Giant-killer stars at Loeries

Cape Town - Giant-killing FoxP2, the small Cape Town-based hot-shop, was named the top agency at the Loerie Awards by the Creative Circle on Saturday.

In the process it beat off the challenge of a phalanx of big agencies with long records of creative achievement.

In second place was TBWA Hunt Lascaris, a notable creative icon making a come-back after a prolonged period in the creative wilderness. Then came Ogilvy Johannesburg and Net#work BBDO.

Each of the top four won a Grand Prix, FoxP2 for the design of its own offices, Hunt Lascaris for its "trillion dollar billboard" campaign for The Zimbabwean newspaper, Net#work for a radio campaign for Virgin Atlantic Airways, and Ogilvy for a mixed-media campaign for Channel O called "young, gifted and black".

Both the trillion dollar billboard and the Virgin Atlantic Airways campaigns won Grands Prix at the Cannes Lions festival earlier this year. Cannes is considered the world's top awards festival.

The ranking of agencies is somewhat controversial. It was based on scaling them Olympic medal table-style, in which entrants are counted down from the most senior award. Thus FoxP2 earned eight Loeries of varying calibre, but was placed ahead of Ogilvy, which had a tally of 13 Loeries. This was because FoxP2 won a Grand Prix and three golds to Ogilvy's GP and only two golds.

Ogilvy won seven silvers to Fox's one.

Another anomaly was that Draftfcb was eighth under the points system but 19th under the "Olympic" system.

The big objection to this system is that an agency that wins a grand Prix and nothing else would beat one that wins five golds, six silvers and eight bronzes - but no grand prix. This is why most prefer a point system, with 600 for a Loerie GP, 350 for gold or gold craft, 100 for silver and 50 for bronze.

The top 10 under the two systems are shown in order:

"Olympic" system

• FoxP2 (GP, 2 gold, 1 gold craft, 1 silver)
• TBWA Hunt Lascaris (GP, 2 gold, 1 silver)
• Ogilvy Jhb (GP, 1 gold, 1 gold craft, 7 silver)
• Net#work BBDO Jhb (GP,2 gold craft, 3 silver)
• Gloo Digital Design (2 gold, 1 gold craft, 2 silver)
• Jupiter Drawing Room (2 gold, 3 silver)
• Ogilvy Cape (2 gold, 1 silver)
• Saatchi & Saatchi Cape (2 gold)
• Wicked Pixels/Gloo (1 gold, 1 gold craft)
• Actuate Marketing (1 gold)

Points system

• Ogilvy Jhb (2 150)
• FoxP2 (1 900)
• Net#work BBDO (1 800)
• TBWA Hunt Lascaris (1 500)
• Gloo (1 450)
• Jupiter Drawing Room (1 350)
• Ogilvy Cape Town (1 250)
• Draftfcb Jhb (850)
• Wicked Pixels/Gloo (750)
• Saatchi & Saatchi CT (700)

The top group was BBDO, comprising Net#work BBDO, Gloo Digital and others. Ogilvy (Johannesburg and Cape Town) was second.

Judges were slightly less generous than in 2008, handing out one less Grands Prix, andthree fewer golds and gold crafts. But the spoils were distributed much more widely. This year 67 agencies received something; last year only 31 left with smiles on their faces.

- Fin24.com