The 2015 ADDY Awards banquet and ceremony is set for Feb. 21 in the Red River Room at Louisiana Downs. A pre-award gallery begins at 6 p.m. followed by the ceremony at 7 p.m. and The Good News will keep the party going with a performance at 8:30 p.m.

Danielle Richard, president of the American Advertising Federation of Shreveport-Bossier for 2015, is excited about the ceremony this year.

“It’s fascinating to see all the work that is done here locally,” Richard said. “There’s a lot of advertising that gets produced here in Shreveport that people assume is from some sort of big national agency. To be involved and get to see all the entries and help out with selecting judges is really a cool experience to be involved with.”

The ADDY Awards recognize the best in area advertising from last year.

“People can submit entries that have appeared in advertising in 2014. Individuals can enter things, advertising agencies can enter things, and it all is based on where you’re located,” Richard said. “All across the United States there will be people entering ADDY competitions at the local level, just as we are doing here, and if people win a gold ADDY then you are automatically forwarded to the district level, and from there the national level. The local competition is the first step toward getting greater recognition than just what is going on here locally.”

Not only will professionals compete for awards, there will also be a separate student competition.

“Students from Louisiana Tech [University], Centenary [College] and [Louisiana State University Shreveport] can enter student work. That’s the only thing that can be entered that’s not paid client work. All the professional entries have to be real advertising that a client paid for – it can’t be made up,” Richard said. “Student work, on the other hand, is all made up work – it’s all class work or for a portfolio class. It’s really interesting to see what the students are doing now in college – it’s neat to see how things evolve and what their focus is and the work students are putting out.”

Richard said the student competition provides a great opportunity for both aspiring artists and agencies to mingle.

There are hundreds of categories for judging in the ADDY Awards, as advertising can take on so many forms, but Richard said they have pulled four judges from the industry to really take time with the judging this year.

“We judge each piece on a 100 point grading scale, and to determine the winners we won’t necessarily have a first, second and third place in each category because some categories may have no entries and some may have a dozen entries,” she said. “To determine the winners, we throw out the categories and just take the Top 8 percent of all the entries in the professional side and they get a gold and so on from there. You’re really competing against yourself and not necessarily work in the same category. Entering multiple times doesn’t increase your chances of winning, you’re just being judged on the work itself.”

Going into the awards ceremony, the winners know they have placed, and they will know which piece has placed. “They won’t know until the night of the awards ceremony if it’s gotten a gold, silver or bronze,” Richard said. “We also award a best of show every year, and the winner goes on the following year to create the theme for the ADDY banquet, and a lot of the graphics that go along with that. Everything from the invitations to the decorations that you’ll see the night of the awards ceremony will have all been done by the creative team at Gremillion and Pou because they won best of show last year.”

The theme is “Comics and Superheroes,” and though the dress for the ceremony is technically blacktie optional, Richard fully expects some attendees will show up in full costume. “That would be totally normal. It’s a fun group because it’s in a creative industry you can get away with a little more fun. It’s not a stuffy event.”

Tickets for the ADDY Awards are available at www.aafsb.org/addytix and are $90 for professionals and $50 for students.