Competition is fierce and the accolades among the creative industry’s most coveted: the D&AD winners for 2021 have been announced and TBWA\Hunt\Lascaris Johannesburg has once bagged two Pencil awards for the City Lodge Hotel Group.

It’s the second year in a row that the agency has picked up two Wood Pencils for the City Lodge Hotel Group.

The D&AD awards took place virtually once again this year, over two days, on May 26 and 27. Shortlisted entries from 52 countries were judged across in 46 categories, spread over eight disciplines.

In total, 664 Pencils were awarded, including 390 Wood, 190 Graphite, 63 Yellow and three Black – the ultimate creative accolade, reserved for ground-breaking work that is not necessarily awarded each year.

Wood Pencils are bestowed on the best advertising, design, craft and impact work.

Graphite Pencils are awarded for stand-out work, worthy of consideration for a Yellow Pencil, while Yellow Pencils are awarded to outstanding work that achieves true creative excellence.

Since its founding, the Pencil has represented the world’s best in design and advertising and its awarding is the crowning point of a career in the creative sector.

TBWA\Hunt\Lascaris Johannesburg scored a Wood Pencil for its “Marital Bliss” radio campaign for the City Lodge Hotel Group while two other campaigns – “Carmageddon” and “TV Licence” for Datsun South Africa – secured short-listings, which is no easy feat.

TBWA\Hunt\Lascaris Johannesburg has held the City Lodge Hotel Group account for the past 30 years.

Its Pencil-winning campaigns, in the Writing for Advertising and Tactical categories for radio, “Marital Bliss” promotes the City Lodge Hotel Group’s weekend special, as “your home away from work from home”.

“2020 has been tough in a lot of ways,” it says. Some of it has been particularly serious and challenging, but other bits have just really been annoying: “For example, having to sit through hours and hours of virtual meetings all day whilst working from home. Something that the whole world seemed to have in common, as seen in memes from around the globe, was that there was always ‘that guy’ on the call… you know the one”.

Pete Khoury, Chief Creative Officer for TBWA\Hunt\Lascaris, says competition was fierce this year, during a particularly challenging moment in history. “I was one of the judges in the Experiential category: We had 377 entries and awarded about 11 Wood Pencils, five Graphite and three Yellow. And among those, it was really hard to choose the best,” Khoury explains.

City Lodge is a small but brave client of TBWA\Hunt\Lascaris’ and its campaigns are consistently among the best and most compelling, he says: “Marital Bliss was delivered in such a charming, funny way. Covid was so serious – with this we wanted to have a little fun and do something different.”

Khoury says after 30 years, TBWA\Hunt\Lascaris knows the soul of the City Lodge brand and their work for the group always gets a disproportionate amount of attention.

“I would like to congratulate all the teams and clients for the wins as well as the shortlisted work. As mentioned, competition was tough and the fact that we had multiple clients across mixed media categories makes me proud of the depth of creative excellence across our business,” says Karabo Denalane, CEO of TBWA\Hunt\Lascaris.

TBWA\Hunt\Lascaris is this year’s interim Agency of the Year at the Creative Circle. The Creative Circle Overall Rankings are the cumulative results from all the Creative Circle-endorsed global and local award shows throughout 2020, which include D&AD, the upcoming The One Show, Cannes International Festival of Creativity, The Loeries and the Creative Circle Annual Awards.

About: D&AD – previously known as British Design and Art Direction – is an education charity founded in 1962 by a group of accomplished London art directors and designers to promote excellence in design and advertising. The educational organisation celebrates creative communication, offers education programmes, and seeks to raise industry standards internationally.

Each year, the D&AD Awards gather the world’s best creative work from across the commercial design, advertising, production and craft disciplines. More than 400 global creative leaders, practitioners and innovators sit on the judging panel.

Award categories span the full spectrum of creative disciplines, from graphic, to product, book, and magazine and newspaper designs; art direction to writing; editing, illustration, photography, typography and animation; creative coding to UX, e-commerce and gaming; PR and media to social good, and more.

There are special categories for rising stars in the industry and for side projects, ready to scale-up.

D&AD invests all surpluses from the awards into education.