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The 2023 Cresta Awards has opened for entries with a call for renewed attention by the advertising industry to the ‘work that makes and changes business, culture and society’.
“It’s a self-evident fact the communications industry does not always do its best job on promoting the immense value it brings to the business and the wider communities it helps,” said Cresta CEO Lewis Blackwell. He announced this year’s Cresta Awards would bring renewed attention onto stories that help shift perception of creativity in advertising and marketing. “We can all learn more from the best work we do in this industry, we need to grow a wider appreciation of creative work. Cresta takes that as the key part of its mission.”
“This year we will increase resources behind sharing winners’ stories more widely and in particular highlighting how outstanding creativity leads to outstanding performance. Our category development, and shaping and advice to the jury, further reflects this.”
Last year's Cresta Awards overall Network of the Year was, for the first time, won by Serviceplan of Germany, breaking a sequence of top wins for the BBDO network.
Cresta has updated its categories with a stronger focus on both Social Impact and also Creative Commerce. Other areas of development include Brand Storytelling, Start-Up businesses, Direct Marketing, B2B and Craft areas.
"There is a need to be more sensitive and insightful on how brand work is recognised,” added Cresta President Alan Page. “Cresta aims to give entrants every possible opportunity to demonstrate how their creativity can advance business and social agendas. We’re still open for suggestions of further improvement.”
The organisers say they intend to survey and promote the best creative achievements the awards recognise, playing back the best from around the world to the client community.
Besides adding new categories, Cresta has doubled-down on its commitment to being ‘the most fair and sustainable global creative award’.
Blackwell says Cresta aims to “be the most fair in what we judge, how we judge, what we charge for participation, and how we reward”.
The competition is distinctive in having a large rolling jury, where some members stay on for several years while others rotate, the overall selection being carefully balanced to reflect a globally diverse range of creative agencies and their clients.
This year’s competition is opening with a Super Early Bird offer, where participants can benefit from a $200 saving on the standard rate per entry.
Cresta’s trophy was redesigned five years ago by the leading designer Fernando Gutierrez and is highly sustainable. Made purely of certified timber and anodised aluminium, renewable and fully recyclable, it claims to be the most hand-crafted of all trophies, with a simple geometric design based on the golden section. “We are proud to offer a beautiful piece of design as our trophy, an indicator of how all products need to be more sustainable. It’s a stand out and, we hope, a pioneer in this industry,” added Blackwell.
Cresta Awards is a global creative award founded in New York in 1993 and now headquartered in London. It has entries from more than 70 countries and is judged by more than 140 leading creatives from around the world.
