Fu'aad Kasu, creative director at Duke Group

How do you feel about judging at this year’s Loeries?

Like the Indian Simon Cowell! But, in all seriousness, super excited.

Tell us more about yourself and why you believe you were selected – your judging experience and so on.

I’ve been in the industry for about 13 years now. Still no regrets. I’m currently a creative director at Duke and loving it! It was my first time judging for the Loeries. It was also my favourite category, print! It was such an honour and privileged to judge with some of the industry greats.

When you heard about being selected as a judge, how did you celebrate the news?

I called my mum, obviously.

What does this mean to you, personally?

That there’s a new judge in town, move over Judy.

It’s such a great achievement and quite an honor to be chosen for Africa and Middle East’s most prestigious creative awards’ ceremony.

As I said already, I judged my favourite category, Print.

What do you expect to experience as a judge?

Learning from others and seeing work differently. It’s also great to see all the work that’s out there and what agencies are producing, be it an award piece or not.

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What specific criteria will you be looking for when judging?

Innovation and quality! With Print being such an old medium, work really needs to stand out and be fresh and different.

You have some major experience in the creative industry. Could you comment on the impact of Covid-19 on the industry?

Like most industries, Covid has messed things up. As a creative industry, we thrive on challenges and our job is to find solutions to problems. During this time, we had to think a bit differently and ideate smarter but at the end of the day, work was work, and the context of Covid was just a ‘minor’ extra mandatory on every brief that came through.

Share a few of your favourite Loeries-related moments over the years – either from attending personally or agency winning work-related.

What happens at Loeries, stays at Loeries ;)

Any predictions of trends that are likely to stand out at Loeries 2021?

Probably a lot of ‘during Covid, we were faced with bla bla bla’ - that’s almost a given. I hope I’m proved wrong on the awards night though. What was nice about judging print is that none of the work actually played into that. It almost went back to old school ideas that were visually beautiful, crafted and smart.

What do you believe SA creatives bring to the Loeries judging mix?

South Africans are such diverse people, and we have so many unique insights about our daily lives. I believe that this brings an interesting dynamic to the judging panels, and allows us to celebrate work that is distinctly South African.

Lastly, what are you most looking forward to from Loeries 2021?

Suiting up and sharing a non-alcoholic beverage with some industry folk - in person.

What does #FightTheGoodFight mean to you?

For me, it’s simple - just keep fighting for cool creative work. That idea that you’re too afraid to present or you think is too crazy is probably what the idea we should be making. We’re so bombarded with boring and safe.

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By Evan-Lee Courie 24 Jun 2021

In some categories, we can no longer differentiate between brands anymore. We need to push; we can’t only be ‘creative’ when it comes to award entries, it should show in all the work that we do.