The Amsterdam-based agency says that it uses humour and irony to remind entrants that the show is judged by journalists and not creatives.

The Epica Awards are now open for entries until Friday, 8 October.

Creative team Julio Alvarez and César Garcia, along with managing director Sandeep Chawla, says, "As far as most awards show go, the advertising industry seems to be the only one where we insist on judging ourselves," says César. "We wanted to point out the absurdity of this while also explaining why Epica is different."

Alvarez adds, "One of the things we like about the campaign is that it reflects a reality. As creatives, we do actually use excuses like 'most of the jury was from a rival network'. So we thought we could have fun with that and be a little provocative at the same time."

Production company Be Sweet Films is helping the agency bring the campaign to life with a series of short films on the same theme.

"We don't create work for other creatives," Garcia says. "We want to touch everyone. There's no reason why a different kind of expert shouldn't judge the work."

Sandeep Chawla says that while creatives are paid to 'ideate' creative solutions, journalists who cover the industry are perfectly placed to recognise ground-breaking ideas. "We don't have a monopoly on creativity," adds Chawla.

Alvarez says that they found themselves in the media spotlight when they joined Cloudfactory to help reboot the agency, which was founded in 2012. The creative duo previously worked on global accounts for Adidas football at TBWA\Neboko and Philips global at Ogilvy Social.Lab.

"One of the things that attracted us to Cloudfactory was the ability to work with clients in a more straightforward and collaborative way. We've both worked on global accounts and the results have been good, but we believe we could have achieved even more if the approach to making work was less complex," says Garcia.

Julio adds, "We consider ourselves activists because we want to help reset the industry as well as the agency."

"Clients are responding," says Sandeep. "They can feel the difference. Usually, a pitch is about feverishly working late nights and weekends. For our last pitch, we didn't do any of that and the pitch meeting wasn't tense; it was a relaxed conversation."

"We in the agency world are guilty of contributing to this self-fulfilling myth by often, perhaps unconsciously, labelling creativity as 'risky' and calling clients who embrace the most creative idea 'brave'. Creativity should simply be recognised for what it is: the core offering of our business. As a powerful weapon for business, not a risk. We need to actively change mindsets, our very language, the way we communicate," concludes Garcia.

For more information, visit www.epica-awards.com or contact [email protected]. You can also follow the Epica Awards on Facebook, Twitter or on Instagram.