James Miller, Head of International Planning, AMV BBDO and President of the 2010 Romanian Effie Awards Jury will hold the seminar "The future of Effective Communications" just one day before we find out the winners. Anyone who paid for a Gala invitation can attend the seminar for free. Confirmations for the seminar can be made the moment you get the invitations.

The Awarding Gala for the 7th edition of the Romanian Effie Awards will take place on Thursday, June 10th, starting 7 pm at Opera Romana (70 - 72, Bd Mihail Koglaniceanu). The Gala will be hosted by IAA Romania (International Advertising Association) and UAPR (Uniunea Agentiilor de Publicitate din Romania), Romanian Effie Awards organizers.

Just after the Awarding Gala, we will celebrate along with the winners during the After Party powered by URSUS, in Tribute Club (118, Calea Victoriei), starting 22:00.

You can get invitations for the Effie Awarding Gala from the IAA House (126, Calea Victoriei, 3rd floor, Bcharest 1) - phone: 0311 050 991 / 0311 052 414). Cost for one person is 300 Lei + VAT for IAA members and 400 lei + TVA for non-members. This year, you can get 10 invitations and only pay for 8. There is no fee for the After Party participation.

Entries will be mailed to the organizing agency, Millenium Communications, on the following address: 21, Gheorghe Lazar Street, A building, 1st floor, Bucharest 1, and the payment is made via International Advertising Association (IAA) Romania (contact person: Ana-Maria Triscau - 0731.031.151).

You'll get 10% off the total amount if you submit at least 5 cases.

The Effie Awards Jury is made up of more than 80 professionals in the marketing and communication industry. You can see the full Jury list here. The 2010 judging sessions will take place on June 7th and 8th and the awards will be announced June 10th, during the Effie Awarding Gala ceremony.

Reminder: you can submit cases with no media budget in the Non-Profit/Pro-Bono, Public Service Campaigns Category for free. Any agency that submits at least 5 cases will benefit from a 10% discount of the total amount.

James has been a planner for over 15 years. He spent his first five years in planning at BBDO Toronto where he worked on such brands as Molson, Jeep, and FedEx, than left Canada for the UK in 2001. He's been at AMV BBDO ever since and worked on most of the agency's biggest and most creative accounts including BT, FedEx, The Economist, Starbucks, J&J and Mars. He was promoted to Head of International Planning at AMV BBDO in 2008. In this capacity he oversees planning on AMV BBDO's larger international clients. In addition, James is the Worldwide Planning Director for Mars at BBDO. He is responsible for the planning on 7 global brands including Snickers, Mars, M&Ms and Cesar across BBDO's 2nd largest global client. He has won 2 IPA Effectiveness awards including a Special Prize for Best Idea, two Cassies (Canadian Advertising Effectiveness Awards) as well as Euro Effie and Marketing Society awards.

The Effie Awards Jury is made up of more than 80 professionals in the marketing and communication industry. You can find the complete jury list here.

The 2010 judging sessions will take place on June 7th and 8th and the awards will be announced on June 10th during the Effie Awarding Gala ceremony.

You can read more about the Effie Awards judging here.

According to the feedback received from the market and as a learning from the 'How to win an Effie' seminar, the deadline for submitting presentation movies for the Effie 2010 entries will be May 26th.

One of the news for the 2010 Effie Awards is the fact that all submitted entries should provide a short presentation movie (maximum 1 minute in length). The movie should briefly present the campaign and must provide public data approved by the client (market challenge and results included). The campaign presentation movies will only be used during the Awarding Gala in order to illustrate all Gold winning campaigns; the movies will not be used during the judging process.

Presentation movies are mandatory. Entries will be approved only after the presentation movie has been submitted. All movies should be mailed to the organizers on a CD/DVD (converted into .avi format), on the following address: 21, Gheorghe Lazar Street, A building, 1st floor, Bucharest 1, attn Andreea Dragut, until the final deadline for submissions (May 26th 2010).

The first stage for submissions will end on Friday, 9th of April 2010. Entries will be mailed to the organizing agency, Millenium Communications, on the following address: 21, Gheorghe Lazar Street, A building, 1st floor, Bucharest 1, and the payment is made via International Advertising Association (IAA) Romania (contact person: Ana-Maria Triscau - 0731.031.151).

IAA & UAPR will organize the "How to win an Effie" Seminar on Friday, March 19th , starting 10:00 a.m. at IAA House (Calea Victoriei 126, 3rd floor).The seminar will address topics like: past editions' winning campaigns, judging procedures and will offer some useful tips & tricks for filling in a brief. At the end of the seminar, the members of the organizing committee will answer any questions regarding this year's competition (concerning the news, rules and structure of the awards).

The seminar will be hosted by the Effie 2010 Organizing Committee and will have three guest speakers: Dan Sendroiu - Strategic Planner, Graffiti BBDO, Dan Petre - Managing Partner, D&D Research Simina Leotescu - Head of Strategic Planning, Propaganda.

They will share their experience in writing successful Effie cases. Any person interested in the Effie Awards 2010 competition can attend the seminar free of charge.

Entries for the 7th edition of the Romanian Effie Awards, organized by The International Advertising Association (IAA) and Uniunea Agentiilor de Publicitate din Romania (UAPR) will start on Wednesday, March 24th.

The Call For Entries for the 2010 competition will end on May 26th. There are 3 stages to enter the competition:

• 1st deadline - 9th of  April 2010
• 2nd deadline - 30th of April 2010
• Final deadline - 26th of May 2010

Any campaigns that have run between 1st of January 2009 – 31st of December 2009 ("Brief of Effectiveness") or between 1st of January 2007 – 31st of December 2009 ("Sustained Success Brief") can be submitted by advertising agencies, companies, freelancers, market research agencies. No entries that have been submitted in previous editions of the awards are eligible.

Entries will be mailed to the organizing agency, Millenium Communications, on the following address: 21, Gheorghe Lazar Street, A building, 1st floor, Bucharest 1, and the payment will be made via International Advertising Association (IAA) Romania (contact person: Ana-Maria Triscau - 0731.031.151).

You can find all the necessary documents and  more details regarding the news of this Effie Awards edition, the structure of the awards in the competition section of the website.

The judging process will take place on the 7th and 8th of June and the Awarding Gala will be held on the 10th of June 2010.

On Tuesday, the 9th of March 2010, was launched the competition for creating the communication campaign of the festival.

Effie 2010 Key Visual Competition is open to all Romanian creatives, students, freelancers and all professionals in the communication field.

All proposals should be submitted by e-mail at andreea.dragut[at]millcomm.ro untill 31st of March 2010. They will be evaluated by The Effie 2010 Organizing Committee. The winner will be announced at the beginning of April 2010 and will be rewarded with 4.000 Lei.

Effie Awards 2010 organizing committee is made up by: Narcis Horhoianu - Marketing Director P&G Balkans - President of the Effie 2010 Organizing Committee, Oana Cociasu - Managing Director, Lowe&Partners, Sorin Blaga - Group Director Marketing and Communication, Rompetrol, Andy Lita - Business Unit Director, Ogilvy&Mather, Sorin Psatta - Integrated Communication Director, Graffiti BBDO Romania, Radu Florescu - CEO, Saatchi&Saatchi, Elena Serban- Marketing Manager, Alexandrion, Sagit Tzur Lahav - Chief Operating Officer, McCann-Erickson, Victor Dobre - Executive Director IAA Romania.