Boys and Girls agency took top honours at last night's National Newspapers of Ireland awards for Press Ad of the Year while the work of the other winners demonstrates the huge range of creativity at play
NEWSPAPERS ARE still the ideal medium for offering "advertising with an intelligent smile", Ireland's top advertising executives were told last night, at the second annual National Newspapers of Ireland (NNI) Press Ad of the Year. A campaign for the Slimsticks weight loss products was given the overall prize on the night.
NNI chairman Matt Dempsey said the winning advertisements were a "perfect example of what can be achieved through the press medium: ads that are intellectually engaging and aesthetically appealing; advertising with an intelligent smile".
The awards ceremony, which is now in its second year, was the culmination of a process which first began in January 2011 when the NNI launched the Press Ad of the Month 2011 to showcase and celebrate the best ads which appeared in newspapers each month.
The competition was open to agencies, media shops and direct advertisers. Each month a winning ad was selected by a judging team consisting of a senior ad agency creative and a senior media specialist, with creativity being the main deciding factor. All the monthly winners were then put forward for the NNI Press Ad of the Year 2011, with the awards taking place in Dublin's Four Seasons Hotel.
The overall winner on the evening was the campaign for Slimsticks weight loss products entitled Kill Your Cravings. The winning ads were created by the Boys and Girls agency, in association with media partner Mediavest, and were described by the judge, Neil Dawson, as "genuinely insightful, a really fun way of addressing the issue".
Dawson, an executive creative director of BETC (London), is one of the most experienced creatives in the industry. Before he launched BETC London, he was worldwide chief creative officer on the Philips account at DDB, where he won back-to-back Cannes Grand Prix for Carouseland Parallel Lines.He found assessing the entries for the awards a rewarding experience.
"It was a very interesting competition to judge and a lot of the work was really bright and unexpected," he said. "Some of it even made me laugh out loud, which doesn't happen all that often."
In the Best Copywriting category, Ogilvy & Mather's Family Homead for TV3 caught the eye of self-confessed history buff Dawson. It tells the remarkable story of a house on Henrietta Street in Dublin, which in 1911 was home to 19 poverty-stricken families and no fewer than 104 people.
"I thought this ad was really well written with some quite extraordinary facts about Dublin in the old days," Dawson said. "I love the construct of the ad, the way the numbers go out and then come back and tie the thing up. Very emotively written, it's an ad that's really worth reading. Very poetic."
Publicis QMP was once more the winner in the Best Art Direction category, repeating its performance last year in receiving the gong for an eye-catching series of ads on behalf of TG4 entitled Scéalta Átha Cliath.
The campaign features teaser-style images associated with some of Dublin's most iconic characters including Molly Malone, Ivan Beshoff and Bang Bang Dudley with the tagline Cad é an scéal?
"These ads are great to look at," Dawson said of the campaign. "They give a real taster for three different stories and an aspect of Dublin that not many people know about. They're well done, have lots of nice typography to suit each one, with a nice campaign feel."
The Road Safety Authority's campaign highlighting the danger of driving under the influence of cannabis won in the Best Local and Regional ad category. Produced by Irish International, the ad, simply entitled Cannabis, was described by Dawson as "a simple but alarming visual that graphically demonstrates how drugs can impair your ability to drive".
In addition to the main category winners, Dawson also awarded a distinction of highly commended to 13 finalists, which included Owens DBB's Clarksoncampaign for car manufacturer Skoda, Young Euro RSCG Doing our Bitcampaign by drinks company Bulmers, and Javelin's Just one Appealcampaign for Unicef. As a creative competition, creativity (concept, copy, art direction) were the main deciding factors, but other factors, such as effectiveness and media strategy were also considered.
On the evening, the audience of advertisers was reminded that newspapers were a powerful, distinctive medium with a range of unique strengths, and NNI chairman Matt Dempsey referred to the special place that newspapers still held in the lives of Irish people.
