There are just a few days left to enter one of the UK's quirkiest ad competitions, with the Chip Shop Awards set to close on March 12th.
The awards provide a great opportunity for up-and-coming creatives to get noticed, if only because criteria for entry are so spectacularly relaxed, at least when compared to many of the other events listed on the Warc calendar.
No geographical or spending limits are imposed by the Chip Shop Awards; you can enter regardless of whether your campaign actually ran, or was even presented to the client in the first place. In short, winners are judged on the quality of their ideas, and nothing else.
This laid-back attitude on the part of the organisers carries through to the list of categories. As well as conventional awards - best viral, best press ad and so on - "chips" are also handed out for "Best Politically Incorrect", "Best self promotion" and "Best Use of Plagiarism".
For examples of the sort of thing the jury will be after for the latter category, see a couple of 2009's winners, from TCS Advertising (Metropolitan Police) and The Black Hole (The Sun), below:
There's also a winner-of-winners "big chip" and a chairman's award. Looking down the list (available in full here), I'm sure the evening's most eagerly awaited gong will be number 34...
Judges pencilled in for the Chip Shop Awards include Leo Burnett creative director John Jessup and Dave Smith of Wieden + Kennedy, Amsterdam.
Elsewhere, the deadline for the Singapore Effies falls on March 12th, while the Creative ABBY awards (for India), Romania's Adprint 2010 and the Swiss Effies will stop accepting entries on the 10th.
All categories for the Cannes Lions will also be closed by the 19th.
Meanwhile, the Greek Effies opened today for an April 23rd: for further details (and a handy countdown clock) see the official website here.
The Spikes Asia Advertising Festival - including the Spikes Awards, which have been running in some form for the past 23 years - has also just announced dates for 2010. The Festival will be held at the Suntec complex in Singapore from September 19th-22nd 2010, while the awards' call for entries - for campaigns from across Asia, Australia and New Zealand - falls on May 20th and the deadline on July 23rd.
Spikes Awards categories cover TV, cinema, print, outdoor, radio and digital ads, along with integrated campaigns.
