The AME Awards Grand Jury are globally respected, award-winning executives who bring innovation, industry expertise, and a 360-degree global perspective to the judging panel. This year's jury panel is comprised of strategy experts, industry thought leaders, innovative creatives and branding experts who are award-winning executives who thoroughly understand the partnership between creativity and effectiveness. Jury members are recruited from 5 regions and include some of the world’s most creative and strategic minds in advertising, marketing communications, and brand building from around the globe.

2022 Grand Jury member Santi Bibiloni, a Silicon Valley based technology entrepreneur, understands the advertising industry and his company's mission is to empower the best creative and professional teams in the world.  As CEO and Co Founder of COR, an all-in-one smart management software that serves worldwide top creative agencies he has always had two drivers: 1) doing something big, 2) giving opportunities to people who never had them.

In the interview below Santi shares his thoughts on the evolution of brand positioning, innovations changing consumer engagement, emerging technological trends, and more.

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

Santi Bibiloni: Effectiveness competitions are a perfect motivation, inspiration, and example to the advertising and marketing industry. AME Awards drives agencies’ innovation and creativity towards impactful results and adds value to creative talent. It is important that agencies have the endorsement and recognition of their campaigns’ success because this proves that ideas are much more than subjective creativity but have the potential to generate change.

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

Santi Bibiloni: In the current informational era, brands that succeed are authentic, grow with transparency, empathy and are true to the world’s and consumer’s agenda. Being true to the brand’s positioning makes for coherent, strong, and better storytelling. This happens to all brands no matter their purpose, from sustainability and social impact-driven brands to those who believe in positive revolutions by tech software. Building brand relationships with consumers held by shared values are crucial to strengthen a distinguished brand. As brand positioning uses technology to understand, listen and reach its potential consumers, the brand’s tone adapts itself to each segmented audience, enriching their connection with brand experience.

AME Awards: What innovations are changing the way agencies engage consumers on behalf of brands? 

Santi Bibiloni: These last few years agencies have quickly adapted to the drastic changes in the way consumers interact, play, consume and buy. Agencies can now interpret real-time consumer data and map their touchpoints to transform insights into ideas that are not only intended for viewership but ensure behavior change. From automation to virtual experiences, agencies have proven that being agile and adapting to the new hybrid world can only be done by understanding consumers better, responding quickly, and by having better agency management.

AME Awards: What new technological trends have emerged and how have they helped deliver creative and effective results? 

Santi Bibiloni: One of the most important technological trends is using Artificial Intelligence & Machine Learning to empower agencies & creative teams. We know that from writing headlines to composing music, there has already been some experimentation with AI in innovation but it can also help agencies, creatives, and strategists better understand and manage their projects & workflows. Agencies are working more hours every day for a lower fee to stay in the market, and If profit margins keep going down, agencies will have little to no options to survive. Salaries have no chances of getting better, teams are overworked and the job is becoming harder every day. Something has to change, and AI plays a pivotal role in this revolution because machine learning lets us automate time tracking. In the billable hours market, the time spent on tasks gives you the output of the staff´s productive capacity and projects or clients profitability. As AI does this automatically, visibility is given in real-time, precisely, and without manual efforts. Having real-time data to manage teams and deliver projects on time allows creatives to work more freely and efficiently. Results have to be effective not only for the brand but for agencies as well, allowing a better client-agency engagement whilst keeping a healthy workplace.

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?

Santi Bibiloni: Being part of AME Grand Jury is an honor and an opportunity to share the potential of new technology in the effectiveness of agency management. Effectiveness is a key attribute not only from the brand’s perspective and the impact of any campaign but also on the behind-the-scenes workflow to make that campaign happen. Freeing agency teams from manual time-tracking and making their capacity visible, delivering projects on time, and making sure of their profitability, is also important and adds as much value and success to any campaign as achieving business needs. I hope that by viewing entries into the competition I can visualize new creative trends, brand insights, strategical thought processes and key outlooks that can inspire and enhance ideas to continue helping agencies’ efforts.