AME’s award-winning Grand Jury members have a world-wide reputation for innovation, creative excellence, strategic prowess, and the ability to deliver distinctive and effective results for global brands.

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 behind many of AME’s award-winning entries.

2020 AME Grand Jury member Shmulik Kitainik is Stratedgy Director for JWT Israel. He has more than 17 years of experience in the advertising and marketing industry. Shmulik has worked in several agencies (Grey, Publicist, Euro RSCG). He has worked with many of the world’s biggest brands - Nestle, Lexus, Skoda, Seat, Ford, Yamaha, Kawasaki, HSBC, Bayer, The Coca Cola company, Unilever to name a few.

In 2017 he was selected by J Walter Thompson Worldwide to take part in the prestigious HIP program, reserved for a few of the agency’s talents from all over the world.

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

Shmulik Kitainik: We are living in a new era of marketing and communication, our work is measured and analyzed every second, every click, every interaction, every lead. Consumer funnels are more complex and accurate, we have more tools and more media platforms.

Yes, we are still creative factories, but in today’s world that creative need to bring results. So that is why, for me, rewarding effectiveness is the is what makes the difference between old advertising and todays advertising. Clients looks for creative ways to get great results and that is exactly what we do here at the AME awards

AME Awards: What makes you share you time and energy to participate on the AME Grand Jury and what do you hope to learn?

Shmulik Kitainik: This is a great opportunity for me to see great work from all over the world. There is so much great creative and strategic work done out there, you might see an ad, or a commercial from another country and you always ask yourself "well that’s a nice ad, but did it worked?" and by being a part of the Grand Jury I can see lots of great work and understand the impact that they had on clients business.

AME Awards: What cultural and/or social changes do you think will influence this year’s work?

Shmulik Kitainik: Wow I love this question. I think that the great challenge of this year is credibility. We are living in an era of fake news, and decrease of credibility, consumers don’t trust brands as they used to. They have a bullshit meter that recognizes lies and half trues and immediately turns on the cynical mechanism of defense. The challenge is to create trust between brands and consumers.