Meet The Jury

BBH’s Matt Fitch (left) and Mark Lewis created the multi-award-winning ‘Three Little Pigs’ for The Guardian.

With more categories up for grabs, we’re expecting this year’s NNI awards to generate a lot more entries than before. And rather than heap all that work on a single judge, this year we’ve decided to put together a judging panel to do the honours.

Heading up our jury is one of the ad industry’s hottest creative tickets: Matt Fitch and Mark Lewis of BBH London.

Art director Matt and copywriter Mark are the creative team behind the most talked-about ad of 2012, ‘Three Little Pigs’ for The Guardian, which went on to win… well, where do we start? It might be quicker to list the awards it didn’t win. BBH’s fable-inspired commercial won Gold for Film and Film Craft atCannes, as well as just about every other significant honour available.

Matt and Mark, who have been friends since they were 12 years old, have worked together since 2009, serving stints at VCCP and BMB before joining BBH London three years ago. They also work, or have worked, on campaigns for Vodafone, Barclays, Google and many others.

Joining our creative duo on the panel, and bringing a wealth of expertise in media and marketing to the judging process, are Peter McPartlin and Gavin O’Doherty.

Peter McPartlin, judge NNI Press Ad of the Year Awards

Peter McPartlin, who is Chief Executive of Today FM, has more than 30 years experience in the Irish media business with some of the country’s biggest agencies including Carat Ireland, where he was Strategy Director, and Aegis Media, where he was Business Director.

Peter has also worked in a consultancy capacity with the likes of Independent News & Media, UTV, The Irish Times, JC Decaux and, yes, National Newspapers of Ireland.

Gavin O'Doherty, judge NNI Press Ad of the Year Awards

Gavin O’Doherty is the Marketing Director for Irish Distillers Pernod Ricard and he has more than 20 years experience in marketing with brands including Findus, Nestle and Coca-Cola, where he was part of the European Sponsorship committee responsible for all of the Coca-Cola sponsorship across the continent.

Gavin also spent five years with Publicis QMP, and says the best and worst thing about agency life was working with creatives. What??!! Gavin, it’s our pleasure to introduce Matt Fitch and Mark Lewis…

Sincere thanks to all four gents for taking part. We cannot wait.

The final deadline for creative, industry specific and Press Agency of the Year (media) categories is Wednesday, January 16th and POP entries should be submitted by February 7th.

Entry forms are all here: www.newsbrandsireland.ie/pressadoftheyear

For queries contact Anna Clarke e: aclarke@cullencommunications.ie T: 01 668 9099