Dubai Lynx Withdraws Agency of the Year Award from FP7 Doha!

Holy cow, what a mass happening with the Dubai Lynx, first with controversial Samsung campaign and now with the Fortune Promoseven case, not to mention the copycat work, the Lynx organizers have stripped the Agency of the Year award for FP7 Doha, and 7 other awards.

Apparently their work wasn’t approved by clients, the awards that were withdrawn are: 1 Gold Print campaign, 1 Gold TV/Cinema campaign, 3 Silver Print campaigns, 1 Silver Outdoor campaign and 1 Bronze TV/Cinema campaign. As cruel as it might seem to FP7, such acts are necessary to maintain the credibility of the Dubai Lynx, personally I admire the Lynx organizers for this decision.

Below is their press release:

The organisers of the 3rd Dubai Lynx Awards announced today that they are withdrawing the Agency of the Year award from FP7 Doha and the trophy will subsequently now not be awarded this year.

Investigations after this year’s award show have revealed numerous examples of work from FP7 Doha that did not meet the Dubai Lynx entry criteria and subsequently these 18 submissions and the associated seven awards have been withdrawn. Those awards were: 1 Gold Print campaign, 1 Gold TV/Cinema campaign, 3 Silver Print campaigns, 1 Silver Outdoor campaign and 1 Bronze TV/Cinema campaign.

In addition, ten pieces which were shortlisted in the Print and Outdoor sections were also disqualified.

“Even before the awards night we had withdrawn a number of pieces of work from the competition but subsequently our investigation has found other pieces that were presented to the jury that infringed our requirement that all work presented must represent the client who approved it. Our rules are very clear with regards to this, and we have no hesitation in withdrawing these awards,” said Philip Thomas, Dubai Lynx CEO. “The Dubai Lynx Awards exist to celebrate and raise the creative bar of genuine work of the region. Activities like this show a disregard not only for the Awards but more importantly for the juries who work so hard judging the event. Due to the scale of withdrawals we feel it inappropriate to honour FP7 Doha as Agency of the Year and so will be withdrawing the prize. I hope that this swift action makes clear our determination to build an award with true integrity for the region,” continued Philip Thomas.

The Dubai International Advertising Festival and Lynx Awards, which took place earlier this month, are held in association with the IAA - UAE Chapter. Dr. Lance de Masi, Chapter President, commented: “In taking such swift action the Lynx organisers have demonstrated their understanding that in order to fulfil the purpose of incentivising and rewarding creative excellence in the region, Lynx must safeguard compliance with the stated conditions of eligibility. To do otherwise would be to undermine credibility.”

Details of the work in question are:
Print Gold campaign:     A04/29 “Ink”
A04/30 “Oil”
A04/31 “Mud”
TV/Cinema Gold campaign:     A12/2 “Car”
A12/3 “Cook”
A12/4 “Rocket”
Print Silver campaign:     A04/13 “Nuns”
A04/14 “Students”
Print Silver campaign:     A14/24 “Flying Bird”
A14/25 “Man Digging”
A14/26 “Running Horse”
Print Silver campaign:     A05/52 “Cow”
A05/53 “Sheep”
A05/54 “Pig”
Outdoor Silver campaign:     A04/25 “Cow”
A04/26 “Sheep”
A04/27 “Pig”
TV/Cinema Bronze     A07/11 “Jackson 7″

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 2nd, 2009 at 12:56 pm and is filed under Amazing, Events, Interesting, Qatar. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.