Highlights of Loeries Africa Roadshow in Harare

The Loeries are Africa's most prestigious brand communication awards and entries are open to everyone in the brand communication industry - marketers, agencies, designers, media owners and media agencies - across Africa and the Middle East.

The first stop of the roadshow was reportedly an all-round success, with around 180 attendees from Zimbabwe's brand communication industry. Juliet Ziswa, marketing director for East and Southern Africa at Unilever, opened the event, with Praxie Dzangare, chairperson of the Zimbabwe Accredited Advertising Practitioners Association (ZAAPA) welcoming the crowd and introducing the night's speaker, Andrew Human, CEO of the Loeries.

The programme began with a collection of highlights from the Loeries Seminar of Creativity featuring several world leaders in the creative industry. Human then presented all the 2013 winners from the Africa & Middle East Category; he went on to explain the judging process, list the categories, and he provided tips on entering the awards. He spoke about innovation, quality of execution and how relevance to the target audience, brand and the chosen medium are all critical elements of great communication.

"If you're selling bottled water and all your competitors are selling bottled water," he said, "your only differentiator is to make yourself stand out. And to stand out you have to be different; recognisable. If you are doing creatively awarded work - you're being innovative - and you will be eleven times more efficient in generating a market share increase than if you're doing mediocre work the same as everybody else," Human continued, referencing James Hurman's book, 'The Case for Creativity.'

Pivotal steps to winning an award

Breaking the programme into easily understandable sections, Human offered six pivotal steps to winning an award:

1. Start with a great idea
   
2. Keep it simple
   
3. Don't create work with the sole purpose of winning awards
   
4. Study the categories and know where to enter
   
5. A bad presentation can lose you an award
   
6. Make your statistics relevant
   

New category

A new category for the 2014 Loerie Awards was announced - Service Design. This category is focused on the interaction between a brand and its customers, "This 'last mile' of the customer experience can be vital in achieving sales, engaging new customers and building loyalty with existing customers," said Human.

Human took the opportunity to make the first announcement of five speakers at this year's Seminar of Creativity taking place during Loeries Creative Week: John Mescall, executive creative director at McCANN, Sydney; Ali Ali, a film director from Egypt; PJ Pereira, chief creative officer & co-founder, Pereira & O'Dell, San Francisco; Steven Doyle, creative director, Doyle Partners, New York City; and Arno Lindemann, chief creative officer, Lukas Lindemann Rosinski, Hamburg.

Special prize

Human also announced a special prize for the overall winner of Zimbabwe's Ngoma Advertising Awards taking place in April: Complimentary entry into the Loeries for the overall winning piece, and complimentary Loeries Creative Week access for the award-winning team - with a total value of over R10,000.

At the end of the programme, visitors had an opportunity to network with their industry colleagues. Many attendees expressed their gratitude for a workshop of this kind because although there is a strong and thriving advertising community in Harare, access to this content was found to be really inspirational.

"I was talking to some of the people who came through today and they were saying that they were amazed at how many Zimbabwean creatives have come out to this workshop," Denford Mangora, CEO of Jericho Advertising said of the event. "The hunger, energy and drive displayed simply demonstrates that we do have passion for great creative work, which is then moulded by the things we're being told today - here is what world-class people are doing, here is what it takes to get there with your campaigns and ideas."

Programme

The Loeries Africa Roadshow went to Dar es Salaam yesterday, 20 March and goes to Lagos next (25 March), followed by Nairobi (28 March) and finally Accra (16 April).

Every touch-point between a consumer and a brand is now considered by the Loeries - including Digital media, Architecture & Interior Design, Package Design, Radio, Television, Print media, Outdoor, Communication Design, Public Relations, Live Events, Sponsorship and more. The entry deadline is 30 May with a 10% discount for entries received before 14 April.

The Harare leg of the Loeries Africa Roadshow was made possible through the generous support of Jericho Advertising, Unilever and Toyota Zimbabwe.

Key dates

• Entry Deadline: 30 May
  
• Loeries Creative Week Cape Town: 15-21 September
  
• International Seminar of Creativity: 19 September
  
• The Loerie Awards Ceremonies: 20-21 September
  
• Ticket sales for Creative Week open 1 April

To attend, email moc.seireol@acirfa.