AWARD Awards has undergone a major overhaul, adding new categories and an overhaul of the AWARD Awards program, which includes a new three-day festival.

Cam Blackley, chair of AWARD, stated,  “This year marks a major revamp of the AWARD Awards categories to better align us with international creative award shows, as well as opening up entries to a broader range of entrants.”

Details of the three-day festival of industry events from 25 – 27 March 2020 will be announced soon. It will feature a retrospective 40th Anniversary Hall of Fame celebration at the Museum of Contemporary Art, and will culminate with a new-look 41st AWARD Awards ceremony on the final night.

Blackley commented, “The Awards night will be different, with a sit-down dinner, the judging will be tougher and live, so winners won’t be known in advance, and that’s just a taste of the activities and changes we’ve planned.

“We’ve been in consultation now for half a year with international bodies and the industry here and we think you’re going to like it.”

• Entries are open now for the AWARD Awards with an early bird discount of 10%, ending at 5pm AEDT on Monday October 28
• Entries closing at 5pm AEDT on Friday November 29.
• Late entries will be accepted until 5pm AEDT Monday December 9. Late entrants will pay an additional fee.

The newly-structured categories include Health and Wellbeing, Media and, in a new partnership with the Account Planning Group (APG) a Creative Strategy strand.

Categories have also been expanded across the board to appeal to a wider range of entrants. This includes the addition of several new sub-categories in Design and across all of the Craft strands.

This year’s Call for Entries creative theme is New & Improved, which Blackley said, “helps us communicate the diverse range of true differentiators we have in a clear and stylish way to awards coordinators, PAs, creatives, media companies and the wider creative community.

“There’s a lot happening to refocus and keep AWARD relevant for the next 20 years from a modern communications point of view. Therefore this year’s Call for Entries campaign couldn’t be a generic award show ‘win gold blah blah jealousy’ idea because we’ve a lot to say with new format, new categories including media, APG Strategy, Purpose and so on, to reflect international standards.”

Eligible work will come from Australia, New Zealand and South East Asia, and completed within the eligibility period of January 1 2019 to December 31 2019 (with the exception of Planning categories which have an extended eligibility period of 3 years).

Find everything you need to know, and enter, here.