All the grand Prix winners from CICLOPE Awards 2026. Six Grands Prix were awarded at the craft-focused Berlin festival, with MJZ named production company of the year, Dan Streit taking director of the year and Wieden+Kennedy named agency of the year Editorial Series The latest jury news, winners, conference lineups and industry happenings. MJZ has been named production company of the year at the 2026 CICLOPE Awards, with Dan Streit taking director of the year, Wieden+Kennedy named agency of the year and Coinbase recognised as brand of the year. Selected Works took VFX company of the year, Untold Studios won animation company of the year, Trim Editing was named editing company of the year, Squeak E. Clean Studios took music company of the year and 750mph was recognised as sound company of the year. The winners were revealed at a ceremony in Berlin on Thursday 8th October, bringing the three-day CICLOPE Festival to a close. This year's event took place at Haus der Kulturen der Welt for the first time. Six Grands Prix were also awarded, recognising work for Coinbase, BBC, Nike, Fuck Cancer and On, as well as A$AP Rocky's music video 'HELICOPTER'. Check them out below. Direction. Coinbase - 'Your Way Out' Production. BBC - 'Trails Will Blaze' Post production. Nike - 'Rip The Script' Animation. Fuck Cancer - 'Beat Cancer Off' Sound & music. On - 'Shape of Dreams' Music videos. A$AP Rocky - 'HELICOPTER' The 2026 edition saw record participation, with entries from a wider range of production companies, agencies, brands and freelancers than ever before. This year's awards also introduced a new structure built around three sections - CICLOPE Craft, CICLOPE Ideas and CICLOPE Entertainment - alongside new categories including AI Craft and For Good. "This year's CICLOPE Awards celebrated outstanding work, and the incredible community behind it," said Juan Maria Fernandez, partner and director of awards at CICLOPE. "They also celebrated the awards' growth, with the 2026 categories having evolved to reflect where its industry is today, and this year's Shortlist containing entries from the most diverse range of countries to date. "Despite industry and wider global challenges being faced, the quality of the work this year truly raised the bar for craft. Thank you to everyone on the jury, and especially to our very committed jury presidents. Congratulations to all of our Finalists, because making the Shortlist is an incredible achievement, and of course, many congratulations to this year's winners."

LEGO Group welcomes Brand Manager. by Telum Media 1 October 2026 11:32 PM Brittany Lawrence has been appointed Brand Manager at the LEGO Group. She has finished three years at Galderma as Brand Manager ANZ, Skincare and OTC for brands including Cetaphil and Benzac. Prior to this, Brittany worked agency-side at Archetype and in-house at Procter & Gamble. Telum Media creating connections. Book a demo You might also enjoy. Sophie Onikul has started consulting at Emergent. She was previously Head of Communications, Australia and New Zealand at Airbnb. Prior to this, Sophie held senior communications roles within the e-commerce (eBay), media and government sectors. 1 October 2026 4:11 AM Francesca Di Stefano has been appointed PR Director for ad agency, Wieden+Kennedy Sydney. She most recently held freelance Senior Business Manager role for Eleven after nearly four years at Thinkerbell as Lead Earned Thinker. 1 October 2026 4:03 AM Sydney Water has appointed Vida Cheeseman as Executive General Manager - Customer and Stakeholder Engagement. She was at Endeavour Energy NSW for five years, most recently as Head of Corporate Communications. Prior to this, Vida held in-house roles at NSW Ports, Ausgrid, Virgin Australia and Ventia. 1 October 2026 3:57 AM

The Hogwarts of Advertising isn't here to decorate the world. Inside VIA, the 33-year-old employee-owned shop in an 1888 Portland library that maps the consequence first and engineers its way there. Leeann Leahy, CEO of VIA, has spent 13 years running an agency that lives inside the old Baxter Building on Congress Street in Portland, Maine - a stone library from 1888 that CCO Matt O'Rourke says has been called the Hogwarts of Advertising. "It doesn't disappoint," he adds. Founded in 1993 by a process engineer, VIA built its reputation on untangling the kind of strategic knots that make other shops flinch. That engineering DNA runs through work for Welch's, Klondike, L.L.Bean, Arm & Hammer, Golden Corral and Big Y, and it earned the agency two WARC Awards for lasting effectiveness - two of only three handed out in North America that year, by Leahy's count. Now employee-owned and 33 years in, VIA has sharpened the story. "We're not here to decorate the world," Leahy says. "We're here to move it." How a process engineer's shop ended up in an 1888 library. VIA's founder was a process engineer, and three decades later that origin still shapes how the place thinks. The building helps - a fusion of old and new, art and study, history and future, as Leahy describes it. "It's such an incredible place to get to come every day," she says. That mix of the ancient and the restless is a decent metaphor for an agency that keeps rebuilding itself while sitting inside a 