Abstract
Each year advertising professionals are brought together at the judging of the Advertising Effectiveness Awards (EFFIES) to identify and reward effective advertising campaigns. However, rather than being a homogeneous group, the advertising and marketing community is composed of a number of subgroups, each of which have unique perspectives and concerns that influence their perceptions of what constitutes effective advertising. Observation of nondirective videotaped interviews of judges are used to examine the degree to which these diverse professionals share values and normative behaviors in their judgments and to identify what values they have in common. From these interviews 4 common themes emerged regarding EFFIE judging: 1. the value of a collective body of knowledge and learning, 2. respect for hard work and effort, 3. the importance of fairness and objectivity in the judging process, and 4. a sense of emergent community. Multiple examples of the way each of these themes is expressed and the importance and implications of these shared values are also described.