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Johannesburg - The Jupiter Drawing Room and TBWA Hunt Lascaris were named jointly as AdReview Agencies of the Decade at a gala function on Wednesday night.
Though the judges agreed a split decision was not the perfect solution, they were unable to reach agreement on a single winner.
Hunt Lascaris was the dominant agency of the first six years of the decade, heading the creative league table in five years, and placing second in another, twice winning Agency of the Year, and making the running as the country's most successful agency business. It then went into a slump, falling to a low point of 11th in the creative league, and would have blown its chances of winning the Decade accolade - were it not for last year's stunning comeback with the Zimbabwe Trillion Dollar Billboard.
Though the Zimbabwean campaign was made up of a single idea (that it is cheaper to make a billboard out of depreciated Zimbabwean currency than out of paper or normal billboard facings), it was an idea so big that it turned the campaign into one of the biggest in the world last year. The campaign was run for an exile newspaper, The Zimbabwean.
"Whether or not Hunt Lascaris builds on this come-back is a relevant issue for the agency, but it is irrelevant to this decade's award," says AdReview jury chairperson Tony Koenderman.
Jupiter, for its part, has had a decade of spectacular growth which took it from a national size ranking of 10th (in 2000) to fourth by the end of the period, and also a two-time winner of Agency of the Year. It was at the centre of some of the most talked-about events of the period, including the "perfect storm" when it won more than a billion rand's worth of new billings from three accounts in two weeks of frenzied pitching in 2007, and the widely acclaimed deal of the decade, when it sold 49% of its equity to WPP Group last year.
Though Jupiter has won for itself an admirable reputation for its creativity, its greatest successes have been more about the business.
The awards were presented at the AdReview Awards on Wednesday, April 21 when the publication, Tony Koenderman's AdReview, was released to a pre-publication audience of 600 movers and shakers from the advertising and marketing industry.
The other major award, the Ad Agency of the Year, was presented to Ogilvy Johannesburg, which was considered to have the best combination of business and professional performance. The criteria taken into account included creative awards, new-business acquisition, growth of the business, ability to produce likeable advertising, advertising effectiveness and black economic empowerment.
Three other agencies were shortlisted for Agency of the Decade: Ogilvy South Africa, Net#work BBDO and Draftfcb.
The full list of winners:
- Ad Agencies of the Decade: TBWA Hunt Lascaris, The Jupiter Drawing Room.
- M-Net Oracle Agency of the Year: Ogilvy Johannesburg;
- Ad Group of the Year: Ogilvy South Africa.
- Jacaranda FM Gauteng Agency of the Year: Ogilvy Johannesburg;
- Cape Agency: Jupiter Drawing Room;
- Ads24 Media Agency of the Year: Carat;
- Small Media Agency: Mediology;
- Specialist agency: Matchworld;
- The Big Idea: Draftfcb Johannesburg;
- Advertising Achiever of the Year: Gordon Patterson;
- Design Shop of the Year: Interbrand Sampson;
- Radmark Radio Campaign of the Year: Ogilvy Johannesburg;
- Magazine Campaign of the Year sponsored by Media24 Magazines: FoxP2 for National Geographic Kids;
- Magazine Campaign of the Decade: Lowe Bull for Dulux;
- Digital Agency of the Year: Gloo Digital Design;
- PR Consultancy of the Year: Marcus Brewster Publicity;
- Newcomer of the Year: ninety9cents;
- The Baobab Award: Ogilvy South Africa.
- Fin24.com
