Everything you need to know about The Drum Awards Festival, with a week until deadline

The annual celebration of global marketing effectiveness and creativity is well underway and entries have been flooding in from regions around the world as the July 31 entry deadline draws near. This year, The Drum Awards Festival features a revamped and simplified category structure, making it quicker and easier for entrants to find the right home for their award-worthy work.

Agencies and brands can enter creative categories for Advertising and Design, categories covering media channels such as OOH, and media strategies across various business sectors. Entrants will also find all the familiar categories for B2B, Content, Experiential, PR, Social, and Social Purpose.

This year, Digital Advertising entries will sit under Advertising, while Live Experience is now simply called Experiential. Digital Experience is where entrants will find categories for outstanding work on the web and across the metaverse.

Another exciting development is that The Drum Awards Festival 2024 will take place over a single week, between November 11 and November 14, in front of a live audience in London. And, just like last year, all the results will be streamed live around the world.

You can now hear what judges look for in an entry by listening to key webinars talking through key tips and advice: watch webinars here.

Judging panels for The Drum Awards Festival 2024

Judging panels for The Drum Awards Festival 2024 are formed from a diverse pool of influential brand marketers and recognized agency leaders from around the world. To ensure fairness, juries will be led by expert practitioners in their relevant marketing discipline and are currently being carefully selected to bring a global perspective to the judging process, with the appointment of a designated president to oversee all the deliberations.

Key judges and presidents announced:

• Design: Brian Collins, chief creative officer, Collins

• Digital Experience: Billy Seabrook, global chief design officer, IBMiX, supported by Benjamin Lickfett, global head of digital innovation, Diageo (vice-president)

• Social Media: Allie Wassum, global director of social and integrated media, Nike, supported by Adam Clyne, founder, Coolr (vice-president)

• PR: Julia Monti, Senior Vice-President of Global Communications, Mastercard

• Media: Lisa Roebuck, global media director, General Mills

• Content: Emily Hare, global content strategy director, Publicis Media Content and Innovation (vice-president)

Senior marketers from brands already signed up to judge include:

• Lisa Maxwell, vice-president, B2B marketing, Mastercard

• Tatiana Lindenberg, marketing vice-president – Dirt is Good, Unilever

• Ryan De Joya, APAC media lead, Colgate-Palmolive

• Sunita Rajan, managing director, APAC media sales & marketing, Bloomberg

• Callum Watt, head of digital marketing, Britvic

• Sebastian Bourne, head of media northwest and central Europe, HP

• Anthony Key, VP media planning strategy & marketing analytics, BET Media Group, Paramount

Agency brands set to take part in judging this year include:

• Karen Coleman, managing director, 303 MullenLowe, Sydney

• James Irvine, global client partner & EMEA B2B lead, VML

• Toru Fujii, executive creative director, ADK

• Stacy Tarver Patterson, head of brand strategy, Code and Theory

• André Toledo, chief creative officer, David

• Yasuharu Sasaki, global chief creative officer, Dentsu Group

• Katy Wright, chief executive officer, FCB London

• Grace Lerner Sharfstein, group creative director, global marketing, GroupM

• Patrice Pollack, senior vice-president, executive creative director, Momentum Worldwide

• Mike Dubrick, partner and chief creative officer, Rethink Toronto

• Richard Denney, joint chief creative officer, St Luke’s

• James Townsend, CEO, Stagwell EMEA and global CEO, Stagwell Brand X Performance Network

• Frances Draskau, group creative director, The&Partnership

• Maria Panayi, head of music marketing EMEA, TikTok

(Sign up to The Drum Awards Festival newsletter for more jury announcements.)

Key dates:

• Early Bird entry deadline: Wednesday, May 15

• Official entry deadline: Wednesday, June 12

• Extended entry deadline: Wednesday, July 31

• Judging: between August 12 and September 20

• Nominations announced: 3pm on Wednesday, September 25

The Drum’s Lester adds: “Moving to a one-week festival format is very exciting and will ensure that The Drum Awards Festival is the most dynamic global marketing awards scheme in the world. We have done a lot of work to revamp and simplify our categories and how the competitions are structured and we believe that will make it much easier for entrants to find the categories that are right for their work.

“My team is now busy signing up judges from brands around the world so that agencies can get their brilliant strategic and creative work in front of some of the biggest and most influential brand CMOs in the world, so watch this space to see who else we bring on board in the coming weeks.”

Check out all of this year’s judges and additional information:

• The Drum Awards Festival 2024: Categories

• The Drum Awards Festival 2024: Judges

• Download The Drum Awards Festival Entry Kit