Bruce McMeekin has once again been selected to judge the International ECHO Awards — one of marketing's most respected programs, and one of the few that refuses to separate creativity from results.
That distinction matters. The ECHOs don't hand out trophies for work that merely looked good in the deck. They recognize campaigns where strategy, creative, and measurable performance all pulled in the same direction. Sitting on that jury means reading hundreds of submissions from teams who can actually prove their work moved the number.
It's also a useful vantage point. Judging puts you in front of hundreds of campaigns across industries, channels, and budgets — work you'd otherwise never see. Patterns emerge: what's actually breaking through, where the category conventions are calcifying, which ideas are getting executed well and which are getting executed to death. That perspective doesn't stay at the judging table. It comes back into the work we do for clients.
Here's the uncomfortable truth about awards season: most great campaigns never get recognized, not because they weren't good enough, but because nobody submitted them.
If you led a campaign that delivered — real lift, real revenue, real behavior change — this is the year to put it forward. The ECHOs exist precisely to surface that work: to give teams the credit they've earned, and to show the rest of the industry what best-in-class actually looks like.
The entry process is also worth something on its own. Building a submission forces you to articulate the strategy, isolate the results, and make the case in plain language. Teams routinely find the exercise clarifying, whether or not they take home a trophy.
Thinking about entering? September 1st is the early deadline and the cheapest tier to hit. Entry fees rise after it, and again after the regular close on October 23rd. Entries stay open until November 20th, so missing the first date doesn't shut you out. It just costs more. Deadlines and pricing →
Great marketing deserves to be seen. Whether you're a financial institution, an agency, or a brand, your strongest work from this year belongs in front of a jury — not buried in a results deck nobody outside your building will ever read.
We spend most of our time in a category where measurable performance isn't optional. Banks don't run campaigns to win applause; they run them to open accounts, grow deposits, and deepen relationships. The ECHOs happen to be one of the few programs built on that same premise — which is exactly why Bruce keeps getting asked back.
Congratulations to Bruce on a well-earned return to the panel, and good luck to everyone assembling submissions.
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