Full lineup of judges set for 2021 competition
Effie Worldwide has announced the marketing leaders who will serve on the Grand Jury for the 2021 Effie Awards United States competition.
The Grand Effie jury will select the most effective, impactful work of the year as the recipient of the “best in show”, the Grand Effie. The year’s competition reflects the work and results achieved during the onset of the pandemic. The Grand Effie winner will serve as both a symbol of the industry’s resilience and benchmark for the path forward.
Leading this year’s panel are co-chairs, Umesh Sripad, chief digital officer at IKEA USA, and Amani Duncan, president at BBH USA. Each year, the Grand Jury is selected for their expertise in a range of disciplines across the industry. Joining Sripad and Duncan on the jury are:
- Jason Harris, co-founder & CEO, Mekanism
- Dirk Herbert, chief strategy officer, dentsu Americas
- Tracy-Ann Lim, chief media officer, JPMorgan Chase & Co.
- Deidre Smalls-Landau, CMO & EVP, Global Culture, UM
- Zena Srivatsa Arnold, global chief digital & marketing officer, Kimberly-Clark
- Kate Stanford, VP, ads brand & activation marketing, Google
- Musa Tariq, CMO, GoFundMe
- Justin Thomas-Copeland, president & CEO, DDB North America
The jury will meet virtually, in a session sponsored by YouTube, to review and debate the creativity and effectiveness of the highest-scoring Gold Effie winners from the 2021 Effie Awards United States competition.
“Despite all of the challenges, I am consistently impressed by our industry’s ability to produce amazing work and drive growth,” said Traci Alford, global CEO of Effie Worldwide. “It is critical that we continue to recognize and celebrate marketing effectiveness, especially now, and the leaders on this year’s Grand Effie Jury are well-equipped to determine this year’s winner and establish the benchmark for effectiveness going forward.”
The Grand Effie contenders and winner will be announced during the final day of the virtual Ideas That Work: 2021 Effie US Summit & Awards Celebration taking place September 29-30 (3-5pm ET). The free-to-attend event will celebrate winners from this year’s Effie US competition and explore the path forward for brands and marketers in today’s constantly evolving landscape.
Review: Malcolm Washington Makes His Feature Directing Debut With “The Piano Lesson”
An heirloom piano takes on immense significance for one family in 1936 Pittsburgh in August Wilson's "The Piano Lesson." Generational ties also permeate the film adaptation, in which Malcolm Washington follows in his father Denzel Washington's footsteps in helping to bring the entirety of The Pittsburgh Cycle — a series of 10 plays — to the screen.
Malcolm Washington did not start from scratch in his accomplished feature filmmaking debut. He enlisted much of the cast from the recent Broadway revival with Samuel L. Jackson (Doaker Charles), his brother, John David Washington (Boy Willie), Ray Fisher (Lymon) and Michael Potts (Whining Boy). Berniece, played by Danielle Brooks in the play, is now beautifully portrayed by Danielle Deadwyler. With such rich material and a cast for whom it's second nature, it would be hard, one imagines, to go wrong. Jackson's own history with the play goes back to its original run in 1987 when he was Boy Willie.
It's not the simplest thing to make a play feel cinematic, but Malcolm Washington was up to the task. His film opens up the world of the Charles family beyond the living room. In fact, this adaptation, which Washington co-wrote with "Mudbound" screenwriter Virgil Williams, goes beyond Wilson's text and shows us the past and the origins of the intricately engraved piano that's central to all the fuss. It even opens on a big, action-filled set piece in 1911, during which the piano is stolen from a white family's home. Another fleshes out Doaker's monologue in which he explains to the uninitiated, Fisher's Lymon, and the audience, the tortured history of the thing. While it might have been nice to keep the camera on Jackson, such a great, grounding presence throughout, the good news is that he really makes... Read More