Most creative competitions select their jury presidents from among the world’s best-known creative directors. Epica Awards has been playing by somewhat different rules for years.
The competition, whose entries are judged by journalists and editors specialising in marketing, communications and the creative industries, has appointed Domenico Loperfido as Jury President for 2026. His career spans several different worlds.
Today, he serves as Chief Growth Officer of DUDE, an independent agency group with offices in Milan and London. At the same time, he leads DUDE Design, a company focused on brand development and visual identity creation. In recent years, his name has become familiar beyond agency circles thanks to In Case You Missed It, a newsletter covering some of the most interesting work, ideas and trends across the creative industry.
It is precisely this combination of experiences that makes his appointment stand out.
Before joining the agency world, Loperfido worked at Vodafone. Alongside his corporate career, he began writing for Italian publication Ninja Marketing, a media outlet he had followed for years as a reader. Writing about advertising soon became more than a hobby: “Writing about advertising has been crucial to my career,” says Loperfido.
It was through journalism that he met Lorenzo Del Bianco, one of the founders of DUDE. Shortly afterwards, he decided to leave the corporate environment and join what was then a small team still building its position in the market.
“What struck me immediately was the concentration of talent. I’d never seen anything like it before,” he recalls.
Within the company, he worked across business development, operations and public relations, building relationships with journalists first in Italy and later internationally. That experience became the foundation of his current role focused on business growth.
In recent years, DUDE has expanded beyond the traditional agency model. One example is DUDE Things, a company that provides startups with branding expertise through a Work For Equity model, exchanging traditional agency fees for ownership stakes.
At the same time, In Case You Missed It was born. Loperfido launched the newsletter three years ago with the idea of bringing together the most interesting work from advertising, design and marketing in a single weekly digest: “To be honest, I was my own audience,” he explains.
Published in English from the start in order to reach an international readership, the newsletter has since become a platform for conversations with some of the creative industry’s most recognised figures.
In his new role as President of the Epica Awards jury, Loperfido is particularly drawn to the fact that the competition is judged by journalists. As he notes, this gives the awards a different perspective compared to most other industry competitions.
Speaking about the state of creativity in Italy, Loperfido is not overly sentimental. He believes the country is currently not going through its strongest creative period. In his view, regaining greater international relevance will require more investment in talent, greater exposure to global standards and a stronger willingness to take creative risks.
As President of one of the world’s best-known international creative competitions, he will soon have a front-row seat to the ideas that are pushing the industry forward and setting new benchmarks for creative excellence.
