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GLOBAL – NEW YORK, NEW YORK, MAY 9, 2012: On its 55th year, The New York Festival International Advertising Awards awarded 43 Gold World Medals, 64 Silver, and 69 Bronze, and 83 Finalist Certificates on May 4 at the New York Show awards ceremony at the landmark New York Public Library Stephen A. Schwarzman Building in New York City.
The Network of the Year went to DDB Worldwide, which collected a total of 19 medals representing eight countries from their worldwide offices in this year’s competition.
The “World’s Best Idea” award was scooped by Digitas and Crispin Porter +Bogusky for their integrated campaign “Small Business Saturday” for American Express. This new shopping day between Black Friday and Cyber Monday was originally launched by American Express in 2010 to support small businesses, help preserve neighborhoods, and fuel the local economies. American Express took Main Street mainstream with a multi-touch campaign that energized and engaged the small business community, their consumers, media and brand partners, and even local and national government officials using simple, sharable and powerful social actions.
The Advertiser of the Year Award was handed to Daimler AG, multinational automotive corporation, headquartered in Stuttgart, Baden-Württemberg, Germany, earned a total of 8 medals from 6 agencies worldwide with Daimler accounts.
BETC Paris earned the Grand Trophy, Commercials, for “The Bear” for client Canal+. The spot shows vignettes of a film director on his medieval movie set, with scenes of an actress praising his skills, the director re-writing the script in his trailer, discussing special effects in a production meeting, and scoring the film. The humorous twist is that the director is a bear rug, who was inspired to become a movie director after years of watching movies while laying on the floor in front of a television. The Bear” also earned 4 Gold World Medals, 1 Silver, and 2 Finalist Certificate.
Germany earned a total of 9 Gold World Medals, followed by Australia and China with 7. The following countries were also honored with Gold World Medals: France 5; United Kingdom 3; USA 3, and Colombia 2. The Republic of South Korea, Costa Rica, Portugal, Romania, Sweden, and the United Arab Emirates each earned 1 Gold Medal.
Publicis Amstelveen was honored with the Grand Trophy, Public Service, for “ALS Campaign” for ALS Foundation Netherlands. The award-winning Dutch campaign has ALS patients ask the viewer to join the fight against this merciless disease and lobby for more medical research for ALS.
Legendary advertising icon Tom Burrell received the presitigious New York Festivals Hall of Fame Award for his contributions to the advertising industry.
Each year, New York Festivals, in partnership with the United Nations Department of Public Information, appoints a UN panel to select public service work that exemplifies the aims and ideals of the United Nations. The Gold UNDPI Award was handed to Baumann Ber Rivnay, Saatchi & Saatchi Israel for “Blood Relations” in Public Service Announcements: Integrated (Mixed Media) for client The Peres Center For Peace. Young and Rubicam Colombia earned the Silver UNDPI Award for “Kidrescue” in Public Service Announcements: Digital / Interactive for client Fundación Telefonica / Kidrescue. Cheil Worldwide, India was honored with the Bronze UNDPI Award for “Minus One Project” in Public Service Announcements: Integrated (Mixed Media) for client Samsung Printers.
Winning entries were selected by the NYF Executive Jury, composed of worldwide chief creative officers, through 5 rounds of live judging. Award winners were selected from a shortlist chosen by the Grand Jury through 2 rounds of online judging. The Grand Jury is comprised of over 400 of some the world’s most respected and award-winning chief creative officers, executive creative directors and industry professionals, representing the largest and most diverse jury of any advertising competition in the world.
To view the complete list of winners, visit www.newyorkfestivals.com/worldsbest
