Categories
There are twelve categories in this year’s awards program:
Emerging Trend: AI Strategy: Recognizes ingenious approaches that seamlessly integrate artificial intelligence into the strategic planning and/or the execution of campaigns, enabling brands to connect with audiences in transformative ways. Submissions should demonstrate exceptional use of generative AI or machine learning in shaping strategic insights and/or in optimizing the delivery of brand messaging and product engagement.
B2B Strategy: Recognizes strategic thinking that led to transformative success of business-to-business engagement, whether products, accessories, services, software or solutions.
Brand Pivot Strategy: Recognizes the strategic insights from brands that found extraordinary ways to support customers and the public at large, and/or repositioned a legacy brand or product in fresh, contemporary, and relevant ways in the face of disruptive change in the economy, category or product.
Connection Strategy: Recognizes strategic thinking that directly led to smart and innovative use of media that connects consumers to brands in relevant and transformative ways.
Experiential Strategy: Recognizes extraordinary marketing strategy that fuels compelling brand experiences, whether physical, virtual or hybrid.
Gaming Strategy: Recognizes strategy to capture the receptive, engaged audiences of the gaming industry, whether for a game itself or an in-game brand or product.
Healthcare Strategy: Recognizes insights that informed the engagement strategy of a healthcare service, product or Rx drug brand. Inclusive of big ideas and innovative use of technology or media that connects customers to brands in relevant and transformative ways. Identify whether HCP or Consumer.
Local Strategy: Recognizes thinking that influenced a marketing initiative at the local or regional level, either in the United States or in the country for which they were designed. (NOTE: Any campaigns that spanned several countries should not be submitted for this category. Consider submitting in the National/Multinational category. The 4As reserves the right to recategorize all case study submissions.)
National / Multinational Strategy: Recognizes marketing efforts that spanned an entire country or several countries for which they were designed.
Nonprofit / Social Cause Strategy: Recognizes work done in support of a social cause or not-for-profit company.
Product / Service Launch Strategy: Recognizes new product ideas, service offerings and launches, showcasing strategic acumen in identifying opportunities and delivering compelling solutions, including disruptive product innovations or transformative service offerings.
Public Relations Strategy: Recognizes work that earned media, attention, and influence to shape perceptions of a brand, company, or issues.
Prizes
Trophies will be given to Gold, Silver and Bronze winners. A Grand Prix prize will be awarded to the one entry that our executive judging panel deems to be the best of all the papers submitted across all categories. We may also award Agency of the Year or Network of the Year if warranted.
Deadlines & Fees
There are three pricing tiers:
Early Deadline: $500 Members, $600 Non Members (per entry) for entries completed & paid for by Friday, April 18, 2025 (11:59PM EST)
Regular Deadline: $750 Members, $850 Non Members (per entry) for entries completed & paid for by Friday, May 16, 2025 (11:59PM EST)
Final Deadline: $1,000 Members, $1,100 Non Members (per entry) for entries completed & paid for by Friday, June 13, 2025 (11:59PM EST)
Payment methods
The submission site accepts payment via American Express, MasterCard, Visa and Discover. If you are unable to pay by credit card, you can pay by company check or wire transfer provided you first contact the 4A's (awards@4As.org) to make payment arrangements well in advance of the deadline date; unpaid entries will not be reviewed and passed to the judging phase.
Winners will be announced at the 4A's Jay Chiat Awards Ceremony, on Monday, October 6, 2025, in NYC.
Eligibility
All campaigns must be in market from January 1, 2024 until December 31, 2024.
If you entered last year and your entry won an award you may enter the case in another category provided that there is substantial new information, insight and creative to make a strong case in that category.
If you entered last year and did not win an award (i.e., Gold, Silver, Bronze or Honorable Mention), you may enter a rewritten case, provided your resubmission includes new information in regards to insight, creative and/or effectiveness.
NOTE: If you would like to enter a case in multiple categories, you may do so. HOWEVER, please adjust the written study to the particular category. Trying to write a case study that would appeal to all judges, in all categories, defuses the strategy.
The Jay Chiat Awards case study should be submitted as a PDF file.
The entry cannot be longer than 25 pages/slides.
You can only submit the same campaign across two categories.
Important Considerations
It’s critically important that the strategic contribution is clear in every paper and that it is not eclipsed by the creative work. We want to be able to clearly see what you did and how it made a difference in getting to the outcome.
Let’s not forget insight, often the essential ingredient of great strategies. Your case study should highlight the insight. Tell us how you uncovered it & what you did with it.
Planners and Strategists face multiple challenges in their work and getting to greatness is often a complicated journey. Your paper should document your internal and external challenges and tell us how you managed to overcome them.
We recognize that Account Planning and Strategy now encompasses a diverse range of skills; from the briefing process to data analysis. We continually diversify the JCA categories in an effort to acknowledge this.
In many agencies, Planning now often involves teamwork. In the case studies, we want to understand how Account Planners/Strategists led their multi-disciplinary teams and what the contributions of the team members were.
The overall Grand Prix winner will be selected from the main category Gold award winners.
DO NOT
Names of the agency or agency individuals cannot appear in the written case study or at any time on-screen in your creative examples. You can include client/brand names--and should! Please check the naming convention of your files, too. — they cannot include your agency name. All submissions that include the agency name will be disqualified. Also be mindful that the file name doesn't include the name of any other competition. The Jay Chiat Awards are unique and require thought.
Any papers exceeding the proper word count and/or page/slide count will be eliminated in the first round.
QUESTIONS?
Contact awards@4As.org