The Rockies Award Show highlights the best creative advertising work completed during the previous year. It is the largest creative ad show in the State of Idaho and is an official event of the Idaho Advertising Federation. Any individual, student, agency, and/or business with a clever tagline or well-executed advertisement may enter the competition.
Visit the Rockies Award Show Page for more details.
Your 2023-2024 Rockies Judges
Fletcher Whitwell
Partner and Chief Media & Publishing Officer,
R&R Partners
Fletcher has a unique ability of blending art and science into all of his work for the clients of R&R Partners. In addition to serving as one of the agency’s partners, he is also the chief architect of diversely talented teams in media and publishing that extend across the agency’s office footprint, overseeing channel strategy, media strategy, media activation, and media reporting insights for our clients.
Under his leadership, R&R has created a cross-trained team and client-friendly tech stack, including specialists across traditional, DSP, broadcast, OOH, search, social and analytics. He and the team have secured preferred status and “first-evers” for clients with the leading media partners: Google and Meta preferred agency partner; Twitter best practice beta partner; Instagram video beta partner; Pandora audio ads beta partner; and The Trade Desk custom attribution partner, just to name a few.
In his 17 years at R&R Partners, Fletcher oversees the integrated media strategy for clients, including Discover Puerto Rico, the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority, Boeing, Destination by Hyatt, Air, Xanterra Travel Collection, Las Vegas Raiders, and others. Most recently, Adweek just recognized the R&R team for securing the Brand USA media account from a 10-year incumbent. His team’s accomplished work has earned R&R and our clients the most prestigious national media awards: Mediaweek Plan of the Year; Travel Weekly’s Magellan Awards; OMMA Integrated Online Awards; Adweek Buzz; and MediaPost Creative Media. Fletcher has the privilege of serving as a speaker, contributor, and judge for industry events including Digiday, National Association of Broadcasters, OAAA OOH Media Plan Awards, Cynopsis Top Women in Media, PR News, Leadership Las Vegas, and many others.
Before joining R&R, Fletcher served as media director at Starcom in Chicago, earning his stripes as a top media professional. A native of Mississippi, he graduated from Ole Miss and was later inducted into the alumni hall of fame. An accomplished tennis player, he is committed “off the court” to giving back to the R&R Foundation as the governing board chair and founding member/mentor of R&R’s Flip the Script anti-bullying and Academy of Finance diversity internship initiatives. Fletcher was awarded Vegas Inc.’s top 40 under 40 and also represents R&R Partners as chair emeritus of the board for Worldwide Partners Inc., the leading independent global agency network.
Branson Veal
Creative Director at Now Comms Asia, Singapore
“First there was that skateboarding film I made and showed at the talent show in the 7th grade that got me kicked out of school”.
Branson Veal was raised by a hippy couple that lived above an art house movie theatre in Portland, Oregon. By the age of 9 he was working as the Projectionist’s Assistant at the theatre below. He started making movies on super 8mm film, increasing millimeters as the years went by.
He first broke into the advertising industry as an intern that was given the chance to create a public service campaign for the Portland Opera. The campaign went on to win an ANDY, The Art Directors Club One Show, A National ADDY and was honoured in the Communication Arts Advertising Annual. In his first year directing he was selected in the Best New Directors Showcase at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity. His "Columbia 300" bowling ball commercial is on permanent display in The Museum of Modern Art in NYC.
As a Creative Director, he founded the award winning creative agency UNCLEBOB in Seattle, serving as its Founder & Executive Creative Director. During his career, he's won just about every major award in the advertising industry, including Cannes, ANDYs, The One Show, CA Ad Annual and Design Annual, and Clios. Branson joined MOD Pizza in 2017 as its Executive Creative Director. He led all creative for the company including experiential, graphic design, store design, film & video, marketing design & concepts, swag & special projects
Branson now resides in Singapore and is the Creative Director at Now Comms Asia, An advertising, event and integrated agency.
Clients include Standard Chartered Bank, Thales, Microsoft, Amazon, Nissan, HP, ESPN, Toyota, Nike, Coca Cola, BGC3, Gatorade, Hyundai, Budweiser, and Rocco's Bail Bonds. He prefers boxers over tighty-whiteys.
7th grade skateboarding film, shown on request.
Sho Ito
Associate Creative Director at TGD
Sho is an agency veteran with 13 years of experience in advertising and a penchant for integrated campaigns and branded content. His past work spans TV, web, social media, and product packaging. He’s currently Associate Creative Director at TGD, a Seattle-based agency that’s building on its strong history of design production to offer full-service creative partnership.
He was born in Japan, but he’s been shaped by his time in the PNW. He knows where to get the best coffee (and brew some himself). He can find his way around a ferry. He goes to every Timbers game he can. And after spending almost six years at POSSIBLE (now VML), he internalized the agency’s guiding principle of “Does it work?” Ideas aren’t precious, and if something doesn’t work, he isn’t afraid to let it go and move on to something else.
His approach is to seek out the unexpected and never take himself too seriously. For example, he thinks he’s won a bunch of Addys but he’s not sure how many. Because for him, the joy is in the work itself and the process of bringing it to life. As he says, “If you’re not having fun, there’s no point.”