IAB SA announces Bookmarks 2018 jury president, chairs

17 Jan 2018

The IAB SA today announced M&C Saatchi Abel chairman Jerry Mpufane as jury president as well as the jury chairs for the 10th annual Bookmark Awards taking place 1 March in Johannesburg.

Jerry Mpufane

Mpufane will serve as jury president. With more than 20 years’ experience in brand marketing, he takes over from John Dixon who served as jury president for four years.

#Newsmaker: M&C Saatchi Abel's Mpufane to lead the Bookmarks 2018

Jessica Tennant 19 Sep 2017

“The Bookmark Awards sets the benchmark for the industry by celebrating award-winning work that inspires and educates the market about the power to build brands through creative, high-impact digital executions that deliver measurable results,” says Mpufane. “This year’s expert judging lineup will have a tough job on their hands, evaluating the best work South Africa’s creatives have to offer.”

Chairing the marketers jury panel is Tseliso Rangaka, ECD: Ogilvy & Mather Cape Town. The publishers jury panel will be chaired by SABC stalwart Izak Minnaar, who serves as digital news editor at the broadcaster. Chairing the relatively new gamers jury panel is Danielle Mascher, head of development: Liquorice. Lorraine Landon, head of agencies: Google SA is chairing the performers jury panel. Luke Judeikin, co-founder and co-CEO: Superbalist.com is chairing the builders jury panel, and the innovative engineers jury panel will be chaired by Native VML’s creative group head Jade Amic.

Each jury panel oversees a number of judging categories. Bookmarks 2018 judging features two rounds – remote and onsite. The finalists will be announced on 8 February in advance of the onsite judging weekend, and this year’s judges will evaluate well over 600 entries across 74 categories.

New categories introduced to the Bookmarks this year include influencer marketing, online video, use of CRM, loyalty programmes and gamification, artificial intelligence, second screen campaign and craft: excellence in use of sound. These new categories reflect the rapid change taking place in the industry.

Amic comments: “Machine learning and AI are becoming more and more part of our daily lives at a rapid rate. We’re finding ourselves speaking to machines more frequently and they are deriving meaning from every word we say (or don’t say). Our world is becoming totally customised for us, by us, without us even knowing it. It’s not only changing our lives but completely shifting industries. The fact that we have no idea what tomorrow will look like is incredibly scary and exciting at the same time. 2018 is looking to be a really interesting year.”