WARC has announced its jury for the WARC Awards for Middle East & Africa 2024.
Held in association with LIONS, the awards will strategies and impact across 12 categories as picked by the jury.
“We have convened a stellar group of extremely knowledgeable and highly respected professionals from across the region to bring expertise and cultural insight to the judging process,” said John Bizzell, Awards Lead at WARC.
All the jury come from the Middle East and the Africa region.
Familiar names from the Middle Eastern advertising industry include Khaled Al Shehhi, the Executive Director of Marketing and Communication at UAE Government Media Office and Omnicom Media Group CEO Elda Choucair.
Al Shehhi will lead the jury for the Channel Integration, Channel Pioneer, Partnerships & Sponsorships, Path to Purchase, Use of Data categories as jury chair.
He will be joined by Elda Choucair and Vice President Marketing of Qatar Airways, Babar Rahman.
Industry professionals from the African region include Mindshare Tunisia’s General Manager Yssem Saadi, Jumia Group Chief Marketing Officer and Co-Head of Brand,Yvonne Gyefour, Starcom East Africa/ALB Media Director Christine Amisi-Bwire, Old Mutual Chief Marketing Officer, Mosala Phillips and Dawn Rowlands, the Dentsu CEO for Sub Saharan Africa
The juryor the Brand Purpose, Business-to-Business, Cultural Impact, Customer Experience, Instant Impact, Long-term Growth categories will be led by Gugu Mthembu, the Chief Marketing Officer of Telkom.
The jury from the Middle East region includes TBWA RAAD Lebanon Chief Creative Walid Kanaan, Wunderman Thompson Saudi Head of Strategy and Planning Rawad El Dahouk, Juman Sleiman, Senior Strategist at Imagination Middle East and Dina El-Dessouky, the Head of Strategy & Insights at Leo Burnett MENA.
Riaya Industries CMO Souheil Badaa, OmniRetail Technology CEO Deepankar Rustagi and Neema Masinde, Regional Lead Marketing Communications & Integrated Media at Beiersdorf Kenya join in from the Africa.
This year also sees the addition of a new category, Strategic Thinking.
The new category jury will be led by Carolyne Kendi, the Chief Marketing Officer at Absa Kenya PLC.
They jury includes Impact BBDO Head of Strategy Anton Reyniers, Grey Group Qatar Head of Strategy Maria Parsons and Anastasia Kim, the Creative Strategy Lead at Google UAE.
They will be joined by Microsoft Africa’s National Digital Transformation Lead Angela Vic Kyerematen-Jimoh and Thinkerneur’s Chief Strategy Officer & Founder, Bogosi Motshegwa.
Finally, the jury is completed with Fred Akinmuyisitan, Head of Portfolio Strategy, CMI and Marketing Capabilities, Nigerian Breweries Plc (Heineken Nigeria) and Tahaab Rais, Group Chief Strategy Officer, Publicis Groupe at Middle East, North Africa and Turkey.
The juries will award Gold, Silver and Bronze accolades across the 12 categories.
Followed by which the jury chairs of all the regional awards – Asia Pacific, Europe, Middle East and Africa, Latin America, and North America – will form a super jury to award the Grands Prix, selected from all the regional Golds.
