Named a Jury Member of the MENA Effie Awards 2026

I have been named a Jury Member of the MENA Effie Awards 2026. The jury sessions are in Riyadh. My thanks to the Effie MENA team for the selection.

The choice was made from thousands of marketing leaders. For many years I have sat on the other side of the table: an award-winning marketer who has competed, and won, on global stages. Judging is a different job. The task is no longer to make the case. The task is to test it.

What Effie judges

For more than 50 years, Effie has asked one question: did it work?

Not the prettiest idea. Not the loudest campaign. The work that moved the business.

That is the standard I am there to apply. A case has to show an objective, the work that followed, and a result that can be defended. Taste is not the test. Effect is.

Those results also feed the Effie Index. The Index is the global ranking of the most effective brands, marketers, agencies and holding companies. It is built from Effie finalists and winners across all Effie competitions worldwide. A strong case in Riyadh does not stay in the room. It becomes part of that record.

What I will look for

My career sits where data, healthcare and business results meet. My experience includes Pfizer, Johnson & Johnson, AbbVie and BioNixus. In that work, creativity earns its place only when it delivers measurable impact. I will read every case against that standard.

Three things will decide how I read an entry.

A clear business objective. Before the idea, I want the target. What had to change in the business, for whom, and by when? A case that opens with a slogan, and hopes the numbers arrive later, is hard to judge. A case that names the commercial problem is easy to follow, and harder to overstate.

A line from insight to strategy to measurable results. The insight should explain the choice of audience, message and channel. The strategy should follow from that insight, not sit beside it. The results should then match the objective set at the start. Reach is not a result if the goal was revenue. Awareness is not a result if the goal was a launch. I want the number that answers the question the team actually asked.

Honest attribution. Marketing rarely works alone. Sales, medical, access, product and a good year in the market can all move the same figures. A strong case says what marketing contributed, and what else was in play. I trust a modest result with a clear method more than a large result with no account of the other forces. If the campaign cannot be separated from the rest of the business, say so.

I am looking forward to the jury sessions in Riyadh, and to reviewing the strongest work in MENA.

What this means for healthcare and B2B marketers

Healthcare and B2B marketing miss this question more often than they should. The cycle is long. Several people decide. The rules on what you can say are tight, especially in pharma. Teams report impressions, opens and event attendance because those numbers are easy to pull. The business question does not change: did the work move prescriptions, pipeline, revenue, or the decision you set out to change?

In healthcare, the objective is often a change in behavior along the path to treatment, not a spike in traffic. Name that behavior. Name who has to change: the specialist, the pharmacist, the hospital buyer, or the patient where the rules allow you to speak to them. Then show the result against that name, not against a number that was merely available.

In B2B, the objective is usually pipeline or revenue from a defined set of accounts. An insight about the buying group should lead to one motion: the message, the offer and the follow-up. A dashboard of channel metrics does not answer whether it worked. A short list of opportunities created, moved forward or won does.

You do not need an award entry to use the standard.

Write the objective before the campaign, in business language. Tie the insight to one strategic choice. Decide in advance which result will count, and which result will not. When the work is done, attribute it honestly. If other factors helped, name them. If the result is mixed, say what you will change.

That habit pays off whether you submit a case or not. It is also how a jury tells a real result from a well-built story.

Effectiveness is a record of what changed, and why you believe marketing changed it.

If you want a clear view of where your marketing produces that record, and where it does not, take the free growth assessment. If you would rather talk it through, book a strategy call.