AdReview Awards honour creative leadership in South Africa

Independent media agency, Carat, took home Media Agency of the Year Award for the second time and, with its sister brands Isobar and Vizeum, won the overall Grand Prix Roger Garlick award for the Best Use of Mixed Media for Cell C's Photocode campaign in demonstrating the instant value to consumers of the new technology. Using innovative competition drives across various broadcast, online, out of home and print media platforms, it had a positive response from over 250 000 consumers.

In addition, with a strong input from Isobar, it won AMASA's Roger Garlick Gold Award for Best Use of New Media for the "Unite Mzanzi' digital mobile campaign for adidas where close on 300 000 consumers interacted with the sports brand over a 6-month period.

Vizeum won Small Media Agency of the Year 2011 and Isobar was awarded the title of Digital Media Agency of the Year 2011.

"Recognition like this has a positive effect on the whole Aegis Media stable and gives the entire team the drive, ambition and determination to pioneer and dominate the digital and media landscape in Africa. I am proud that we have won these accolades and commend the team on their outstanding work," said Dawn Rowlands, CEO, Aegis Media.

Rebranding wins award

Reichelt, who joined Cell C in 2009, has been widely credited with transforming not only the previously troubled mobile operator's business, but the industry as a whole. Working together with lead agency Ogilvy Johannesburg, he and his team embarked on what turned out to be one of the most talked about campaigns of 2010. The 'Tell Trevor' re-branding campaign has been described as brave and impactful, and often as controversial. Most importantly however, it worked. Only one month after the brand's re-launch, Cell C was voted the 2010 Mobile Broadband Supplier of the Year.

The judging panel said that Reichelt truly shook up the industry in which he operates. He was described both as outrageous and canny, but above all, effective.

Winners

Creative Circle introduces new consolidated report of agency rankings

The Creative Circle will now publish a consolidated report of agency rankings, using objective third party reports, that do not weight one award show over another. This has been done by using a simple 'flattened' system that allocates points to agencies based on where they have been placed in each award's show ranking. For example the highest ranked agency at Cannes has received the same points as the highest ranked agency at The Loerie Awards.

In explaining this move, Brett Morris, chairman of the Creative Circle, stated that in 2009, it abandoned the points ranking system, in favour of an Olympic table, as it was felt that undue focus was being placed on calculating and allocating awards points and weighting the various award shows against each other according to their 'relative value'.

Then, for the first time, Cannes Lions published a comprehensive report in 2009 ranking the top performers in their competition including agencies, creatives, brands and production companies among others. The Loerie Awards also published a ranking system in 2010 and other international award shows have followed suit in 2011.

The reason that award shows are moving towards publishing this type of report is to offer a transparent mechanism to review the outcome of the awards and to avoid different and often confusing claims by the winners.

New system

Under the new system, points are awarded for the top 10 places at each award show, based on the Formula One motor racing system, with 25 points awarded for 1st place, down to 1 point for 10th place. This then gives an overall ranking of the top 10 individual agencies and the top 10 agency groups, as well as large, medium and small agencies for each Creative Circle endorsed award.

Results

Creative Circle Awards - March 2011 Results.

2010 Group Agency Ranking - Top 10

2010 Individual Agency Ranking - Top 10

2010 Large/Medium/Small Agency Ranking - Top 5

For more information go to www.creativecircle.co.za/