A total of 88 jurors made up of creatives, senior marketers, senior management, senior planners, directors, and production company specialists will be tasked with selecting the 39th AWARD Awards winners.

Online pre-judging will be conducted from until Friday 9 March 2018, and in-room judging from Thursday 15 March to Monday 26 March.

This year’s jury chairs are:

• James Dive – special projects, Scoundrel
• Tara Ford – executive creative director, DDB
• Emad Tahtouh – director of applied Technology, Finch
• Ben Coulson – chief creative officer, Clemenger BBDO
• Rebecca Carrasco – freelancer
• Kat Thomas – founder and CEO, One Green Bean
• Grant McAloon – executive creative director, Leo Burnett
• Tara McKenty – creative director, Google APAC
• Cam Blackley – chief creative officer, M&C Saatchi
• Paul Middleditch – director, Plaza Films
• Toby Talbot – chief creative officer, Saatchi & Saatchi NZ

You can view the full list of jurors here.

AWARD chairman Mike Spirkovski said: “For the first time, the jurors have been selected from a combination of creatives, agency CEOs, client CMOs, planners, directors, and production company specialists.

“These leading industry professionals have been responsible for creating some of our region’s best work and know what it takes to consistently deliver award-winning ideas.

“The decision to do this was to ensure the work is judged by extremely qualified jurors who are highly respected in the industry.

“Running for 39 years, the AWARD Awards have become a huge annual celebration and a respected benchmark for creative excellence in our region.

“Each year, we rely on the support of our industry’s top talent to help identify and set those standards, and as anyone who has judged in the AWARD Awards before will understand, it is no quick and easy task.

“I would therefore like to thank our impressive list of judges in advance for what will be a rigorous few weeks ahead.”

The annual AWARD Awards presentation will take place on Friday 25 May at CarriageWorks as part of the three-day Semi-Permanent festival of creativity and design.