Eleven won its gold for burger chain Carl’s Jr, while silvers went to Ogilvy & Mather and ZenithOptimedia for GE Money’s James brand, TBWA\Tequila for ‘Light a million candles’ for Standard Chartered Bank and Ogilvy & Mather and Qeren Communications for the Singapore Hospice Council. DDB won the rest.
“We're a very happy agency — and somewhat relieved,” said DDB president and CEO, David Tang. “We’ve shown that highly-creative work goes hand in hand with hardworking results. We are thrilled for our clients, and hope more will take to the Effies. I think all serious marketing clients are into this sort of creative work.
Agencies don’t need to do scam ads. It’s time we were more like a London with real ads, than a Patpong with scam.”
Before the event, the creation of the Singapore-located global effectiveness festival was announced.
Launched through a partnership between the New York-based Effie Organisation and the Institute of Advertising Singapore, the World Effie Festival will debut in February 2008.
The event will include a conference on how to measure creative effectiveness, followed by an Asia-Pacific Effie Awards. The awards will be open to winners of existing national Effie competitions in Hong Kong, China, Singapore, New Zealand and India. All other Asian countries will also be invited to enter.
There are also plans to move the long-running Global Effie Awards from New York to the city-state by 2009.
“If Cannes is about celebrating creativity with an eye to effectiveness, the World Effie Festival will be about celebrating effectiveness with an eye to creativity,” said Stephen Mangham, chairman of the World Effie Festival supervisory board and group chairman, Ogilvy Singapore.
