EPICA UNVEILS PROVOCATIVE AD CAMPAIGN

The Epica Awards has launched a cheeky new advertising campaign created by Parisbased agency Altmann+pacreau. The press and banner campaign stresses the fact that Epica is judged by journalists and is therefore a credible and objective competition in the awards landscape. The campaign shows famous creatives on juries receiving cheerful texts from “friends” in the industry, which are actually thinly disguised begging requests for votes. Agency co-founder Olivier Altmann, the former worldwide chief creative officer of the Publicis network, said: “There are so many awards competitions these days that we had to find the right message to stand out. Luckily Epica, as far as I know, is the only award judged by journalists. Not creatives. Something which could appear as a lack of credibility was in fact for us a competitive advantage – because the jury can be totally objective. No-one in the room is involved in the work or needs to promote their own agency. When you serve on a jury you receive lots of ‘friendly’ messages, trying to find out what’s going on and putting a gentle pressure on your judgement. So we built on this insight to promote Epica, one of the few worldwide awards that most agencies support specifically because of its singularity.” Although it has a unique model, Epica counts in the big annual rankings of the mostawarded campaigns. It is celebrating its 30th anniversary this year, with a creative conference and ceremony in Amsterdam on November 17.