International delegates from the UK, France, Italy, the US, Qatar and of course Ireland attended the 52nd Sharks creative awards festival in Kinsale at the weekend. There was a 20 per cent increase in festival entries this year. An education day on Friday saw talks from award-winning radio writer Paul Burke, Alex Matthews from BBH London, Joel Templin, founder of The Hatch design agency in San Francisco, Donald Gunn on The Power of Print, Warner Chappell and Osama Saeed, head of PR and media at the Arab TV station Al Jazeera.
Jury members included Gerry Human from Ogilvy London, Katrien Bottez from Duval Guillaume in Belgium, Liam Wielopolski from DDB South Africa and Joel Templin. The festival’s grand prix was won by Forsman & Bodenfors for Volvo Trucks ‘Epic Split’ with actor Jean-Claude Van Damme of Coors Light fame. Leo Burnett was voted network of the year with their French office also being rewarded with agency of the year, marking the first time a French agency has won the award. The network went home with a total haul of 19 golds.
BBDO won a gold for its Pepsico and various awards for Anheuser-Busch, GE, Monster.com, AT&T, Hewlett-Packard, Diageo, Mars, FedEx and Eurostar. Sonny London won gold for its emotional film titled ‘Simon the Ogre’. M&C Saatchi won two golds for the Optus ‘Clever Buoy’ digital campaign for alerting coast guards in Australia about impending shark attacks.
Dublin agencies Rothco and Publicis each won 11 awards in international categories. The Publicis wins were for TG4, IDA, Philanthropy Ireland, No Nonsense and Renault winning five bronze, four silver and two golds. Rothco’s awards were for Heineken, Dublin Bus, Meteor, Tiger and Hailo, with six bronze, four silver and one gold. DDFH&B took home seven awards – five bronze, one silver and a gold for the National Lottery, Google Ireland and Lucozade. Owens DDB was presented with three bronzes for Volkswagen.
Ogilvy picked up two awards for their work on the ISPCC, a silver and a bronze. Havas Dublin, The Social House, Irish International, Ican, Reelgood, Red Rage, Butter and Zoo all picked up gongs. In the media excellence categories, Starcom had a great show and won two golds and two silvers for their work on Heineken and Coors Light. Les Gaulois won a silver and gold for Ebay. Vizeum and PHD picked up a gold award each for Ikea and Fáilte Ireland. The Leo Burnett network also took home several media excellence awards.
The promo categories were dominated by NBC Universal, Antenna Creative Services, Framestore and Universal Networks. The international new director was awarded to Oliver Briganshaw for ‘What goes around’. The Irish new director was awarded to Ciaran Foy. The Young Shark award was won by Victoria Lench and Joshua Cunningham from Publicis London. The festival is open again for entries from St Patrick’s Day next year. Marketing.ie is the Sharks media partner and photos from the festival will feature in the October issue.
Next year’s festival will take place from September 10th -12th.
To watch the Sharks’ grand prix winner on YouTube…
