Mike Garner
2017 Advertising Chairperson
Mike Garner is a founding partner and Creative Director of Chemistry, one of Ireland’s leading creative agencies and will chair one of the two principal advertising juries in 2017.
One of the most highly awarded creatives in Ireland, Mike has won a vast array of national and international awards, for work in both traditional and new media, as well as in more specialist disciplines such as direct response and direct mail. These awards include ICAD, the One Show, Cannes, D&AD and The Echo Awards.
Unusually, perhaps, for someone with such a strong creative reputation, Mike also has proven strategic planning skills, for which he has won a number of IAPI ADFX Advertising Effectiveness awards.
With a strong grasp of the relative strengths and weaknesses of all 21st century media channels, Mike is a keen champion of a highly integrated approach to communications, always placing the consumer at the centre of all activity, and thus avoiding the traditional, siloed approach to creativity.
Given this unusual combination of skills, Mike enjoys working on projects where he can provide the link between initial research, insight and strategy, right through to concept and final execution, in all media channels.
Mike is a past president of the Institute of Creative Advertising and Design, Ireland’s premier creative awards, where he led a radical overhaul of the awards process, and the benchmarking of these awards to international standards.
He is regularly asked to judge both national and international creative awards.
Interested in all forms of creativity Mike regularly gives talks and writes articles about the subject. His most recent article ‘Here Be Dragons – Towards a New Definition of creativity’ won a prestigious Atticus award in 2016, and has been selected for inclusion in Atticus and WARC.
