The Index
Call for Creative
Free to enter.
Hard to get in.
On the IndexCity Limits, Bandit01 / 13
The Index is open for submissions. We’re recognizing the best creative work in outdoor, sport, and lifestyle, and telling the story of how it came to be through the people who made it. If your team made something that belongs here, send it.
$0
No entry fee, no category fee, no tier.
3 or better
In every one of four lenses. No lens carries another.
90 days
Released within 90 days of submitting. No deadline, a shelf life.
Three fields
Outdoor, sport, and lifestyle. Commissioned, independent, or the brand’s own.
What it costs
Nothing.
There’s no entry fee, no category fee, and no tier you can buy into. The price of entry was paid before you got here: in the talent, the grit, the brief you fought for and the version you threw out. That’s the only currency the Index takes. It also means nobody can buy their way in, which is the point.
What belongs here
Work made in and for outdoor, sport, and lifestyle. If you’re not sure your work fits, read the three fields below. They’re wider than they look, and lifestyle is the one people ask about most.
On the Index: ACG identity, ACG
Outdoor
The work of the places people go and the brands that equip them: mountains, trails, water, and weather.
On the Index: Radical AirFlow, ACG
Sport
Performance and participation, from athletes, teams, and races to the everyday people who train like the result matters.
On the Index: Hyperformance, MAAP
Lifestyle
Where those worlds cross into how people dress, live, and see themselves: the apparel, footwear, and culture that carry the trail and the start line into everything else.
Any form
Form is open. What we’re judging is the work, not the category it was filed under.
Campaign Film Product Identity Experience Editorial
Commissioned, independent, or the brand’s own
Commissioned work made to a brand’s brief, independent work a team made on its own initiative, and work a brand made in-house are all judged by the same Standard. You’ll tell us which it is when you submit; it changes who gets credited, not how it’s scored.
How it’s judged
Every submission goes before the Panel of Judges and is scored against the Standard through four lenses: Idea, Craft, Impact, and Meaning. Each judge scores independently. To enter the Index, work has to score 3 or better in every lens. Strength in one can’t cover weakness in another, so a brilliant idea poorly made doesn’t get in, and neither does perfect craft in service of nothing. Every work’s page shows the panel’s combined score in each lens. No judge’s individual score is ever published. Read the Standard →
Idea
Is there a thought at the centre of it?
Craft
Is it made as well as it could be?
Impact
Did it move anything?
Meaning
Does it stand for something?
The threshold: 3 of 5 in every lens. A strong average doesn’t get work in; a weak lens keeps it out.
When
Work has to be recent, released within the 90 days before you submit. There’s no deadline and no season, so submissions are open year-round, but every piece of work has a shelf life. If it went live this summer, the clock is already running.
What you get
Work that enters the Index gets a page on The Brand Report telling the full story of how it was made, with the people who made it, alongside the panel’s combined scores. The agency, studio, or brand behind it gets a page that gathers its work in the Index, one that’s yours to point clients, candidates, and partners toward. And every credited member of the team gets a page of their own. Credit flows to the makers: the director, the designer, the producer, the photographer, not just the logo.
Send it.
Questions: hello@thebrand.report
The form takes about ten minutes. Sign in with your email, and have the release date, a link to the work, and the full credits list ready.
Submit workFree. Work must meet the Standard.