138-year-old landmark. What VIA is known for: untangling the gnarly stuff. For most of its life, VIA has been known as the place that solves incredibly complex problems in clever ways - what Leahy long articulated as helping brands find their way to value creation. True, effective and a little polite. O'Rourke, who joined as chief creative officer in January after stints at Wieden+Kennedy, Crispin, Grey and McCann, heard that reputation before he arrived. "The lore of that place is fantastic," peers told him. "They're like this mythical building full of geniuses way up in the Northeast." What the positioning lacked was teeth. So Leahy and O'Rourke rewrote it: VIA makes ideas with consequences. Three things VIA does differently. First, they start at the end. "You can't start with the data without understanding where your end consequence is," Leahy says, "because if you do, you will follow the data and optimize to mediocrity." Second, they engineer rather than hope. "You're not pushing a button and expecting an idea with consequences," O'Rourke says. "You have to engineer them." Start with the intended outcome and you own your destiny instead of leaving it to fate. Third, they refuse to pick a side between art and science. That combination has been pumping through the agency's veins since the beginning, and it's what turns a consequence map into work people argue about. Independence on steroids. Leahy has worked inside holding companies, through acquisitions and divestitures - she's touched it all. Employee ownership, she says, is "like independence on steroids." The fun part is making your own calls about investments and big swings. The serious part shows up elsewhere. "It's the moments when the decisions are hardest that independence matters the most to me," she says, "because I can make a decision based in my values and what is the right thing to do for the people that I represent." O'Rourke, who has worked for WPP and IPG plus indies like Wieden and pre-sale Crispin, felt the difference immediately. "There's a level of responsibility that comes with being an owner," he says. "It drives deeper thinking and consideration in everybody." Why brands should work with VIA (and when they shouldn't). Leahy is refreshingly clear about the disqualifier. "If they want to do more of the same, we're not the right guys. We're just not." The proof is in the trajectory changes. VIA reminded the world that grape is a fruit and not just a flavor for Welch's. It pulled Klondike back up after competitors knocked it down its own category. It reintroduced L.L.Bean with "Be an Outsider" and shifted how people saw their place in the brand. Golden Corral is posting record year after record year on a strategy built around being different and connected at the same time. Ownership also makes them faster. Everyone at VIA is vibe coding tools, testing AI, building things daily - without an enterprise mandate freezing them into a stack that made sense two months ago. Why talent chooses Portland - and Velocity. O'Rourke sees two streams. Early-career people who are sponges, and senior people who have collected all the scars and lessons and arrived at the moment where they can make incredible things without the baggage. The middle is covered by Velocity, a network Leahy built of freelancers on retainer who get a project fee on top when activated. It kills the ramp-up and getting-to-know-you tax of ordinary freelance relationships and gives VIA deep ties to a fractional workforce around the world. Compensation gets benchmarked across the entire Northeast, not just Portland. And the goal isn't lifetime capture. "If our legacy is people out in the world that are like, that is the place where I really figured out what made me tick," O'Rourke says, "I couldn't think of a better way to be known." A 33-year-old underdog with an appropriate amount of weirdos. Leahy lands on underdogs, but with a caveat. "I don't think VIA is a weirdo, but I do think we have an appropriate amount of weirdos, and we let them be weird." Evidence: she mentioned once that she likes disco balls, and now they're everywhere she turns. O'Rourke frames the underdog thing as deliberate. "We're underdogs by choice," he says, noting VIA sits outside the New York ecosystem while staying close enough to be part of it. Leahy, meanwhile, cannot stop hearing the cartoon theme. "Here it comes to save the day. We're here to barrel in and fundamentally change the trajectory." Dear Sarah Steven: keep pushing. Leahy's shout-out goes to Sarah Steven, the marketing leader at Big Y, the family-owned grocery chain with a fiercely loyal following across Connecticut and Massachusetts. VIA is about to shoot work with them that breaks every rule of traditional grocery advertising. "Sarah is not only along for the ride, she is pushing us," Leahy says, crediting her for backing an ambitious director, an ambitious editing partner and risks that are thoughtful, calculated and engineered rather than cool for the sake of cool. O'Rourke went the other direction and looked backward, to Joyce King Thomas, recently inducted into the One Show Hall of Fame, who gave him his first job in New York. Her advice stuck: if the work is fantastic, the rest of the world falls into place.