Last year, Saatchi & Saatchi Dubai packed the Print Grand Prix award at Dubai Lynx 2007 for the “Undo” ad for Olay, the ad as you can see is smart as it communicates that the product can help you to undo what’s time and daily life have done to skin.
This year it seems that the guys at TBWA\RAAD in Dubai are aiming at the gold with this new ad for NIVEA, which is a little bit similar, only it communicates that the product can “pause” the time so that the skin keeps a younger look, both ads are interesting, a product can go back in time, while the other can stop it!
The organisers of the 2nd Dubai Lynx Awards honouring advertising creative excellence across the Middle East and North Africa, announced today the members of the four juries, including the inaugural Media jury.30 leading creatives and media experts from around the world make up the four Dubai Lynx juries. Convening in Dubai, they will judge and award MENA’s best creative advertising. The winners will be revealed on the 2nd of April at the evening awards ceremony and dinner, which will be the culmination of the 1st Dubai International Advertising Festival.
The Integrated jury is made up of members from the three other juries, including all the jury presidents, and will be chaired by Piyush Pandy, Executive Chairman & National Creative Director of Ogilvy & Mather India, who also heads the TV/Cinema, Print, Outdoor and Radio jury.
‘We are delighted to bring together an international group of highly professional and talented judges whose expertise of the business will be of immense importance to the judging process and ultimately to the region’s advertising and communications industry,’ said Philip Thomas, CEO of Cannes Lions, organisers of Dubai Lynx.
TV/Cinema, Print, Outdoor and Radio Jury
Piyush Pandey, Executive Chairman & National Creative Director, Ogilvy & Mather, India (Jury President)
Mike Edmonds, Partner & Creative Director, Meerkats Brand Communications, Australia
Urmas Villmann, Creative Director, Kontuur Leo Burnett, Estonia
Wolf Heumann, Executive Creative Director, Jung von Matt, Germany
Jagdish Ramakrishnan, Executive Creative Director, BBDO Singapore, Singapore
Alistair King, Executive Creative Director, King James, South Africa
Agustín Elbaile, Creative Vice President & Creative Co-Director, McCann Spain, Spain
Anna Qvennerstedt, Creative Director & Senior Partner, Forsman & Bodenfors, Sweden
Mark Hunter, Executive Creative Director, Euro RSCG, United Kingdom
Christoph Becker, Chairman & Chief Creative Officer NY, Draftfcb, USA
Interactive and Direct Jury
Wolfgang Haf, Chief Executive Officer Central Europe, Wunderman, Germany (Jury President)
Maximilien Guena, Creative Director, Tequila France, France
Ashish Bhasin, EVP - Lowe Worldwide & Asia Regional Director - Integrated Marketing, Lintas India, India
Enrico Gasperini, President, Digital Magics, Italy
Dave King, Creative Director, Aim Proximity Auckland, New Zealand
Andrew Ambrogione, CEO & Executive Creative Director, Action Ambro’s, South Africa
Óscar Rojo, General Creative Director, Fullcontact, Spain
Zeke Tastas, Creative Partner, Scholz & Friends Stockholm, Sweden
Ben Clapp, Executive Creative Director, Tribal DDB, United Kingdom
Heath Rudduck, Executive Creative Director, Digitas, USA
Media Jury
Mark Coad, Managing Director, OMD Australia, Australia (Jury President)
Wout Dockx, Chief Executive Officer, Initiative Brussels, Belgium
Markus Biermann, Founder & Managing Director, CROSSMEDIA, Germany
Jakub Bierzyñski, Chief Executive Officer, Omnicom Media Group, Poland
Zoltan Szigeti, President, thegroup, Romania
Carmen Montero, President, Mediaedge:cia Iberia, Spain
Louise Fallenius, Media Director Print, Carat Sverige, Sweden
Avril Gallagher, Client Managing Director, Starcom MediaVest Group, United Kingdom
Ernie Simon, President & Chief Strategist, MindShare, USA
Integrated Jury
Piyush Pandey, Executive Chairman & National Creative Director, Ogilvy & Mather, India (Jury President)
Wolfgang Haf, Chief Executive Officer Central Europe, Wunderman, Germany
Mark Coad, Managing Director, OMD Australia, Australia
Wout Dockx, Chief Executive Officer, Initiative Brussels, Belgium
Dave King, Creative Director, Aim Proximity Auckland, New Zealand
Jagdish Ramakrishnan, Executive Creative Director, BBDO, Singapore
Alistair King, Executive Creative Director, King James, South Africa
Agustín Elbaile, Creative Vice President & Creative Co-Director, McCann Spain, Spain
Anna Qvennerstedt, Creative Director & Senior Partner, Forsman & Bodenfors, Sweden
Mark Hunter, Executive Creative Director, Euro RSCG, United Kingdom
Christoph Becker, Chairman & Chief Creative Officer NY, Draftfcb, USA
In the past, elections candidates in Jordan used to promote themselves using very traditional tools like brochures and fabric banners, it was so simple with no special designs and advertising in the media, but this year things changed.
