Categories
There are 16 categories in this year’s awards program:
AI STRATEGY: Recognizes strategic thinking that leverages artificial intelligence to inform insights and decision-making. Submissions should demonstrate how AI played a meaningful role in shaping strategy and driving measurable impact.
AUTOMOTIVE STRATEGY: Recognizes strategic thinking that drove impact for automotive brands and related services. Submissions should demonstrate how insights informed brand, product, or customer engagement strategies that influenced perception, consideration, or adoption.
B2B STRATEGY: Recognizes strategic thinking that drove impact for business-to-business brands, including products, services, and solutions. Submissions should demonstrate how insights informed engagement, positioning, or growth among business audiences.
BRAND TRANSFORMATION STRATEGY: Recognizes strategic thinking that repositioned a brand or product in a meaningful and sustained way. Submissions should demonstrate how insights led to a shift in perception, relevance, or business performance.
EXPERIENTIAL STRATEGY: Recognizes extraordinary marketing strategy that fuels compelling brand experiences, whether physical, virtual or hybrid.
FINANCIAL SERVICES STRATEGY: Recognizes strategic thinking that drove impact for financial brands, including banking, insurance, investment, and fintech. Submissions should demonstrate how insights informed customer engagement, trust, or adoption.
FOOD & BEVERAGE STRATEGY: Recognizes strategic thinking that drove impact for food, beverage, and restaurant brands, including CPG, QSR, and spirits. Submissions should demonstrate how insights informed brand positioning, demand, or consumption behavior.
HEALTHCARE STRATEGY (Non-Pharma): Recognizes strategic thinking that drove impact for healthcare services, providers, or non-pharmaceutical brands. Submissions should demonstrate how insights informed engagement and improved access, understanding, or outcomes.
INFLUENCER / CREATOR STRATEGY: Recognizes strategic thinking that leverages creators, influencers, or social communities to drive brand impact. Submissions should demonstrate how partnerships, platforms, and content strategies authentically engaged audiences and influenced behavior.
INTERNATIONAL STRATEGY: Recognizes strategic thinking for work developed and executed primarily outside of the United States. Submissions should demonstrate how local market insights, cultural nuance, and regional dynamics shaped the strategy and drove measurable business or brand impact.
NONPROFIT / SOCIAL CAUSE STRATEGY: Recognizes strategic thinking that drove impact for nonprofit organizations or social causes. Submissions should demonstrate how insights informed awareness, behavior change, or measurable outcomes.
PHARMA STRATEGY: Recognizes strategic thinking that drove impact for pharmaceutical brands, including prescription treatments and therapies. Submissions should demonstrate how insights informed engagement with HCP or consumer audiences and improved outcomes.
PRODUCT / SERVICE LAUNCH STRATEGY: Recognizes the strategic thinking behind introducing new products or services. Submissions should demonstrate how insights informed positioning, go-to-market approach, and adoption.
PUBLIC RELATIONS STRATEGY: Recognizes strategic thinking that leveraged earned media and influence to shape perceptions of a brand, company, or issue. Submissions should demonstrate how insights informed narrative, timing, or amplification and drove measurable impact.
RETAIL / COMMERCE STRATEGY: Recognizes strategic thinking that drove business growth for retail brands and commerce-driven experiences. Submissions should demonstrate how insights informed customer acquisition, conversion, or loyalty across the purchase journey.
TRAVEL, HOSPITALITY & TOURISM STRATEGY: Recognizes strategic thinking that drove impact for travel, hospitality, and destination brands. Submissions should demonstrate how insights informed demand, perception, or visitation.
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, May 8, 2026 (11:59PM EST)
Regular Deadline: $750 Members, $850 Non Members (per entry) for entries completed & paid for by Friday, May 22, 2025 (11:59PM EST)
Late Deadline: $1,000 Members, $1,100 Non Members (per entry) for entries completed & paid for by Friday, June 12, 2025 (11:59PM EST)
Final Deadline: $1,000 Members, $1,100 Non Members (per entry) for entries completed & paid for by Friday, June 19, 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 5, 2025, in NYC.
Eligibility
All campaigns must be in market from January 1, 2025 until December 31, 2025.
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