APG Creative Strategy Awards 2021

See below for details on how to enter the APG Creative Strategy Awards 2021.

Thank you to everybody who uploaded their papers. We got over 120 entries and we can't wait to read them!

What is Great Creative Strategy?

In an era when Ben Schott of Bloomberg bemoaned the ubiquity of identikit “blands” that were pervasive amongst new tech brands, and the global ad industry ended up making the same ad, frame by frame, in response to Covid-19, it’s never been more important to champion the very best in creative strategy.

Great creative strategy takes brands and businesses and organisations to the polar opposite of the aforementioned examples. Firstly it is truly original, which means that when the dominant convention is to stick closely to the familiar well-trodden path, creative strategy forges new ones. Secondly, it confers on its businesses, an unfair competitive advantage. A brand that is able, through its sheer strength of appeal and distinctiveness to charge a price premium, to gain audiences that others have spent decades struggling to attract, to have a path to sustainable, long-term growth.

Thirdly, it results in creative output that reminds us all, that whilst optimization and conversion are essential hygiene factors, the rich emotional power of original ideas, and the many wonderful forms that creativity can take today, is still unique in its power to transform.

Long Term Thinking Category

This is for a campaign that has run for 5 years or more and is still running. It awards the strategic thinking that has successfully and actively guided the brand or business over that time.

It is a separate category and the papers entered will be judged alongside each other, and not with the papers submitted to the overall Creative Strategy Awards 2021.