Johannesburg - Ogilvy Johannesburg is making the running for South Africa's premier advertising competition, the Loerie Awards, to be presented in Cape Town during the first weekend of October.
The agency tops the finalist list, released on Friday, with 64 of its entries now contending for an award. In a list marked by several surprises, it's followed by Draftfcb, DDB, FoxP2 and Ogilvy Cape Town (see list below).
A caution here, though: the ratio of conversion from finalist to an actual trophy is tenuous.
The unexpected outcomes were:
- Draftfcb taking second spot. Though a reliable and steady award-winner, Draft seldom beats the likes of Net#work BBDO or TBWA Hunt Lascaris.
- Hence the next two surprises. Net#work is the country's second-biggest award winner over the last 10 years, having been in the top three on seven occasions. It's lying 10th.
Hunt Lascaris has been pushed down to sixth place, after the phenomenal success of last year's Trillion Dollar Campaign, which became the most-awarded campaign in world advertising history, and pushed the agency to No 1 in South Africa.
- DDB returned to prominence with a goodly spread of work. It won a Cannes Grand Prix a couple of years ago, but was not as successful last year.
- Y&R Johannesburg, which unexpectedly occupies second spot in the leaderboard so far, experienced something of a wipe-out, ending in 16th. (The leaderboard keeps a tally of results as they occur during the year. So far there have been four – the international advertising competitions which count for points in South Africa.)
- MetropolitanRepublic, which has not featured high on any table of winners so far, is in seventh spot.
The leading winners of finalist status for 2010 are:
Ogilvy Jhb: 64
Draftfcb Jhb: 54
DDB Jhb: 47
FoxP2: 44
Ogilvy Cape: 40
Hunt Lascaris: 33
MetropolitanRepublic: 31
Jupiter Cape: 30
Joe Public: 29
Net#work BBDO Jhb: 27
KingJames: 26
Lowe Bull Jhb: 25
Lowe Bull Cape: 23
Jupiter Jhb: 21
Gloo: 19
Black River FC: 15
Y&R Jhb: 15
Ireland/Davenport: 13
JWT Cape: 12
Grid: 11
Hello World: 11.
How accurate is the tally of finalists in predicting success at winning Loerie trophies?
The last time we did the exercise, two years ago, this was the position, with agencies ranked by their finalist tally, and awards ranking shown for comparison:
Loerie winners 2008.
1. Ogilvy Jhb: awards rank 1
2. Net#work BBDO: awards 4
3. Draftfcb Jhb: awards 8
4. Ogilvy Cape: awards 9
5. TBWA Hunt Lascaris: awards 23
6. Jupiter Drawing Room Jhb: awards 7
7. DDB: awards 16
8. FoxP2: awards 2
9. Saatchi & Saatchi Jhb: awards 25
10. Joe Public: awards 5.
The top spot is consistent, but clearly, a finalist position is only a rough predictor of awards conversion. Only three of the results came close: Ogilvy Jhb, Net#work and Jupiter. Another four were reasonably close (both in the top 10), and three were wildly out.
The net for finalist status is very wide. More than a third of all entries this year have made it through to the finalist stage.
These results do not include the student competition.
- Fin24.com