Digital jury jabber with... Tseliso Rangaka

Rangaka judged the marketers’ category of the Bookmark Awards last year, so he knew what he was getting into ahead of the intensive judging sessions.

Here, Rangaka lets us in on some of the digital excitement by sharing his favourite digital innovation from the past decade, and what the judging process was like, as well as the importance of celebrating digital creative work…

Firstly, let’s talk about the fact that it is a decade of The Bookmarks. What’s your favourite digital Innovation from the past 10 years?
I’m a movie-slash-documentary-series fanatic, so broadband allowing services like Netflix to come in locally has been great. I also recently discovered that YouTube is not just a couple of idiots making asses of themselves, there’s actually great content on there. So I spend a lot of time basically watching the internet, which is quite cool.

I’m also enjoying services like Audible. I drive around a lot, and don’t always have time to sit and read a book, so audio books are fantastic.

That’s for sure. Let us in on the importance of celebrating digital work, especially in 2018.
These days, most people roll their eyes when they hear the word ‘digital’. I get that, because it should be in the very fabric of everything we do. But it isn’t yet. Hence the need for shows such as the Bookmarks. As an industry, we arrived a little late to the party and so we should take every opportunity to shine a light on the kind of work that sets the pace.

And this year you went beyond mere juror to jury chair. Share some insights into the actual judging process itself and also what you were looking for from the entrants.
The judging process was quite tight. We had experienced judges who knew what to look for. The categories themselves were a lot more defined than in the past. There were one or two that we found a little vague in their criteria, but the rigour and overall process around judging was good.

I was looking for work beyond just the textbook blueprint. I found a lot of entries saying: “We have a digital campaign, where’s our award?” vs. “We’ve got a very innovative digital campaign that pushes us into fresh territory.” Innovation is important – especially when you're talking digital, it’s the lifeblood of the show.

Results are also important. We’re generally not great at tracking results and looping these back into our campaigns to get the effect we want. We tend to just let the ship go out and leave it there.

Sad but true. Did you notice any big trends from this year's entries? What was the overall standard of the work that you judged?
As with any award show, 80% of the stuff was run-of-the-mill.

People tend to look at what did well in the previous cycle and try to emulate that, so there were a lot of 'me too’s'.

We saw a lot of influencer-led campaigns that didn't do much beyond just having a celebrity push a video.

Then there were great campaigns that were intended for the digital sphere. These are the ones that shone. The Huffington Post work was one such campaign.

What are you personally looking forward to from this year's fourth IAB SA Summit and 10th Bookmark Awards?
I’m interested to hear what some of the speakers have to share. The Accenture talk is one I'm quite keen to catch, just to find out how they’re approaching this game. The speaker from IBM Watson should be interesting, too. Especially now that AI is the big buzzword and it’s not about to go away quietly.

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That’s for sure! Keep an eye out for my interviews with others from this year’s #Bookmarks2018 judging panel, and click through to our IAB Bookmarks and Digital Summit Special Section for all the latest updates. You can also follow the IAB SA and The Bookmarks, as well as Ogilvy SA and Rangaka himself, on Twitter.