Introduction to Pitcher Awards 2019 Winners Showcase
By Nnamdi Ndu, CEO CHINI Africa
Many Africans, especially those from the bigger countries like Nigeria, get so pained when people from other parts of the world say someone is from Africa or going to Africa. They feel the fact that Africa is a mega continent is lost on them.
Indeed, Africa is huge - 54 recognized independent countries with a total land mass of over 30 million Km2. Africa is 3 times the size of Europe and has a population of over 1.2 billion, second only to Asia in both land mass and population. So, it is understandable that people are furious when they’re made to feel they come from a small town. No one likes being belittled. But then, clinging zealously to artificial national boundaries at the expense of trade and development is also the bane of Africa.
When we launched Pitcher Awards in 2018 as another step in the over 12 years’ journey of CHINI Africa to promote creativity, the goals were simple. Firstly, to create a regional benchmark for quality and secondly to create visibility and appreciation for African ideas in the global space.
Strangely, organized advertising has been practiced in many parts of Africa for about a century, but the profession did not progress in a way that evolved industry structures for peer evaluation, benchmarking and innovation. This is what a good award system should do. It is not just about winning. For many entrant companies, especially those in Media and PR, submitting work for Pitcher Awards has been a real eye-opener. It was their first opportunity to critically review the brief, analyze the ideas and strategies and present their results in a format they could share with others. They were doubtlessly thankful for the opportunity and the positive changes it could bring to their processes.
The work that you will see in this showcase are basically materials created in West Africa. However, we are opening entries for all materials created or implemented anywhere in Africa from the 2020 edition, taking us another step further in our mission of truly promoting the Creativity of Africa. Indeed, we find no logical justification for restricting entries from anywhere in Africa as the borders are largely artificial. For instance, Nigeria has over 500 different tribes and languages and those tribes are probably just as different from each other as they will be compared to another tribe in say Congo or Mozambique.
We remain thankful to the 3 different juries that judged the works in this volume. The Heritage jury looked at work in traditional categories such as film, print and audio. The Channel jury handled categories including media, PR and integrated campaigns while the Innovation jury were saddled with the responsibility of judging categories in digital, social media and mobile. Each of these pieces selected by the juries represents the will of the team behind them to rise above obstacles by using their creative ingenuity to overcome tough business challenges. Above all, we hope you discover in each work the very passion and love the creators have poured in making them. Enjoy!
Order Pitcher Awards Showcase here.