The uncomfortable truth about judging your competitors

OK. So here's something I think the industry doesn't talk about enough.

In 1968, psychologist Robert Zajonc coined the “Mere Exposure Effect” — the idea that the more we encounter something, the more we like it. Not because it gets better. Simply because it becomes familiar. Zajonc demonstrated this across languages, images, faces, even nonsense syllables. Familiarity, it turns out, is quietly one of the most powerful forces in human judgement.

Now apply that to an awards room.

If a jury member has seen a campaign a gazillion times — in their feed, in trade press, in industry conversation — they're already predisposed to rate it more favourably. Not through corruption. Not through conscious bias. Just through the ordinary mechanics of the human brain.

That's the first uncomfortable truth. But, of course, it gets more complicated.

Rivalry is the lifeblood of the creative industry. The competition between agencies: to outthink, outcraft and outpitch each other, is what pushes the work forward. It raises the bar. It drives the advancements that make the whole field better. Without it, branding and advertising would stagnate into comfortable mediocrity. And none of us want that now do we?

But that same rivalry creates a very specific kind of worry when it enters the judging room.

Because if someone has been competing against you for clients, for talent, for recognition — can they really be neutral when your work is in front of them? Or does that competitive instinct, however unconsciously, pull the score down? It's the whisper that runs through every agency that has ever entered an awards show: what if our rivals are the ones deciding whether we win?

‘Fess up, we’ve all been there.

The Mere Exposure Effect cuts both ways when competitors are involved. Yes, familiarity might mean you score something higher. But knowing exactly who made that piece of work? That can introduce a completely different kind of pressure.

Are you scoring it down to protect your agency's position? Are you scoring it up to appear magnanimous — to perform objectivity so visibly that you overcorrect? Either way, the work itself isn't driving the decision. Something else is.

Last year, we groaned when we saw who was judging one of the categories we'd entered. Not because we assumed they'd be malicious. But because the dynamic itself (however unintentional) changes the atmosphere in that room.

And that feeling, that moment of “oh well, there’s no hope of that one getting through, then”, is something I suspect a lot of agencies know but nobody says out loud.

So is peer judging fundamentally broken?

Not necessarily. And I wonder if this is the counterargument that often gets overlooked…

If you qualify to judge at D&AD, it's because you are at the top of your field. You are, by definition, someone who has seen almost everything worth seeing. The best work in the world is probably already on your radar. Which means the Mere Exposure Effect isn't just a bias risk — it's arguably baked into the qualification itself. You should know this work. You're the right person to evaluate it precisely because nothing should be surprising you.

There's something clarifying about that framing.

The people in that judging room aren't randomly selected members of the public encountering a campaign for the first time. They're the industry's sharpest eyes. Their familiarity with the landscape isn't a flaw. It's the whole point.

But integrity still requires structure, and it requires the people in that room to actively choose it.

As Jury President this year, I sent our wonderful judges a manifesto, and read it out to them on a call: "Many of us run studios. Many of us compete. Some of us will recognise the work (we should, in fact). But we cannot let ego, rivalry, taste, or reputation distort our judgement. This room is not about who made it, it’s about what it does. Bias is easy. But integrity takes proper fucking effort. Let's make the effort”

This was meant as a call to arms. As a commitment.

Because the alternative — letting rivalry quietly poison the room — is a betrayal of everything these wonderful awards are supposed to stand for. You don't get to benefit from the credibility of D&AD and then selectively apply that credibility when it suits you.

Familiarity doesn't eliminate the conflict, it just contextualises it. The question isn't whether bias exists. It does. The question is whether there are guardrails in place that are robust enough to catch it when it matters.

Declarations of conflict. Recusals. Multi-judge panels that dilute any single perspective. Anonymised submissions where possible. These aren't bureaucratic boxes to tick, they're the architecture that makes trust possible.

And trust is the whole game.

Because awards only mean something if people believe in the process. The moment an industry starts whispering that results are predetermined — that who you know matters more than what you made — the entire ecosystem loses its integrity. D&AD's value rests on one thing above all else: the belief that a Pencil means something real.

And thankfully, with D&AD, it really does.

The industry deserves this conversation to happen in the open.

Not to tear down the process, but to strengthen it. To say: yes, judging your competitors is genuinely difficult. Yes, bias exists and the Mere Exposure Effect is real. And also: the people in that room are professionals who chose to be there, who signed up to hold the work above everything else.

That last part matters most.

The discomfort of judging a rival's work isn't a reason to abandon peer judging. It's a reason to take the responsibility of it seriously.

The best judges aren't the ones who feel nothing when a rival's work is in front of them. They're the ones who feel it, and score it fairly anyway.

That's not a small thing. In fact, it’s actually the whole thing.

Cat How is CEO and Founder of How&How, a brand strategy and identity agency with studios in London and Los Angeles. She is a D&AD Ambassador and was D&AD Jury President of the New Brand Identity category 2026.