Financial Times

Phoenix O&M wins most awards at SLIM

Phoenix O&M (Pvt) Ltd won the highest number of awards at the Sri Lanka Institute of Marketing (SLIM) Awards last week but a local player sans international input also won a round of applause for its creditable showing.

Phoenix collected a total of 30 awards followed by Lowe LDB and Leo Burnett Solutions with 27 and 24 awards respectively. JWT came fourth with 21 awards. Last year's overall winner Grants McCann Erickson finished fifth with 15 awards but clinched the crucial Campaign of the Year gold for the SriLankan Airlines 'One Day' campaign. Triad Advertising, a local company battling against multinationals, secured four gold awards- proving that local players also have the skills, ability and talent to compete with global giants.

The best of the best awards were also distributed among the leading agencies. Lowe LDB won the Print Ad of the Year with Leo Burnett winning the Radio Commercial of the Year and Phoenix the TV Commercial of the Year. The silver and bronze awards for the Campaign of the Year were won by Leo Burnett and Phoenix respectively.

Most the awards were picked up by the leading multinational agencies - Phoenix Ogilvy, Lowe LDB, Leo Burnett, JWT and Grant McCann Erickson. Other participants who were in the awards haul included Blitz, Masters, Rediffusion DY&R, Bates Strategic Alliance, Grey Worldwide, Ogilvy Outreach, Holmes Pollard and Stott, and Initiative Media.

The much looked forward to event of the advertising industry started off on a low note compared to the previous years with the sound equipment not functioning properly, and the audio visual, fanfares and announcements failing in synchronization. This also resulted in some of the speeches not being audible to most parts of the audience. The momentum only picked up after popular singing duo Bathiya and Santhush appeared on stage to give away some of the awards and interacted with the audience.

The scheduled 4-hour long award distribution was also subject to delays with the final ‘Campaign of the Year’award being awarded almost two hours behind schedule. However, the event was organized on a grand scale with a three dimensional stage setting and attracted a crowd of over 1500 from the advertising fraternity.

Thirty advertising agencies participated in this year's awards submitting a little over 1000 entries.

Masters Advertising refused to take part in the event in a furore over seat allocations and announced its boycott in a large newspaper advertisement.

Meanwhile here are briefs extracts of press releases and claims from advertising agencies:

Phoenix

Phoenix Ogilvy (Phoenix O&M (Pvt) Ltd) received nine gold, 12 silver, and nine bronze awards making it the agency with the highest number of gold and silver awards. "This is the success story of our concentrated team effort to regain Phoenix Ogilvy. To regain, its creative edge for our clients. An effort where the entire agency, and most importantly the clients all worked as a team to raise the bar," said Ruchi Sharma, Executive Creative Director, commenting on the performance of the agency,

Other awards won by the agency included awards for clients such as National Savings Bank, Eveready, Nestlé, DHL, Development Lotteries Board, and the Cancer Society.

Leo Burnett

Leo Burnett Solutions Inc bagged 24 awards across the board. The four-plus year old agency also received the coveted Radio Commercial of the Year award for Sri Lanka Telecom and the silver award for the Campaign of the Year for ODEL.

The agency won 8 gold awards, 8 silver awards and 8 bronze awards - namely gold for Cargills Kist, Vicks (Proctor & Gamble), Sri Lanka Telecom IDD, Odel, Cargills (Ceylon) Limited; silver for SLTnet, Odel, Mobitel, SLIM, KFC, Leo Burnett and bronze for Cargills KIST, Odel, KFC, Cargills (Ceylon) Limited, People's Bank YES, Cargills Food City and Linea Aqua.

Grant McCann
Erickson

Grant McCann Erickson walked away with the most coveted “Campaign of the Year” Award for the brilliant work they did for Sri Lankan Airlines - the much talked of 'One Day' campaign.

Commenting on the Agency's unprecedented success, Neela Marikkar, Managing Director, Grant McCann Erickson said, "I am delighted at this achievement and would like to dedicate this award to our founder Chairman and undoubtedly the God father of Advertising in Sri Lanka - Reggie Candappa, whose creative genius has made Grants what it is today and will forever remain the spirit of our agency."

Triad

Triad Advertising, a 10-year old local company, emerged four times Gold winner at the SLIM awards ceremony, adding silver and bronze awards to its match bag for the evening.

"It is the blood, sweat and tears by a team who pride themselves as doing all it takes that has enabled us to reach these levels," said Varuni Amunugama Fernando, Joint Managing Director of Triad. It is the first time that a 100 percent Sri Lankan owned advertising agency outperformed the giants in the industry, especially in the keenly contested ‘Personal Care’ and ‘Retail’ categories.

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