AAF Miami - American Advertising Federation

American Advertising Awards 2019

Bring it home Miami.
The 2019 local, district and national American Advertising Awards are all in our backyard.

How Addys are Judged?

As per National American Advertising Awards rules, all judging must be done blindly. In other words, judges don’t know what agency or company worked on the projects until judging is fully completed.

Aside from this key rule there are some other great ones that you might not be aware of, for example:

Judges cannot be from your same market. More often than not, our judges are not even from Florida.
Judges must be from a comparable market. In other words, markets that have similar type of work, populations, etc. Our 2019 judges were from Austin, TX, Dallas, TX and Montreal. You can learn about them by reading their bios in our Winner’s Book.
All entries are judged via our online portal, which is why having a good case study video really helps sometimes. Projects are also scored on a very specific numeric judging criteria from 1-10. (Think like the Olympics) Scores then get averaged automatically by the judging system.
Judges only speak to each other after all their scores have been recorded. At which point, they discuss what they think is the Best project per category.
90% of the judging is done remotely, which is why we have a specific deadline. Your projects are released for judging the minute you pay for them. Late entries are the last entries to be judged. This may or may not be a good thing since judges have already seen hundreds of entries.
We must have at least 3 judges, and they should all come from different backgrounds. They also need to be Creative Directors, or above. In 2019 two of our judges were Executive Creative Directors. One was from a very traditional agency, while another was from a digital and creative tech shop.
Since we’re Miami, we always make sure that at least 1 of our judges speaks Spanish, since some entries are in Spanish.
No one knows the final score until all judging is completed. Not even the judges themselves.

What is the difference between a Local ADDY and a National ADDY?

A National ADDY is a 3-tiered competition including Local, District, and National judging. If you entered your project to the National competition and it is awarded a GOLD at the Miami ADDY level, it automatically gets forwarded to the District competition. If you won a Silver ADDY, you have the option to pay an additional fee to be judged. The same rule applies at the District level for Nationals.

If you won a Local Miami ADDY, your entry gets pooled into all the entries available and judges pick ONLY 1 project they like. We also give them the right to choose an Honorable Mention/Judges Choice if there’s a second project they really love.

I won a Miami Gold Addy, why didn’t I get a trophy?

Locally, we only award trophies to the best project of each category, and we allow the judges to pick 1 or 2 other projects that really deserve recognition sometimes called Honorable Mention, or Judges’ Choice.

However, if you want to upgrade your certificate to a trophy, or if you want to order a duplicate for your client then we can happily help you with that. Clients love this and it looks great on your shelves too. There is a fee associated with upgrading to a trophy and it varies depending on whether or not we made a custom trophy that year. In 2019 our trophies were 100% customized and they really stand out whenever you see them on a trophy display case.

If you are interested in upgrading to a trophy, please email addys@aafmiami.com for more information.

2019 American Advertising Award Winner Highlights

Professional Gold

Entry Title: St. Croix River: Zoning Rules

Company: Artex Productions

Category: Animation, Special Effects

Entry Title: Restoring Puerto Rico

Company: CCOM Group

Category: Webisode Series

Entry Title: The Force that Moves the Bravest

Company: Zubi Advertising

Category: Online Campaign

Entry Title: Chuleando My Ride

Company: CCOM Group

Category: National Integrated Campaign

Entry Title: Open Up to Join the Chorus

Company: Republica Havas

Category: Cinematography

Professional silver

Entry Title: Bite Sized Stories

Company: WOW MKTG

Category: In Theatre Commercials

Entry Title: Bauducco – Thanksgiving Times Square

Company: SambaRock

Category: OOH Digital

Entry Title: Ciroc 3D

Company: Be Underdog

Category: Online Campaign

Student gold

Entry Title: Hush

School: Miami Ad School

By:
CRISTINA MARQUEZ - Copywriter
JUNGGLE KIM - Art Director
CHAEYEONG SEO - Art Director

Category: Digital Creative Technology

2019 National Best of Student Winner

Entry Title: The Case for Her (Period)

School: University of Miami

Art Direction & Copy by: Hayley Buchholz & Chloe Glenn

Category: Social Media Campaign

To view the rest of the Winning Projects visit our Vimeo Channel