Completing the ADFEST Lotus Awards tally on the final night of ADFEST 2018, the Special Awards aim to recognize outstanding agencies, production companies and advertisers and are compiled from the tally of ADFEST Lotus Awards won during the festival.
TBWA\Hakuhodo, Tokyo. was elected Agency of the Year 2018 and Choojai & Friends, Bangkok picked up the award for Independent Agency of the Year.
Dentsu was named Network of the Year. The group of fifteen offices that entered the ADFEST Lotus Awards includes its network agencies from Bangkok, Jakarta, Manila, Melbourne, Mumbai, Osaka, Singapore, Sydney, Taipei and Tokyo.
Digital Agency of the Year was announced as R/GA Sydney. Direct & Promo Agency of the Year was awarded to McCann Worldgroup India, Mumbai. Production Company of the Year was awarded to Tohokushinsha Film Corporation, Tokyo. Advertiser of the Year was presented to Ministry of Public Health, Afghanistan.
LOTUS GRANDE FOR HUMANITY
Work submitted for Public Services & Cause Appeals in the Lotus Awards is not eligible to win Grande Lotus in the main Lotus Award categories. Instead, ADFEST has created The Lotus Grande for Humanity to recognize creative excellence in this sector.
This Special Award can be given out to work winning Gold Lotus for Public Services & Cause Appeals in the Film, Press, Outdoor, Radio, Interactive, Mobile, Direct, Promo, Design and Media Lotus Categories and to winners in the Public Services and Cause Appeals category for Branded Content & Entertainment, Effective, Integrated and INNOVA Lotus.
The agency selected to win this prestigious award at ADFEST 2018 was Dentsu Inc., Tokyo for Disaster Prevention “Emergency Collectibles” in the Press Lotus “Best Use of Print” category.
Grand Jury President, Joyce King Thomas, Chairman and Chief Creative Officer of McCann XBC, New York summed up the Jury’s thinking behind the decision to award the Grande for Humanity: “This [piece of print] was beautifully done, but the most interesting thing about it was how it provoked a conversation and got families to sit down and talk about what they would pack for an emergency. It’s a very important issue in Japan, where earthquakes can be felt in Tokyo every month”.
LOTUS LEGEND
Ant Keogh, Chief Creative Officer of The Monkeys, Melbourne has been named as the Lotus Legend at ADFEST: TRANSFORM 2018. Campaign Brief Australia ranked him the #1 Creative Director in Australia for the past five years. He has headed the Bestads Australian Creative Rankings for the last decade and is ranked #7 in the world. In the 2017 Big Won Report he was ranked #1 Chief Creative Officer in the World.
As a copywriter, his most famous work is the on-going Carlton Draught “Made from Beer” campaign featuring “Big Ad”. As Executive Creative Director, he guided Gold Lion winning campaigns such as TAC “Meet Graham”, Snickers “Hungerithm “, Bonds “Boys”, Victoria Tourism’s “Remote Control Tourist”, National Australia Bank’s “Breakup”, Four ‘n’ Twenty’s “Magic Salad Plate”, Australian Guide Dogs’ “Support Scent” and Carlton Draught’s “Slo Mo” and “Beer Chase”.
He has previously served on the Cannes Lions Print Jury in 2010, Film & TV Jury in 2013 and the Titanium Jury in 2015.

Jimmy Lam, President of ADFEST, said: “Ant creates the kind of ads that are remembered and talked about for years afterwards – his work is funny, provocative, memorable and effective, which makes him a worthy winner of this year’s Lotus Legend accolade.”
Keogh is currently filming in New Zealand but accepted the accolade remotely: “It’s an awfully big honour to win something like this. It’s impossible to thank everyone that’s involved in an award like this – this is really about hundreds of people who have been involved in the work I’ve made. But I should quickly thank James McGrath [Creative Chairman at Clemenger BBDO] and all the people who have worked at Clemenger BBDO in Melbourne for the last 10 years that I was there, Y&R Melbourne before that and Mojo in the dark ages,” he said.
Lotus Legend is nominated by all 56 Juries of this year’s Lotus Awards, where they were asked to put forward one creative contender, either previously or currently active in the advertising and communication industry of Asia Pacific or Middle East region. He or she must have achieved creative excellence whilst working in those regions, as well as being a role model to new creative generations.
SUMMING UP ADFEST 2018
As the twenty-first ADFEST drew to a close on the eve of Saturday, 24th March 2018, the final tally of delegates through the doors was close to 1300 from 67 cities worldwide. They were welcomed, fed, watered, informed and entertained and enjoyed a packed 4-day festival including 25 speaker sessions, 5 breakout workshops, and 3 parties – not including the unofficial ones.
56 Juries from 25 cities assessed close to 3,000 entries across 18 Lotus Awards categories.
Joyce King Thomas, 2018 Grand Jury President and Chairman and Chief Creative Officer for McCann XBC, New York summed up her experience at the regional awards for Asia Pacific and MENA. “What I like about ADFEST is that every judge in each Jury is from a different country. They bought a different perspective and culture to the decision-making and yet as a group, the final choices for awards were unanimous. ADFEST is warm and intimate – it’s not like any other awards show I’ve ever been to!”
