< height="576" border="0" align="right" width="385" alt="" src=" BBDO-web. " />In a ceremony held Aug. 28, BBDO Guerrero was named Agency of the Year for the first time, winning Best in Creative and Best in Industry Leadership. The increasingly competitive Overall Media Excellence award went to Mindshare, which also won for Business Performance.
The ceremony was held at Greenbelt 5 Fashion Walk. Complete with a neon-lit entry arch and catwalk, the awards night carried the theme “Catch Up.” This was taken somewhat literally by the evening’s organizers, who ran the show at a breakneck pace.
That said, catch up is exactly what Agency of the Year BBDO did. Perennial finalists, the team went onstage without its namesake founder, who got the text while at an online and “couldn’t run fast enough.” David Guerrero and a few team members arrived shortly after the announcement. The victory was the perfect first act for the agency’s 10th anniversary, coming in October.
It was the third straight Media Excellence award for Mindshare, which shared the evening’s honors with Media Creativity winner OMD. While both agencies’ sterling performance is unquestioned, one can only wonder what results might have been had media giant Starcom been in competition.
In the production categories, Calypso was a surprise winner for Print. Provill received its second consecutive award as Broadcast Production House of the Year. For Audio Production, Hit Productions kept up the multi-year duopoly it shares with Sound Design.
Other agency categories provided interesting insights as well. Former AOY winners TBWA Santiago Mangada Puno and JimenezBasic were the other category winners, each in a category they had won before. JimenezBasic won Management of Business, which it won last year, together with AOY; TBWASMP was recognized for Market Performance, which it also won in 2004, also for KFC. For its part, BBDO also replicated last year’s win for Industry Leadership.
The biggest change, then, was in the Creative category, which had been dominated by TBWA in recent years before going to O&M in 2006. With JWT and DM9 fresh from Clio and Cannes wins, it was a tight race. But ultimately it was BBDO’s campaignable creativity for big brands that earned the nod from the judges, themselves the industry’s creative elite.
Having won two of the four categories, BBDO was the likely winner for Agency of the Year. Celebrating afterward at nearby M Café, the agency team raised their champagne flutes and made exhilarated calls to regional officers. If anyone got a little inebriated, it was okay – they’d waited 10 years after all.
< border="0" alt="" src=" mindshare-web. " />
Here is the complete list of winners:
PRODUCTION EXCELLENCE:
Print Production = Calypso
Radio = Hit Productions
Broadcast = Provill
MEDIA EXCELLENCE:
Media Creativity = OMD
Management of Business = Mindshare
OVERALL MEDIA EXCELLENCE = Mindshare
CREATIVE AGENCY CATEGORIES:
Industry Leadership = BBDO Guerrero
The agency’s 2007 case rested mainly on David Guerrero’s appointment as Jury Chairman at Cannes. From that platform, the agency founder promoted Filipino creativity through media appearances and interviews. Other venues where this was achieved were as a speaker at the Asian Outdoor Advertising Awards, and as the first Filipino judge at Australia’s AWARD.
To raise the value of creativity to Clients, the agency promoted The Effies, bringing the Chairman of the Asia-Pacific Effies to Manila to give a seminar attended by most Agency leaders.
Pro bono campaigns included WWF, Unicef and the Effie-award winning Childhope Asia; community service included an Art Class module that had up to 12 agency people at a time regularly teaching street kids in Luneta Park, and a Christmas Party in Museo Pampanga where Santa had a t for every child.
Management of Business = JimenezBasic
In 2007, JimenezBasic re-engineered itself while remaining efficient and profitable (24% this year).
Recognizing a changing landscape, business was refocused around one insight: “the new consumer” is more important than the “new media.” Empowered consumers are the final arbiters of purchase, and of how they are engaged. They choose: to be visible or not, to be attentive or simply curious, to postpone interest or disagree.
From this insight came the following changes: mapping changes around the agency, matching current skills with needs, then identifying & acquiring new skills, and restructuring according to the new consumer.
The advertising agency has become The Consumer Connections Company, organized in quadrants with the consumer at the center: dramatization covers traditional tri-media, plus areas requiring storytelling; visibility captures imagination immediately, with traditional packaging or display, plus ambient, kinetic and architectural media; permission, recognizing consumers’ power to decide, and uses digital media to “recruit” consumers in developing the brand; activation involves skills that generate consumer involvement in activities that bring the brand’s personality to life.
Market Performance = TBWA
TBWA submitted two case studies, Del Monte Fit & Right and KFC’s Fully Loaded Meal.
Del Monte Fit & Right had new packaging and a new feature, the inclusion of fat-burning L-Carnitine. The celebrity-led campaign significanty contributed to Del Monte’s total beverage business, exceeding targets by 30% and grabbing share from its main competitor. More tellingly, it has created a new category as copycat products rushed to market.
Meanwhile, KFC’s Fully Loaded Meal was itself, as the case study put it, “a me-three product”, late to the game in a cutthroat market. Faced with client reluctance, TBWASMP sold the idea with a Disruption Day, a session that “puts to bear the power of Disruption in overturning marketplace conventions.” The agency practically created its own product – one that proved amazingly successful, exceeding targets by +32%
Creativity = BBDO Guerrero
Campaigns for FedEx (TV “Zhang”/”Keep Guessing”/”Hard Road to Cross” and radio “Zhang from China”), Pizza Hut (multimedia), Tide (“Fire Flowers” posters), Bayantel (multimedia and outdoor) and Biolink (“Vogue” TVC) convinced the judges. ECD Joel Limchoc succinctly explained the entry strategy: “All big brands. Fewer posters.” BBDO also benefited from a rule change that allowed agencies to submit campaigns rather than single ads, which ultimately rewards bigger thinking over the quick payoff.
AGENCY OF THE YEAR: BBDO Guerrero
Having won two out of four categories…
