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Cape Town - Much-admired but inconsistent Cape Town agency KingJames has emerged as the top agency of 2010 at the Loerie Awards, held for the second consecutive year in the Mother City.
Its achievement was based on a relatively small number of entries of exceptional quality. It won a Grand Prix for the Allan Gray “legend” commercial, which speculates about what the world would be like if iconic actor James Dean had not died in a car crash when he was 22. Three Golds came for campaigns for the same client in magazines and mixed-media , and the agency also shared in a Gold for a mixed-media campaign for kulula.com earned in TV.
KingJames, named after its founders, Alistair King and James Barty, was placed 25th at last year’s Loeries, South Africa’s premier awards for creative advertising. Though KingJames has offices in both Cape Town and Johannesburg, it has consolidated its creative studios in one city, Cape Town. These results suggest the move has been a great success.
There were a number of minor surprises in the ranking. Ogilvy Johannesburg fell from second last year to fifth.
Draftfcb had a good year to come in fourth. Winning overall requires a good balance of wins on the two nights – print advertising and communication design on Saturday, TV, digital and integrated campaign advertising on Sunday – and the top three all had this.
Net#work BBDO, came in a strong runner-up, with its showing underpinned by a good showing in the TV and cinema category, where it won two golds and several other awards for Virgin Atlantic Airways, Chicken Licken and Nedbank.
Design shop Grid Worldwide Branding earned all its points in its specialist categories on Saturday, but this was good enough to keep it in seventh spot overall.
The biggest shock, however, was seeing Cape Town creative leader FoxP2 slipping from third last year to 10th, thanks to a mediocre performance in the Sunday categories, dominated by electronic and digital advertising.
TBWA Hunt Lascaris came off its best-year ever (2009) to hold eighth position. The agency swept all before it last year with its “Trillion dollar billboard”, which became the most-awarded campaign in the world – ever. Campaigns like that don’t come along every day, but Hunt Lascaris did pretty well nevertheless.
VWV, out of the winners’ tables for some years, made a comeback with the staging of the World Cup closing ceremony, for which it won a Grand Prix.
Joe Public is beginning to make regular visits to the winner’s podiums, and its eighth position put it ahead of several previous creative champions.
McCann Erickson showed signs of life to capture 13th position, but Jupiter Johannesburg had a bad year which it will be the task of new creative director Brad Reilly to reverse.
Y&R’s indications of creative renaissance early this year were not reflected in the Loeries, with the agency finishing a disappointing 19th.
New names in the winner’s circle were Hello World, A Word of Art, Mesh, Cow South Africa, Wirefire, Conduit and Studio Zoo.
The top 20 agencies, based on the new Loeries point system, were:
1. KingJames
2. Net#work BBDO Jhb
3. Draftfcb Jhb
4. Ogilvy Cape
5. Ogilvy Jhb
6. Joe Public
7. Grid
8. TBWA Hunt Lascaris Jhb
9. Jupiter Drawing Room Cape Town.
10. FoxP2
The first 10 positions were provided by The Loeries. A full table of all agencies, with point scores, will be published this week in Finweek.
The points scale is: Grand Prix 300; Gold 110; Craft Gold 90; Silver 40; Craft Certificate30; Bronze 15.
But on top of this, a group of ads making up a campaign or programme earns 1,5 times the points of a single ad, as do the specified campaign categories such as mixed-media or internal marketing programmes. But Grand Prix winners don’t get upweighted if they are campaigns. Where agencies collaborate on an entry, the points are shared equally between them.
- Fin24.com
