Feature: And the nominees are…

The ISP 2007 Award nominations have just been announced. Matt Sullivan was invited for the first time to be a panel judge and was surprised at the scrutiny each entry received.

In November last year and completely out of the blue, a letter arrived on my desk from the ISP. It was an invitation to be a judge for the ISP Awards and when I read the letter I don’t mind admitting that I felt a little flurry of pride that I had been asked. Of course I wandered nonchalantly around the office with the letter asking what an important judge is likely to be faced with. Most seemed to think I would walk around a fancy room on my own, looking at display boards and marking creative 1 - 10. Easy, I thought, and I bet there’ll be a nice lunch.

However, with the exception of the nice lunch, I was way off the mark. The judging process is far more scrupulous and takes place over various days and locations to accommodate everybody. When I arrived at my allocated day, the board room was ready for the briefing. There were around twenty people present, all from different backgrounds, not just agencies. During the briefing the group was split into smaller groups of around five, each with a chairman who was experienced in judging and there to help the group along.

I was surprised at how thorough the whole process was. The group was allocated a category to judge (and before it was double checked there were no conflicting interests) moved to a private room with all of the entries waiting for us in a large box. We then spent two or three hours independently going through each entry and marking it on four strict criteria, with an idea of where the benchmark will be for those to make it through the first process of elimination. All marks are then handed to the chairman who adds it all up and gets ready for the debate. All marks are discussed and differing opinions are put forward (the fun bit) with the end result being our chosen nominations. This takes a whole day and is actually very enjoyable. Now our nominations go off for a second round of debate and examination to decide who gets the gold, silver and bronze.