The One Club for Creativity has used the disruption of the industry caused by the COVID-19 pandemic as an opportunity to transform its annual in-person Creative Week programming and awards events for 2020.
Creative Week this year will become Creative Month 2020, an expansive streaming event running free of charge May 4-29 featuring a wide range of original creative inspiration and professional development content specifically developed for a global online audience.
In addition, The One Club will this year as a global awards organization recognize the world’s best creative work in advertising and design with unique new formats for announcing The One Show 2020, ADC 99th Annual Awards and Young Ones Student Awards winners. While the latter two will reveal winners during Creative Month, The One Show 2020 is slated for streaming events in June.
“In light of how the pandemic has hurt the industry, we’ve doubled down on upholding our nonprofit mission to support the creative community,” said Kevin Swanepoel, CEO, The One Club. “We worked with our Board of Directors to reimagine and expand Creative Week and the awards into multiple weeks of inspirational programming that stream free of charge worldwide. This year more than ever, it’s critical that we provide the platform to inspire the creative community and give recognition to those who have done the best work in the world.”
Creative Month 2020
Extending the concept of its annual one-day Creative Summit during Creative Week, The One Club has dramatically expanded programming into a vast streaming offering rebranded as Creative Month, running May 4-29.
The club is working with more than 60 creative leaders around the world to develop entertaining and engaging original content designed to inform and inspire the global creative community during Creative Month. Each day at 9:00 am, 12:00 pm and 4:00 pm EST, the club will post a different session of original streaming content from the Creative Month page. All sessions will then be viewable at any time from the Creative Month archive.
All programming aligns with the nonprofit organization’s four pillars — Education, Gender Equality, Inclusion & Diversity and Professional Development — with participation from agency and in-house creatives, designers, educators and brands.
The three daily sessions range from pre-recorded 5-10 minute talks by top global creatives under the “Creative Perspectives” banner for Professional Development to longer live panels, workshops, mentoring sessions and Instagram takeovers.
Session speakers include Burger King’s Fernando Machado, Spotify’s Alex Bodman, Leo Burnett London’s Chaka Sobhani, R/GA’s Tiffany Rolfe and Jessica Greenwood, ad legend David Nobay, McCann’s Matt Eastwood, Best Buy’s Bruce Bildsten, C&G Partners’ Maya Kopytman, Wieden+Kennedy London’s Tony Davidson, Del Camp Global’s Pablo Del Campo, The Creative Collective NYC/CultureCon’s Imani Ellis, The Martin Agency’s Karen Costello, The Fink Tank’s Graham Fink, Design Army’s Pum Lefebure, Prettybird’s Kerstin Emhoff, Cassanova/McCann’s Ingrid Otero-Smart, TGH Collective’s Tay Guan Hin, Kastner’s Brandon Rochon, Grid Worldwide’s Nathan Reddy, Fishbowl/Dong Draper’s Sai He, consultant/entrepreneur Cindy Gallop, Cutwater’s Chuck McBride, former REI creative Mishy Cass, Bon Appetite’s Rick Martinez, Momentum’s Omid Farhang, photographer Mark Seliger and many others.
The calendar of Creative Month sessions and speakers can be viewed here.
ADC 99th Annual Awards
ADC 99th Annual Awards, the world’s longest continually-running global awards program honoring excellence in craft and innovation in all forms of design and advertising, will announce this year’s winners in a week of recognition running May 18-22 during Creative Month.
Winners in a few disciplines will be announced online each weekday. The One Club will also post a series of exclusive live Instagram Stories conversations between ADC 99th jury members and creatives responsible for some of this year’s biggest winners to discuss their creative inspirations and processes.
Young Ones Student Awards
Recognition of the best creative work by students worldwide will also transform this year, as the Young Ones Student Awards changes from an annual in-person event to a streaming program during Creative Month on May 13 to announce winners and provide other educational content.
The One Show 2020
After the conclusion of Creative Month, The One Show 2020 will take center stage as this year’s leading global awards program in advertising and design with special streaming events set for mid-June. Details will be announced shortly.
In early March, The One Club announced the switch from in-person to online judging for The One Show 2020 and ADC 99th Annual Awards. The change allowed jury members from around the world to continue to review entries in safe environments, and enabled both awards shows to maintain the global integrity and quality of their judging processes.
Unlike other awards shows that generate most of their revenue from an in-person festival, The One Club is a non-profit organization that produces more than 80 events around the world throughout the year and is not financially dependent on a single annual awards festival.
In-person judging, Creative Week and The One Show, ADC Annual Awards and Young Ones Student Awards ceremonies in New York will resume in 2021.
