AME's Grand Jury members understand what it takes to deliver creative and strategic campaigns that move the needle for brands. Their industry experience and strategic expertise provides them with an understanding of the partnership between creativity and effectiveness. As award-winners themselves and experts in creative effectiveness, their ability to recognize innovative results-driven work truly sets the bar for this year's competition.

2022 Grand Jury member AJ Jones is Chief Strategy Officer for McCann Canada. She brings a decade working in multiple markets in Europe and North America to the jury panel.  AJ has worked across a plethora of brands and industries from Telco to toys, pharmacy to finance, and CPG to QSR. Having judged both creative and effectiveness shows across a number of regions she is well dialled in to identifying great work. As CSO for McCann Canada AJ is focused on delivering culturally relevant ideas that have a real impact across Canada and beyond.
Schooled at McCann UK, AJ has a track record of delivering creatively awarded and commercially successful campaigns.

AME Awards: What stand-out attributes do you recognize in award-winning creative effective advertising?

AJ Jones: One of the things I love most about Creative Effectiveness is the huge range of ways in which work can be effective. These different dimensions of effectiveness usually have one thing in common: a clear focus. There are two risks of creative effectiveness, I believe, ‘creativity for creativity’s sake’ [where there is no clear focus] or ‘showing your strategy’ [where there is no real creativity, and you can blatantly see the brief showing through the work]. The work that finds the balance between being focused, yet surprising, usually wins out.

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

AJ Jones: Effectiveness competitions are an essential part of our industry showing our worth. Sometimes we’re so focused on doing great work and building the next campaign, idea or shiny new object we forget to take a second to step back and see what we’ve built. Effectiveness competitions remind us to do just that. Showing the effectiveness of our work is critical not just for ourselves, but our clients too. Having Effectiveness competitions introduces a degree of objectivity to judging work too. We are in the business of creativity and seeing the organizational value in that creativity is critical. Finally, Effectiveness competitions are a great source of learning that can inspire, educate and fuel us to all be better and do better. The learnings from these shows can often be extrapolated and applied elsewhere, ensuring the industry continues to evolve and improve.

AME Awards: Speak to the evolution of brand positioning, values, and tone of voice during the past few years.

AJ Jones: With the onset of the pandemic, we saw many brands panic, freeze or react in a knee-jerk way; now we’re seeing brands gradually find their confidence again. Some doubling down on their positioning, some with revisions to direction and some capitalizing on new opportunities. We have seen with tone of voice that there is no one way of connecting during the pandemic, just the right way for each brand in question. We need to build back that diversity of brand-tones to allow creativity to flourish.

AME Awards: How has brand messaging evolved and succeeded these past few years?

AJ Jones: There hasn’t necessarily been one message for brands to convey to emerge successful from the past few years. It has almost all been about timing. Lots of different messages have cut through, but whether they’ve cut through for the right reasons or the wrong reasons has depended a lot on timing.

AME Awards: What mediums will be front and center in 2022?

AJ Jones: I’d love to see developments in audio – it offers such rich opportunities to connect with a whole host of audiences. There has been a bit of a movement toward sonic branding, but there is still way more to be done in audio spaces. Out of Home is another medium I think has huge potential if treated right. In some ways the pandemic made everything a little more tactical, a little more short term focused so hopefully we’ll see a return to real ideas that can then be showcased across a range of mediums

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?

AJ Jones: The best thing about judging a show like AME Awards is that you will inevitably learn something you never thought you’d learn! Often times judging this show will be a great or timely reminder of something you knew but had forgotten. Then there are real breakthrough moments where you see a case that just flips something you thought you knew; those cases stay with you. One thing I do know is that by the end of the judging process I’ll be outrageously jealous, hopefully that will turn into motivation and not just make me bitter!

AME Awards: What is your favorite most successful ad and why? What campaign resulted in a global brand making an impressive pivot?

AJ Jones:It’s an oldie but a favourite of mine is the old ROM – the Romanian chocolate bar that came out with a mock campaign about new American ownership, it showed the power of a rallying cry in a really interesting way and although it was an FMCG product it was really about so much more than that. I was lucky enough to work in Romania for a period and there are a number of tremendous creatively effective cases that we can all learn from.

AME Awards: What advice would offer to potential entrants on earning an AME Award?

AJ Jones: Be your own harshest critic, take nothing for granted and remember that you know all the context that a jury doesn’t know.