The Comms Council has appointed London-based “recovering account planner” Mark Earls as the international judge at October’s NZ Effie Awards.
Earls has run agencies large and small. He has written a number of award-winning and best-selling books about human behaviour, creativity and innovation. These include Welcome to the Creative Age, HERD, I’ll Have What She’s Having (with Professors Alex Bentley and Mike O’Brien), CopyCopyCopy – how to do better marketing by using other people’s ideas and most recently Creative SuperPow-ers (with Daniele Fiandaca, Laura Jordan Bambach and Scott Morrison)
He has also written for many magazines, journals and newspapers and appeared on British, American, Irish, Indian and Dutch TV and radio – but his favourite piece remains a double page spread in The Sun newspaper about the London Riots (“Come and have a go if you think you’re HERD enough”).
And appeared on more stages than Elvis (well, almost).
“Earls’ work applies leading-edge behavioural and decision science to challenge much of the received wisdom about human behaviour,”
“Earls’ work applies leading-edge behavioural and decision science to challenge much of the received wisdom about human behaviour,” said Comms Counil ceo Paul Head.
“He’s been a big champion of behavioural economics but has championed the notion that we are social (HERD) creatures first and foremost, that much of our behaviour is shaped by what goes on between us (rather than simply between our ears) and finally that creativity is a team game rather than a solo act.”
He advises a wide range of organisations from corporations to start-ups, charities and governments, both in the UK and around the world and is in much demand as a speaker and as a conference curator and programmer.
Earls has judged all kinds of strategy and effectiveness awards, including IPA, APG, Marketing So-ciety, 4A’s, ADFX; he is a Fellow of The UK Marketing Society and the RSA, an Honorary Fellow of the IPA and an Ambassador of The School of Life.
“But mostly,” Head reckons, “he would rather be fishing or watching cricket.”
Entries have closed for the 2018 Effie Awards, which will be held in Auckland on Thursday 18 October.
The Comms Council’s commercial partners in Effie 2018 are TVNZ and NZM; its sponsors are Nielsen, Bauer, Adshel, Soar Printing, Google, and The Radio Bureau.
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