Effie Canada Announces 2 New Co-chairs

Effie Canada, which recognises the best in marketing effectiveness, has appointed two co-chairs for its 2024 and 2025 program of activity. 

Kate Torrance, VP, head of brand, content and communications, SickKids Foundation and Adam Reeves, chief creative officer, TBWA\Group Canada take on the roles leading the Effie Canada Steering Committee.  

The co-chairs will oversee both the judging of the Effie Awards Canada, and the resulting program that amplifies the impact made by the winning work across the industry. 

Kate is a long-standing client champion of marketing effectiveness and Reeves' co-chair role is a statement of the importance that creative is represented on the Steering Committee, based on the belief that Effies should only be awarded to work that has a clear focus on exceptional creative ideas. 

Since Kate joined SickKids Foundation in 2015 it has built an established record of advertising effectiveness, winning an Effie Canada Gold award in 2021, and a Silver in 2023. Responsible for ensuring SickKids remains the number one charity brand in Canada, she is an integral part of the team that launched the globally recognised and award-winning VS brand platform for SickKids. 

Adam joined TBWA\Group in January to lead creativity across both Juniper Park\TBWA and DDB Canada. He previously worked in the US at R/GA and Goodby Silverstein & Partners, and his work has been recognised at Cannes Lions, Effie, and Webby awards.

The duo take on the roles from Ali Leung and Dustin Rideout, who focused in their two years as co-chairs at Effie Canada on the successful evolution of the awards to showcase new voices and helping Canada's marketing community to engage and learn from the winning Effie campaigns.  

Kate Torrance said, "The creative and marketing talent here is broad and deep, and Canada is such a diverse and unique marketplace. The Effies give us a platform to both recognise and share that work – so that marketers and agencies alike get better." 

She added, "I hope to build on the great work of our former co-chairs in elevating the profile of the Effies to encourage the development and submissions of ‘work that works’ with the ultimate goal of putting Canada on the map globally as a creative effectiveness leader." 

Adam Reeves said, "The Effie Awards is an international metric that helps us track our work for our clients and against the rest of the work in the world. When we show creativity impacts the bottom line, it's a win-win." 

Kate and Adam join four other members of the Effie Awards Canada Steering Committee and Operations Team. These are: Scott Knox, president and CEO at the Institute of Canadian Agencies (ICA); Brent Nelson, global CSO, Edelman; Leah Power, EVP at the ICA; and Madison Papple, senior director at the ICA. 

The appointments coincide with the Effie Canada 2024 Call for Entries, which closes on April 3rd. Campaigns that ran in the period September 2022 to December 2023 are eligible. 

Effie Awards Canada 2024 features two new categories - Commerce & Shopper: Retail Media, and Digital: Artificial Intelligence (AI). The judging process will commence under the leadership of the co-chairs, and the results are expected to be announced in September with a full support program to follow. 

The competition culminates in the Grand Effie award announced at the Canadian Marketing Effectiveness Summit on October 24th.