Clio wants balanced juries, including equal number of male and female ad professionals

Cristina Blanaru Creativity, Festivals & Awards

CLIO Awards, international advertising, design and communications competition, issued a call to action to the advertising community worldwide to nominate a gender-equal juror committee for its 2014 competition so it  would more strongly reflect the contributions of women to the industry on the whole. Juror nominations, submitted via the website, are being accepted through August 29, 2013, according to a CLIO press release.

The call to action coincides with the announcement that the CLIOs will stage its awards show in Fall 2014, coinciding with Advertising Week New York. Entries will now open on February 3, 2014.

Through its call to action, CLIOs add their voice to ‘Let’s make the industry 50/50″ initiative, announced by the Art Director’s Club (ADC), aimed at making measurable changes to the roles and participation of women within the creative sector. It calls for an equal level of participation for both genders across awards show juries, boards of directors and events and speaker lineups. The CLIOs effort encourages peers to nominate qualified female creatives and increase the pool of women for consideration in selecting the best creative work of the year. It has the support of leading agencies and advocates like the 3 Percent Conference.

It is our aim to honor the industry’s most groundbreaking creative work, judged by the industry’s most elite talent, and that can be accomplished with juries that better represent both genders (…) As this effort reflects, changing the status quo depends on the commitment and participation from the creative community across the globe.

 Nicole Purcell,

 Executive Director CLIO Awards.

Every year, CLIO Awards boasts a panel of industry-nominated jurors who review and select the world’s best in creativity and communications for CLIO honors. All jurors must hold a title of Creative Director or higher and have won at least one award in an international advertising competition, epitomizing the vanguard of creative work themselves. While the ratio of men to women has been relatively high in the past, the juries still have mirrored an industry-wide issue of pervasive under-representation – only three percent of creative directors in advertising are female.

The CLIO Awards is one of the world’s most recognized awards competitions for advertising, design and communications; it celebrates and rewards creative excellence, honoring a powerful form of communication and its impact on modern culture.