web dynamics with a client that is committed to be always in beta with lots of waves of short term-long effect activities. It makes me very proud to be part of this. 

AME Awards: What advice or guidelines would you give to potential entrants on earning an AME Award?

Priscilla Ceruti: I would say one always should have in mind the audience which in this case means the jury. Ask yourself what they are looking for, what will seduce them, what will make them amazed. This is important to keep in mind when you are trying to find the best headline, video case storyline, results, selecting the best material to showcase your work. The storytelling you choose should only have one clear angle over the whole story and in this case the best angle is the one in that captures the mind of the jury and not the necessarily the one you used for your client or for your consumer target. Remember that.

AME Awards: AME’s Grand Jury, emanating from 5 regions around the globe provides the opportunity to earn trophies within a region and on the global stage. Why in your opinion is the idea of AME’s Grand Jury judging both regional and then the entire Grand Jury judging all the Gold winning work to select Platinum winners and Best in Show important to both entrants and to jurors?

Priscilla Ceruti: As we learn through time people emotions and consumption drivers have the same human DNA behind them. If you think about that in a global perspective, it is pretty amazing to see how different cultures deal with the same emotions and drivers from human beings. Therefore, the idea of having all of the cases in a global perspective gives a lot more richness to the award and even more learning to the market.

AME Awards: What is one secret of your success that no one knows about you (till now)?

Priscilla Ceruti: I need to feel proud of my work every day. As planners sometimes, we are not in control of the whole process until the campaign is on air, so we have to celebrate every great meeting with clients or with the inside team as a great achievement. That maybe seems silly at first, but this shared feeling keeps everyone motivated and confident that greater things still can be done. 

AME Awards: What philosophy or iconic individual inspires you in both your career and life?

Priscilla Ceruti: I like to think that we are all here to learn and grow by learning. Advertising and marketing give me the opportunity to meet lots and lots of interesting people with the most diverse backgrounds and I face every one of them with an open heart and mind to learn as much as possible.