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But, boy, the responses were surprising. The Viral Factory is not an agency, so we can’t compare things! one voice said. These campaigns have nothing to do with the ideas used in other parts of the same campaigns, ran in traditional media! said another.

It all looked too much like a Sicilian coffee-shop debate, where any small and innocent remark can provoke a heated reposte. It seems that nothing is small anymore in the worlds of DM and digital.

So what can this year’s Cyber Lions teach us, really?

•    The secret of success is in the jury as much as in the creative work. Last year, the president of the jury was all about creating a seamless user journey across both off- and online channels; it was about real-life storytelling and not trivial things such entertainment or letting the backroom boys get too carried away with ‘clever’ technology. So, research your jury very well: Google them, read their bios, blogs, SlideShare decks and try to get into their minds – particularly the jury president, as (s)he will colour significantly what sort of optics and ‘filters’ will be applied in judging the work.

•    Be sure what you are entering. Digital is the first ‘meta-medium’ we’ve ever had: it encompasses the tools, approaches and characteristics of all previously known media. Which means that your work could actually be unclassifiable: a peculiar mix of advertising, PR, sales promotion, augmented reality, DM and God knows what else! It doesn’t have anything to do with traditional, clear-cut agency ‘artefacts’ (read ‘ads’), because more and more this isn’t going to be what we are producing in the digital space.

•    Spin your entries the right way. If you’ve understood the previous point, you’ve also understood that most digital projects will fall into this amorphous non-ad category (good!); that also means that you can spin it the way it plays better with that particular jury and its members. If the topic of the year is usefulness, show the engagement and results side of it; if it is about entertainment put it in that context. Why is this important? It will dictate how you are going to write your entry form, what to emphasise to make it resonate better with the jury.

•    Don’t stay to close to your campaign executions in other channels. Digital is a fantastically rich environment to knit a story and a customer journey across different channels and devices. It is the principle, the spirit of your campaign that really matters. It doesn’t have to be the exact ‘matching of luggage’ (despite Facebook being a huge carrier of display advertising, the things and campaigns that we remember mostly from Facebook is it social aspect and approaches that successfully utilised it).

•    Don’t behave like an agency. Think like a content provider, like a media owner or a media production house. Think like a charity, trying to collect and mobilise activists. Think like a Madmen bent on changing the world. The least that world needs now is just another ad.

Lazar Dzamic is digital planning director at integrated agency Kitcatt Nohr Alexander Shaw