Ava Awards Q & A
What is the Ava Awards?
The international Ava Awards (Audio/Visual Awards) recognizes outstanding work by creative professionals involved in the concept, writing, direction, shooting, and editing of audio/visual materials and programs. Entries include film, analog and digital productions viewed in a wide variety of mediums- from movie screens to televisions to computers. Entrants include video and film production companies, web developers, advertising agencies, PR firms, corporate and government communication departments, producers, directors, editors, and shooters.
Who oversees the Ava Awards?
The Association of Marketing and Communication Professionals (AMCP) (www.amcpros.com) administers the program. The international organization consists of several thousand marketing, communication, advertising, public relations, media production and free-lance professionals who have entered AMCP competitions. The organization's roots go back 14 years. The Advisory Board oversees awards and recognition programs, provides judges and sets standards for excellence.
AMCP also administers the MarCom Awards and Hermes Creative Awards, perhaps the largest and most prestigious international recognition programs for marketing and communication professionals.
What is the mission of the Ava Awards?
The mission of the Ava Awards is to honor excellence and recognize the creativity, hard work and generosity of audio/visual professionals. As part of its mission, AMCP fosters and supports the efforts of creative professionals who contribute their unique talents to public service and charitable organizations. Anyone entering the Ava Awards can also enter their pro bono work without charge.
Over the past 2 years, AMCP's Advisory Board allocated over $40,000 to support the efforts of its members. That money went to create marketing materials for homeless shelters, orphanages, educational endeavors for the underprivileged, child care, day camps, community theaters, art centers, elderly programs, and at risk youth programs to name a few.
Why was the Ava Awards started?
There are a few video categories in the Hermes and MarCom Awards, but over the years entrants asked us to start a competition that would be specifically for video and its many uses.
Why is there an AMCP fee on the entry form?
AMCP is doing whatever it can to keep entry fees at reasonable levels. Instead of charging several hundred dollars per entry, the entry fee is $60 per category. Rather than increase the fee for each entry, an administration fee is being charged to help offset increasing overhead such as printing, mailing and data entry. By charging each entrant the same administration fee, entrants entering more than one category will be paying less than if the entry fee were increased.
Why enter the Ava Awards?
It's all about recognition. Recognition for you and for your clients and bosses. Winners and their clients are listed on the Ava Awards web site and in the next year's Call for Entries. In addition, winners and clients can tout their awards through their news releases to their local media and on their own web sites, newsletters and print materials. Winners also have the opportunity to showcase their achievement in their offices or homes and to present clients with attractive, high-quality, meaningful awards.
How is the judging done?
To ensure fairness and consistency, all of the judging is done in the AMCP judging room in Arlington, Texas. It takes two months of full-time work to judge all of the entries. Each entry is judged against itself and not directly against other entries. There could be no winners in a category or multiple winners. There are no lengthy essays to persuade the judges; so all work will be evaluated solely on its own quality, creativity and resourcefulness. Judges base their decisions on learned perceptions of creative excellence rather than an entrant's imaginative explanation of an entry's value.
Entries are judged at random. They are not grouped by categories. Each entry is viewed and discussed individually. The judges are experienced professionals who have had projects similar to anything that is submitted. The judges are cognizant of what an entrant has to work with and make their evaluations accordingly. For instance, a car commercial for a major manufacturer is not compared to a used car spot produced in a small market.
Entries receiving scores between 90-100 points are Platinum winners. Entries with 80-89 points are Gold Winners. Entries scoring from 70-79 receive an Honorable Mention certificate.
Why do we have to pay for awards?
There is no obligation to purchase an award. Each winning entry is eligible for a free certificate. Unlike many competitions, Ava entrants do not subsidize awards for the winners. Instead of charging up to several hundred dollars per entry, competition organizers decided to keep entry fees at a fraction of that cost and let the winners buy their own awards if they so choose. The result is more affordable entry fees and a higher quality award that is not a trinket, but a piece of art that anyone would be proud to display and give to a client.
Who sees my entries? Do I need to enclose copyrights, credits, etc. with my entries?
Since many of the entries are internal or proprietary in nature, or are done for the government or another company, only the judges see entries. Immediately after judging, each entry is destroyed. No entrant information is sold, traded, displayed, made available to a third party or used for any other purpose. AMCP assumes that you have rights to materials and the authority to enter them, so you do not need to enclose that information with your entries.
Please explain Pro Bono as it pertains to the Ava Awards.
A pro bono entry is a project that you did for free for a non-profit that does not employ you. In other words, you did not get paid to do the work. An example of such work would be you personally or you in your role at whatever company you work for, producing a PSA for the local homeless shelter. Only entrants who enter a regular piece in the competition are eligible to enter pro bono work at no cost. This is a perk for those who help defray costs of overhead, mailings, judging etc. You can only have one pro bono entry per client. You can however have an unlimited number of pro bono clients. If you want to submit pro bono work only, you must pay the regular AMCP and entry fees.