UAE Jury Members for Cannes Lions 2017 Announced

As the official representative of Cannes Lions, Motivate and Motivate Val Morgan are pleased to announce that 4 leading creatives from the UAE have been selected as jury members for this year’s Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity.

The 4 Blue-chip creatives who will represent the UAE in the shortlist and awards jury panel under Radio, Promo & Activation, Media and Direct categories include:

Awards Jury

  1. Firas Medrows, Executive Creative Director at DDB Dubai – Radio

Shortlist Jury

  1. Josephine Younes, Creative Director at McCann FP7/DXB – Promo & Activation
  2. Elda Choucair, CEO at PHD MENA – Media
  3. Sascha Kuntze, Creative Director at Memac Ogilvy –Direct

Firas Medrows – DDB Dubai

Firas has 20 years of experience in the advertising world with a background in design and art direction. He began his career as a freelance graphic designer in 1996 and moved on to start his design house before relocating to Dubai in 1999.

In Dubai, he started in a small local agency where he had to be the Art Director, Designer, finalizer, Arabic Copywriter, Production Manager and sometimes the Suit. After spending three years learning every aspect of the business, he decided to move on and join the multinational advertising world.

He joined Lowe Dubai, as graphic designer and progressed to gain the role of Art Director. From there, he moved on to join JWT Riyadh before moving to JWT Dubai, where in just a couple of years, he managed to become one of the most awarded creatives in the JWT MEA network.

In 2010, he took on a new challenge and joined DDB Dubai, as a Creative Director before getting promoted to and Executive Creative Director. Since then, Firas and his team has managed to turn DDB Dubai around, delivering outstanding campaigns to their clients – winning DDB’s first Cannes Lions, CLIO, DA&D, LIA, Dubai Lynx Grand Prix and Grand Cristal.

Over the years his work has been recognized at all the prestigious award shows including CLIO Awards, D&AD, One Show, Cannes Lions, Epica Award, New York Festivals, London International Awards, Palais Du Louvre, Dubai Lynx, MENA Cristal Awards and others. In 2014 he was ranked amongst the Top 50 ECDs Worldwide and 11th amongst the Top ECDs in the MENA Region.

 

Due to an increased focus on quality, Direct, Promo and Media categories will have a shortlisting jury committee conducting the first round of judging in advance of the festival.

For example, if the Direct category has 40 world-class jurors in total this year, a jury of 10 will be invited to Cannes to award the Lions. The remaining 30 will contribute to the shortlisting process and will be invited to attend the festival with a complimentary pass, but will not take part in the awarding of Lions in Cannes.

Nevertheless, it goes without saying that all jurors will be of an equal, world-class standard regardless of their contribution to the judging process.