AME's Grand Jury are experts in creating results driven work on behalf of global brands. As award-winners themselves,their stellar reputations and commitment to creative and effective work set the benchmark for innovation. Their high standard of excellence and global perspective ensure entries are reviewed with utmost attention and based on an international view of industry standards and trends.

2023 Grand Jury member Fabio Medeiros is Head of Strategy for VMLY&R in Dubai working with some of the best brains and hearts in the industry. He's extremely proud to share my days with such an inspiring bunch of people - despite the occasional ‘drive-by questions’ that requires an immediate answer! Fabio brings years of industry experience to he judges table an is absolutely passionate about finding human tensions (or creating them).He feels they keep us, strategy and creative folks, on our toes, always searching for the new and the different but always in a brutally real and human way. "And that’s the beauty of being paid to poke culture on a daily basis."

He has worked with some of the most phenomenal minds across a few different continents with Ogilvy, OgilvyAction, Geometry, Leo Burnett and Uber before stepping into this force of nature called VMLY&R. Have worked across pretty much every category under the Sun. From FMCG to Automobiles to Restricted products to E-commerce marketplaces and so on. I love all things creativity, but have a soft spot for the words conversion, commerce and anything else remotely connected to impact.

Keep reading to learn more about Fabio's perspective on how brands are re-prioritizing brand building, how will strategic marketers address this data loss due to GDPR laws, and what he's looking for in award-winning effective creative advertising and more.

AME Awards: What future forward trends and innovations are brands embracing for 2023?

Fabio Medeiros:  Looking at trends that brands may or may not be following in 2023 is kind of an educated crystal ball gazing exercise. Brands are in various categories, geographies and talk to cultures of different kinds every day, meaning that challenges and solutions adopted will differ from brand to brand. That being said, there a few interesting developments to talk about.

The first one is how brands are re-prioritizing brand building by focusing on trust, credibility and authority. In a world filled with options and a multitude of opinions (most being considered universal truths) it seems brands are finding the need to speak up and clarify who they are, what they do and, recently, also, why they do things.

The second is the obvious rise of commerce, and more specifically, social commerce. Mostly as the evolution of micro-influencers, A.i bots and creative commerce within social. As shopping online becomes more natural and almost a natural conversation between two “people” brands truly need to ensure content, mission, tone of voice and the influencers chosen to partner with are relevant and don’t sound at all as a pitch. It cannot seem to be forced, otherwise it will fail.

Two more points I’d mention are A.i supporting brands to drive trust and honest relationships with customers through more accurate engagement and secondly the seamless mix of digital and physical experiences ensuring more connected brand experiences.

AME Awards: With General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) laws and third-party cookiecrackdowns, how will strategic marketers address this data loss?

Fabio Medeiros:  If I truly had the answer, I’d be rich by now. However, it’s a challenge we all have at hand and marketers just may have to leave their comfort zones and somehow, go back to their previous comfort zones. What I mean by that is the fact solutions may be lying on patience and play a longer game by first focusing on aggressive retention to ringfence current fans (costumers/consumers) who are already part of the legal and allowed ecosystem of CRM. Then it's reverting back to semiotics and even anthropology (plus faster and more thorough research) to ensure brands and businesses are relevant and can spot behaviour trends and pivots, leading to the mother of all marketeers: great and engaging content. Channel is a different conversation altogether.

AME Awards: As a strategic creative, what stand-out attributes do you recognize in award-winning creative effective advertising?

Fabio Medeiros:  Creative and effective and award-winning advertising should provide real solutions for true human issues or opportunities. Finding a tension and acknowledging it in a raw and sometimes even painful way is a must to push creative solutions to the max. Making a difference is not easy, and treating creative strategy in a bland and blasé manner is far from ideal.

Award winning work tends to be brave, to create a ‘wow’ or surprising effect that leads to some emotional reaction. And that’s the key difference between an IKEA manual and a great copy-led campaign for example. The former is very successful at delivering the information (and quite frankly, an emotional reaction too – usually anger) the latter stays with you, unearths sentiments of all kinds and in today’s world, will be shared with tens or hundreds of people within minutes. Award winning creative makes you proud of being the audience (maybe I pushed this one too far).

AME Awards: Why are effectiveness competitions like the AME Awards important?

Fabio Medeiros:  Competitions like the AME awards bring effectiveness to the forefront of the industry. They put the spotlight on work and thinking that is truly helping clients to move products and brands to develop relationships that could impact or even help shape culture.

Effectiveness competitions allow for marketeers, strategists, creatives and agencies in general to expand their options, to see work being benchmarked at a higher standard. Effectiveness competitions are not very different than a marketplace or any sport. You can’t be a champion or a market leader if the competition doesn’t exist. One won’t chase innovation or improvement unless there’s pressure to do so. Awards such as the NYF/AME help the professionals and the industries to get better, to feel indispensable for every new generation of CEOs and CMOs that arises.