Epica’s online judging was a first time experience for me, Candide McDonald. It was a fascinating experience. The quality of work from some of the countries and some of the agencies that don’t get much “air time” was astonishingly good.
BBDO agencies lead the shortlist with 68 finalists. Star BBDO performers are BBDO New York (33), Wirz BBDO China (8) and Energy BBDO US (7).
Cheil agencies have 30 finalists, led by Cheil Worldwide Hong Kong with 10, Cheil Kazakhstan with 8 and Cheil Germany with 6
McCann agencies have 28 finalists, 10 of them from McCann New York, 7 from Mercado McCann Argentina and 7 from McCann India.
DDB agencies have 28 finalists, led by DDB Argentina with 10 and DDB Group Germany with 7
Heimat agencies have 19, led by Heimat Werbeagentur with 16.
J.Walter Thompson agencies have 13 finalists.
BETC Paris is the 2nd highest scorer among single agencies, with 18 finalists. With BETC/Havas Brasil’s finalist added, the group has 19 shortlisted entries.
Fred & Farid France has 11.
Scholz & Friends Denmark has 11 and Scholz&Friends Kyiv Ukraine has 1.
Cossette Canada has 10.
Australia has 11 finalists, including 3 in illustration by Paul Gawman:
View all finalists here.
The finalists now through to the grand jury, which meets in Berlin from November 13-15. Gold and Grand Prix winners will be awarded during a ceremony at the Meistersaal concert hall on the evening of November 16.
The ceremony will be preceded by the Creative Circle conference whose line up of speakers will cover the theme, The Creative Singularity. More information about that is here.
Silver and Bronze winners will be published on the Epica Awards website on November 17.
The Epica jury is made up of editors and senior reporters from the world’s leading magazines covering creativity and communications. They are supported by an online jury of 200 journalists including from specialists’ titles in fields such as post-production, VR, design, luxury and fashion. The full list of jury members is here.
This year Epica received 3350 entries from 71 countries, down on the previous year due to the Publicis awards hiatus and a lower participation by WPP agencies. Having said that, Epica received twice as many entries from China and Taiwan, 50% more from Malaysia and three times as many from Poland. New countries this year included Pakistan and Kenya. In terms of networks, The North Alliance from Scandinavia was well represented, which shows in the shortlist, and there was an increase in direct entries by clients.
Selected entries are featured in the annual Epica Book, finalists or not, giving every piece of work an additional chance to shine. The book will be released in September 2018.
