Australia has nabbed 22 spots on the shortlist for this year’s Festival of Media Global Awards, with public service campaigns leading the field.

Check out the release below.

Australia takes 22 spots on shortlist for this year’s Festival of Media Global Awards

Sixteen campaigns up for 13 different awards

11/3/14: The Festival of Media Global Awards’ highly-anticipated shortlist for 2014 comes out today, with Australian campaigns taking 22 spots overall. Australia is the third most represented country in this year’s shortlist after the UK at 57 entries, and the US with 45.

Public service campaigns lead the entries from Australia, with Hepatitis C’s campaign ‘Creating a media channel to fight Hepatitis C’ and ‘XTL’ from the Department of Families, Housing, Communities and Indigenous Affairs both up for three awards each. ING Direct’s ‘Spend Your Lunch Well’ campaign has also been shortlisted twice, for Best Entertainment Platform and Best Launch Campaign.

The Festival of Media Global Awards recognises the very best of creative thinking in media globally, and this year’s record-breaking number of entries coming from 27 different countries. The Philippines, Malaysia and Singapore each doubled their number of entries from last year.

For the first time this year, Ogilvy DigitalHealth, ONIRIA\TBWA, and Forsman & Bodenfors also made the shortlist. Malaysian agency UM led the Australian entries, with six of their campaigns up for nine different awards.

The new category for ‘Best Content Creation Award’ was one of the most highly contested, with 14 different campaigns from across the globe set to battle it out during the final judging.

Across the board, this year’s entries demonstrated extensive social media engagement to reach audiences. Etihad’s ‘Mapped Out’ campaign explored users’ networking opportunities abroad by connecting to their LinkedIn accounts, and Swedish brand Marabou’s ‘The Chocolate with 6,000 Names’ asked Facebook fans to share their favourite excuses for enjoying chocolate.

Sameer Singh, VP, Head of Global Media at GlaxoSmithKline and Chair of the 2014 Awards Jury, comments: “It is so exciting to see brands from the four corners of the globe receiving multiple shortlist accolades. It certainly demonstrates that international standards of creativity and campaign excellence are being championed by countries both big and small. As global practitioners, we can learn from each of these campaigns to continue to drive the effectiveness of our own work – they’re an inspiration.”

Singh and a panel of 24 other industry experts will meet in Rome to judge the shortlisted entries, and the winners will be announced at a gala dinner on April 8^th, the final night of the Festival of Media Global 2014. This year’s jury features from some of the world’s leading brands and agencies, including Craig Hepburn of Nokia, Tom Wyse of Paddy Power, Kathleen Brookbanks of OMD, and Sylvain Chevalier of Havas Media Group.

For the first time ever, the Festival of Media Global Awards 2014 will feature tiered judging, with Gold, Silver or Bronze awards available to recognise the high calibre of entries, along with the Grand Prix awards for Campaign of the Year, Country Agency of the Year, and Agency of the Year. There will also be a Guinness World Record Award for the brand with the best world record-breaking campaign, as voted by the industry.

The entries will be available on www.creamglobal.com, and during the event, delegates can review the shortlisted campaigns on Surface devices from Microsoft. The ceremony itself sees new additions of projection mapping technology, and Spotify is also enabling winners to select their favourite track to be played if they win. This year’s Festival is being held in Rome at the Rome Cavalieri Hotel, from April 6-8, 2014.