The 2021 Australian Effie Awards are open for entries, this year a challenge to demonstrate “resourcefulness, resilience and the power of great advertising in the teeth of the COVID pandemic”.

Tony Hale, chief executive officer of Advertising Council Australia stated, “The 2021 Effie Awards promise to be one of the most important we have ever held. Every single campaign will have been impacted by COVID-19 in some way and the entry forms across all categories have been adjusted to accommodate the challenges that were confronted.

“But it’s also a golden opportunity to enhance our collective marketing knowledge. We have not had a recession since 1990 nor been significantly impacted by a pandemic since the Spanish Flu. This is a chance to understand who really have emerged as the winners in this recession.”

New categories:

Because this is a special year, ACA has thrown out a challenge to the marketing community by adding a special new category, Outsmarting COVID. The new category has been created for advertising that has resulted in a genuine and demonstrable contribution to the industry’s collective marketing knowledge in response to the pandemic. Entries are eligible from a very wide range of advertising activity including, but not limited to, information campaigns, crisis management, opportunistic campaigns that turned the pandemic to commercial advantage or defended an advertiser’s position during enforced lockdowns. They might be for the development of new distribution models or how to recover quickly from the recession.

A  Jumpstart category has also been added to encourage advertisers and agencies that haven’t entered the Effies for the past five years, or never before. Jumpstart is intended for potential entrants who might feel they don’t possess all the campaign data to compete on level terms with the usual Effie entrants and past winners. This category is specifically designed to help make the Effies more accessible to the broader marketing community.

Category changes:

The Best Smaller State Campaign category has been changed. The category cannot be entered directly, however eligible Smaller State entries in other categories that score highly in Round One of judging will be entered into the Best Smaller State Campaign category automatically – and for free.

The changes mean that 25 categories are available to enter this year. Find full details on categories and all other information about the 2021 Effie Awards here.

Dates to note:

• Initial entry deadline: Thursday June 3
• Extended and final deadline: Thursday June 17 (late fee applies)
• Round one judging (online) July 12-16
• Finalists announced July 28
• Round two judging September 7
• Awards announcements, dinner and presentation: Sydney, Wednesday October 20. Details of the event will be announced soon

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