BBDO Network comes out on top at Asian Marketing Effectiveness & Strategy Awards

The 2015 Asian Marketing Effectiveness & Strategy Awards last night handed out a total of 144 winners across 10 countries with 3 Platinum, 26 Gold, 44 Silver and 70 Bronze trophies at the awards ceremony in the evening. India led the region with 31 trophies, followed closely by China, Australia and New Zealand.

Agency of the Year awards were given in Effectiveness, Media Strategy and Digital Strategy to the best performing individual agency offices. Lowe Lintas + Partners, India won Effectiveness Agency of the Year, BBDO Pakistan took the Media Strategy Agency of the Year while BBDO/Proximity China brought home Digital Strategy Agency of the Year.

BBDO was once again the most awarded agency network at for the fourth year in a row. Thirteen BBDO offices took home awards for clients including Visa, Mars, Wrigley, Virgin Australia and Levis.

Andy Wilson, Head of Strategy for BBDO Asia said of the win: “This has been an unprecedented year of success for the BBDO and Proximity network, with more awards than any other network in the Effectiveness, Digital Strategy and Media Strategy categories. Especially pleasing was the broad spread of offices contributing award winning campaigns – special thanks and congratulations to our clients and teams in Pakistan and Shanghai for winning the coveted agency of the year for the Media Strategy and Digital Strategy categories.”

Effectiveness Agency of the Year winners, Lowe Lintas + Partners India, had the maximum number of shortlists from India (17) and the agency managed to win a total of 10 awards comprising 4 Silver & 6 Bronze trophies.

Joseph George, CEO, Lowe Lintas + Partners said: “After being declared earlier this year by WARC as 2014’s Most Effective Agency in the World, this performance at the AMES last night is a further confirmation of what we and juries around the world believe what we are good at – delivering disruptive creative solutions that work in the mind and in the market. We look forward to carry this momentum and performance right through the year!”

Saatchi & Saatchi Australia swept 2 Platinum and 3 Gold trophies for their “Penny the Pirate” campaign for Luxottica. BBDO Pakistan collected 4 Gold awards for the “Not A Bug Splat” campaign for Reprieve/ Foundation for Fundamental Rights, while MRM//McCANN Singapore took home 3 Gold trophies for the Singapore Red Cross campaign.

The AMES Effectiveness jury selected 9 Gold, 18 Silver and 34 Bronze winners from the shortlisted entries.

“The best work at AMES this year did not respect ‘discipline’ boundaries such as advertising, digital, or experiential, but instead integrated them into campaigns based on how consumers live,” said Jury President James Thompson, Managing Director, Global Reserve, Diageo. “I was pleased to see more independent, smaller Asian agency work especially from India, China, Vietnam and Cambodia, but my provocation is we need to be open-minded to much more. To continue to push the limits of marketing, we need to create a much clearer understanding of the drivers for success, clarity on return on investment, and importantly, use the dynamic cultural nuances in Asia to develop great creative work that is effective.”

The Media Strategy jury, chaired by Rahul Welde, Vice President of Media at Unilever Asia awarded 1 Platinum, 8 Gold, 9 Silver and 12 Bronze trophies. Rahul says, “”The jury was very impressed by the standard of the entries. We were pleased to see many campaigns that focused on delivering value for both the brand and consumers. They demonstrated real, quantifiable commercial results from solid strategic thinking and great creative execution.”

Headed by Jayant Murty, Marketing Director for Intel, the Digital Strategy jury gave out 1 Platinum, 7 Gold, 15 Silver and 12 Bronze awards. Jayant says, “There was range of entries starting from local executions of global strategies to local reinterpretation of global strategies to completely local strategies to make it more resonant in the market. They ranged from attempting to grow market share and markets to share of voice and share of mind. The entries that captured the imagination and the attention of the jury this year were broadly in 4 areas. First, remarkably simple and effective but unhindered by executional complexity. Second physical met digital in interesting ways, Third where content and response was agile and personal and Fourth where the strategy and execution was social by design.”

Dr Elaine Rodrigo, Global Director of Consumer Insights & Strategy in Biscuits Category, Mondelēz International led the Data & Analytics and e-Commerce jury which picked out 1 Platinum, 2 Gold, 2 Silver and 9 Bronze awards for Data & Analytics, and another Silver and 3 Bronze awards for e-Commerce. Elaine says, “I was very encouraged to see so much interest in the Data & Analytics track, which is only in its second year in AMES. My fellow judges and I were impressed at the quality and breadth of submissions, particularly in the areas of mobile, digital ROI, and e-Commerce, all which are burgeoning areas of interest in the world today.”

Visit www.ames.asia for the full list of winners.