This year, candidates took their campaigns to a higher level by spending a lot of money on booking space in the media and compete with commercial advertisers; TV and radio, SMS broadcast, outdoor with wall-units, bus branding, bus stops and tunnels, prime locations in the daily newspapers, and more than that, online with Google AdSense and Facebook!
Some candidates enhanced images of their campaigns through creating logos and good photo shooting. It’s really amazing to see that things are improving, but the thing is if the candidates started to hire media buyers and art directors, then I believe it’s time they should hire copywriters to come up with different messages rather than the usual crap that they use.
To me if a candidate was so sincere and open I will definitely elect them; they can say: Elect me cause I’m handsome, or I won’t fool you, I just want to have this job in the Parliament cause the salary is good! Makes you feel honesty.
But the thing is, I don’t believe that those candidates are spending that amount of money just to serve people, I just don’t buy it, I believe it’s all about gaining a prestigious position in the community and a high-paid job, so come on guys stop the bullshit.
As a start, I’m really glad that today is the last day of Meeting Points 5; I kept receiving dozens of e-mails everyday regarding this event.
I went yesterday to a Hip-Hop performance, the show really sucked! Basically it was a freak show, a group of mental patients that kept doing weird stuff all over the stage, the whole thing was so stupid. They were moving for like 10 seconds, then set down for 5 minutes, then move again for 10 seconds, then set for 10 minutes, and so on, as far as I know, dancing is a continues performance.
I guess two of them were aerobic teachers who got touched in the head or something, or maybe they just decided to do weird stuff in the name of art in order to make a living out of it.
If Art is a man I would really petty him, I mean if you look at all artists in the world, they do rubbish stuff that no one can understand, even they can’t understand it, and then they start explaining it using bizarre explanations.
Humanity should do something for those people, if they are really mentally patients then they should be treated, but if not, and I believe so, then it’s a scam, simply they are people who failed in life then decided to fool people with trashy work to make some living. I’m calling the U.N. to do something about that.
Over the past two days I’ve attended the 3rd Annual Advertising and Marketing Communication Conference “Box Basics” which was organized by IAA Jordan. Overall the event was better than last year, even that there were no topics about online media like the previous one but it was interesting.
To start with, the name “Box Basics” is better than the cliché phrase “Outside The Box”, and most importantly the conference covered basics of the industry, well not all the time, but many presentations were really good.
The one I liked the most was about copywriting, by Andy Owen, he is really amazing and I guess he is the best in this field. I liked the one by Ed Jones the Regional Creative Director of Saatchi & Saatchi in the Middle East; he is a mastermind. The impressive one was Chris Staples of Rethink in Canada, who presented a lot of amazing ideas on how to create impressive work with very little budgets.
Elliot Polak from Text Appeal gave some interesting insights about culture differences and how to deal with it, while Chris Savage from Oglivy PR in Australia showed a group of devastating examples of PR crisis and couple of effective ways to handle it.
And of course it won’t be complete without Zain and Orange, both kept debating who is the largest, who is better, who wants to give bags and giveaways, both speakers “Philippes” were really entertaining and funny. I liked when the guy from Zain started his presentation using the same theme of Zain’s campaign; this is my presentation, those are my friends…
At the end, Herve de Clerck from adforum.com ran a group of winning ads and TVCs from all over the world, and a collection of ads that used duplicated ideas; it was a really interesting presentation.
Last night was the final round of the 2nd IAA Jordan Charity Bowling championship which was held in Kempinski hotel with the participation of a number of advertising agencies in Jordan, in addition to some other teams, it was held over three nights, so I guess the number was big.
The event was nice, an opportunity for agencies to compete face to face 
but frankly I expected a more “exciting” event, I don’t know if Ramadan had any effect on it. Anyway this event aims at raising funds for King Hussein Cancer Center, the total amount raised was 6,800 JDs, and it was delivered to HRH Princess Ghaida Talal.
The winning teams are:
- First Place: Ipsos-Stat.
- Second Place: Orange.
- Third Place: Publicis Graphics.
Here are some shots from the event. Read the rest of this entry »
