INTRODUCTION

AME’s Grand Jury is the powerhouse behind the prestigious AME Awards, their high standard of excellence insures that AME’s 25-year legacy is upheld and respected globally both by winners and industry reports measuring creative distinction. Their dedication results in truly award-worthy work being recognized.

2019 Grand Jury member Paolo Pascolo is CEO of Imille. A designer with over than 20 years’ and a decade of creative consultancy experience in digital marketing, Paolo founded Imille in 2004. Imille is an award-winning strategy and design consulting agency focused on digital communication. Paolo leads a team of strategists, designers, creative technologists and coders who use disruptive concepts and emerging technologies to realize the full potential of a brand. Imille works with clients such as Enel, Google, Ferrari, Carlsberg, Luxottica, Dr Oetker, Eli Lilly, Action Aid, Barilla, Casio, Zurich and many others.

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?

Paolo Pascolo:  In Imille Creatives, Technologists and Strategists work together to better reach impactful and effective results. The brainstorming is only the beginning phase of a much more complex process. Nowadays, everything starts with research and data. In our agency, the strategic approach takes the lead for each project, the creative phase begins from the key results and insights provided from the strategic team through conceptual visual maps. The brainstorming phase makes use of these results and keywords to narrow the conceptual territory that defines the playing field. The brainstorming is definitely a focal point that is also open to lateral and disruptive thinking but then the strategy always validates the initial speculations.

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?

Paolo Pascolo:  In my opinion the stand-out attributes come from different layers of assessment. First you need a great entry point to engage: at this level speaking to emotion is key. Does the campaign make me think? Or better: is the campaign relevant for the addressed target? Is the storytelling catchy and bold? The second layer is the information hierarchy: am I understanding quickly all the messages delivered? Is there any information that may not be so clear or is misleading? The third layer is about the execution: am I impressed by the composition, typography, pictures, editing video, etc.? Is there anything that really catches my attention in terms of innovative techniques? The fourth layer includes the three I mentioned above: is there a distinguished balance between emotion, hierarchy and execution? Are the message/s delivered memorable?