Nearly a month after awarding, the Dubai Lynx festival is still making headlines. Reports on April 1 stated that the Agency of the Year awarded to Fortune Promoseven (FP7) Doha has been withdrawn, with the trophy not to be awarded at all for 2009. FP7 is part of Interpublic Group and is affiliated with McCann Worldgroup.
An irrepressible blog blew the whistle on a number of prized entries as scam ads. An official investigation found merit in the allegations, and ultimately withdrew seven awards: 1 Gold Print campaign, 1 Gold TV/Cinema campaign, 3 Silver Print campaigns, 1 Silver Outdoor campaign, 1 Bronze TV/Cinema campaign. The agency had 18 submissions. The Dubai Lynx body also expunged ten shortlisted entries in the Print and Outdoor sections.
In a statement on the Dubai Lynx official site, CEO Philip Tomas said, “The Dubai Lynx Awards exists 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.”
The controversy erupted even before awards night, when an entry from FP7 Doha for supposed-client Nissan was withdrawn from the shortlist. Nissan reportedly complained that the entry ad was not commissioned by the company. The situation led to the investigation of the agency’s entries for Samsung and Matchbox.
FP7 Doha entered an ad for Samsung’s SL310W camera that featured the figure of Jesus taking a photograph of a group of nuns, for which the agency was awarded two golds and a silver. The ad has reportedly caused public outrage, and has been called “an attack against Christian symbols” (quotations supplied), when published by a Lebanese newspaper, as reported by Brand Republic last March 30.
As reported by Ad Nation last March 30, Samsung’s statement read “The company did not commission, develop or approve the publishing of the religiously insensitive advertisements. This advertising campaign was produced and submitted by marketing agency, FP7 Doha, without the knowledge or consent of Samsung Electronics.” Sunny Hwang, president of Samsung Electronics Levant, continued, “At no time was Samsung Electronics aware of these advertisements and the company has not approved or commissioned FP7 to create any advertising campaigns. Samsung has the utmost respect for all cultures and religions and would never produce or approve the use of such culturally insensitive advertisements.”
Last April 3, Gulf Nation reported that FP7 chief execu-tive Azmi Yafi stated that they are “prepared to take decisive action regarding any submission by FP7 Doha which genuinely contravenes the rules, regulations and the spirit of Lynx. This is about ethics, practices and responsibility towards our industry. We are looking into the allegations and if we have discrepancies from our end, we will take immediate and swift action to remedy them.”
But it seems the matter refuses to die a natural death. Gulf News and AdNation recently reported that Aramex, a Middle East shipping com-pany, has issued a statement "to clarify that it has never commissioned or worked with FP7 Doha or any party to develop or publish (this) campaign, which bears a striking resemblance to a campaign published by the FedEx Corporation in February 2008." The entry won a gold Lynx. Fp7 Doha’s non-clients are coming out of the box, pun intended.
In Cannes Lions 2008, FP7 Doha won gold and silver in Press and another gold in Outdoor, becoming the first Qatar agency to win at Cannes and the first from the Middle East to win two gold and one silver Lions in a year. The agency also had 30 entries shortlisted last year, the highest number among all global agencies at the festival.
Parent company Fortune Promoseven, after a thorough internal investigation of its Doha office, issued a statement, as reported by Brand Republic, in part reading, "It seems our strict policies and procedures for awards entries were circumvented. This is clearly unacceptable to our company. It has been decided that FP7 Doha will hand back all of its awards from the Dubai Lynx festival, and has also been instructed not to submit any entries to Cannes Lions 2009.” FP7 stated moves for strict compliance for all future award entries, as well as corrective actions over staff responsible for the debacle, including a parting of ways.
