Agency of the Year goes to Net#work BBDO

Net#work was voted the best agency of the year because its achievements, relative to its size, were considered superior to its competitors.

“On a per-head basis, Net#work turned in better scores for creative awards, growth and new business,” says AdReview editor Tony Koenderman. “Measured by Creative Circle points, it was the top individual agency. It has also been the cutting edge in the repositioning of the BBDO group, which now comprises BBDO Cape Town, Proximity#ttp and Gloo.”

Koenderman said many agencies had legitimate expectations of winning, but in a boom year for advertising last year, almost everybody did well. This resulted in some very close contests, particularly among design shops, Cape agencies, Gauteng agencies, digital agencies and overall winner.

The Roger Garlick Awards for innovation in media planning were also presented at the AdReview ceremony.

The full list of winners:

• Ad Agency of the Year: Net#work BBDO
  
• Diversified National Group of the Year: Ogilvy South Africa
  
• Gauteng Agency of the Year: Net#work BBDO
  
• The Big Idea: Coca-Cola “Brrrr!” (Ogilvy Johannesburg)
  
• Advertising Person of the Year: Andrew Human, MD of The Loerie Awards
  
• Newcomer Agency of the Year: MetropolitanRepublic
  
• Cape Agency: Lowe Bull
  
• Small Agency of the Year: FoxP2
  
• Commercials Director of the Year: Greg Gray of Velocity Films
  
• Design Agency: Grid
  
• Digital Agency: Gloo
  
• Marketing Services Company: Brand Leadership
  
• Media Agency: Nota Bene
  
• The Baobab Award: Ogilvy South Africa
  
• Editor's Longterm Achievement Award: Ann Nurock
  
• Public Relations Consultancy: Magna Carta
  
• Campaign of the Year: MTN “Go” campaign, devised jointly by The Jupiter Drawing Room and MetropolitanRepublic

Commenting on his award, Human paid tribute to the Loeries board and working committee. "While it is indeed a great honour to receive this award, it is testimony to the hard work and commitment that has been put in by the committee and all the people behind the scenes, in making sure that the awards grow in stature and clout every year," he said.

Roger Garlick Awards

The Roger Garlick Awards were incorporated into the AdReview Awards function. The main accolade, the Roger Garlick Award plus R25 000, was presented to Ogilvy's Carree Ferrari for the Cliff Jennings stunt, on behalf of M-Net's Idols programme.

Other winners of Gold Awards were:

• Multiple/Mixed Media - Amaleya Goneos, media strategist at Starcom for Proctor & Gamble's Olay Total Effects campaign,
  
• Best use of Television - Graeme Taylor-Warne, executive creative director at Zoom Advertising for his Pep Corporate Branding campaign,
  
• Best use of Magazines - Claire Herman, business director at Mindshare for her KFC Twister
• campaign, Multiple/Mixed Media - Tracey-Anne Cobey, media planner at Mindshare for her M-Net Ugly Betty campaign.

"I am delighted that Starcom's strategic abilities were recognised by this year's Roger Garlick Award judges. I was proud to have two of our entries emerging as finalists, but being honoured with a prestigious AMASA Gold Award is even more special. As a media independent we are not always able to compete in these awards due to confidentiality which makes this success even sweeter," said Gordon Patterson, MD of Starcom.

Living the dream

As SA Idols was recently due to air for a fourth season an awareness campaign driven by Ogilvy Johannesburg needed to excite viewers with a promise that the reality show would not be more of the same, but new and innovative.

To create the hype and excitement around Idols 4, Ogilvy Johannesburg created a fictitious character who was essentially a useless singer, an equally pathetic songwriter but proved wildly entertaining to viewers. They created Cliff Jennings. As expected, he never made the cut - the unsuspecting judges hated and eliminated him in province after province. But Cliff was briefed to never give up and so attended every new audition in each given venue.

His ever faithful friend and companion Benji filmed two-minute snippets of Cliff's adventures and rejections in the auditions. Ogilvy Johannesburg also created pages on key social networking sites Facebook, My Space and YouTube - the documentary of Cliff's journey was posted to these sites. In addition, CDs and business cards handed out at every audition, directed people to Cliff's online pages and created his close to cult-celebrity status.

The judges decided Ogilvy used Jennings most effectively to create hype around Idols 4 and the campaign production costs were negligible. The results were enormous - Idol's ratings soared and more people voted on Idols 4 than in South Africa's first democratic elections.

Just in the printed press, total publicity value reached R1.8 million. Cliff boasted over 7000 friends on Facebook, 9000 hits on My Space and over 14 000 views on YouTube.

The awards ceremony is associated with the publication of Tony Koenderman's AdReview, an annual publication distributed with Finweek, a leading weekly business magazine.