This year, ADFEST Lotus Awards will return to Pattaya, Thailand to conduct its first live judging in four years, which takes place just before ADFEST 2023 held during Thursday 23 - Saturday 25 March. The ADFEST 2023 juries will be responsible for reviewing and rewarding exceptional work produced across Asia Pacific and the Middle East in the last year. This year’s juries feature a cross-section of most innovative and brightest minds from the region. Each jury panel will judge some of the most ground-breaking work and the juries were chosen with the aim to ensure diversity across markets, backgrounds, and gender.

The Effective Lotus and Entertainment Lotus jury will be led by Ali Rez, Chief Creative Officer of Impact BBDO Group MENAP, and the most awarded creative leader in the Middle East. Named Creative of the Year twice by Campaign magazine, Ali is currently creative lead for the entire IMPACT BBDO Group across the Middle East, North Africa and Pakistan region after joining the agency in 2016. Ali’s work has been instrumental in Impact BBDO Dubai being named the No.2 Creative Agency in The World on the WARC report, while winning 10 different Agency of the Year accolades in 2022. He has also won more than 700 international accolades in a twenty-year career spanning four continents working in top tier agencies such as FP7 McCann, Grey Worldwide, Saatchi & Saatchi, JWT (now Wunderman Thompson) and Y&R (now VMLY&R). His awards include Cannes Lions Grands Prix, Clios, D&AD Pencils, Effies, and a United Nations Peace Medal, awards that have led him to be ranked No.1 Executive Creative Director in MENA and APAC in several creative rankings.

The full Entertainment Lotus & Effective Lotus jury is:

·       Jury President: Ali Rez, Chief Creative Officer, IMPACT BBDO Group MENAP, Dubai 

·       Alan Leong, Lead, Creative Strategy (SEA), TikTok, Singapore

·       Eugenie Yeo, Director, Creative Production APAC, Netflix, Singapore

·       F. E. Devi Attamimi, Executive Director, Strategy, Hakuhodo International Indonesia & Institute Director, HILL ASEAN, Jakarta

·       Jon Chalermwong, Chief Creative, audacity Bangkok

·       Lulu Lu, Chief Creative Officer, Wunderman Thompson, Taipei

·       Sarah McGregor, Executive, Creative Director, Dentsu Creative Australia, Melbourne

·       Suzzane Zhang, VP, MW Advisory, APAC, Head of Strategy of McCann Worldgroup China, Shanghai

·       Toshihiko Tanabe, Co-Founder & Creative Director, Tsuzuku Tokyo

Juror, Suzzane Zhang, commented, “Creative Effectiveness is in decline. The Effectiveness of creatively awarded work has fallen. Campaigns across the world produce fewer large business results. So I do look forward to seeing more cultural-changing, emotionally impacting work that is truly effective in the ADFEST Jury room.”

For more information about ADFEST 2023, visit www.ADFEST.com