The single gold Lotus Award was presented to

DDB Auckland wins Best of Direct Marketing Lotus Award at AP AdFest 2006 and three golds given for Interactive work.
Close to 1400 delegates are addressed by guest speaker Donald Gunn and Young Lotus finalists at 9th Asia Pacific Advertising Festival in Pattaya, Thailand.

The 9th Asia Pacific Advertising Festival (AP AdFest) burst into life today when almost 1400 delegates gathered at PEACH, the Royal Cliff Beach Resort in Pattaya Thailand - an increase in attendance of nearly thirty per cent compared to 2005.

At the AP AdFest Opening Ceremony held outside under a starry sky, awards were presented for the 2006 Lotus Awards for Direct Marketing and Interactive. Out of 227 direct marketing entries, sixteen awards were presented.

Nine bronze and five silver trophies were awarded, with one gold trophy completing the tally. Despite only one gold award, Tan Kien Eng, executive director and executive creative director of Arc Worldwide in Kuala Lumpur and chairman of the judging panel for direct marketing said that bronze and silver awards were won across a good spread of countries. The accolades went to agencies from Auckland, Bangkok, Beijing, Hong Kong, Kuala Lumpur, Melbourne, Petaling Jaya, Singapore and Sydney.

The single gold Lotus Award was presented to DDB Auckland for its work on the integrated campaign for NZgirl, entitled “Worst Boyfriend”. The work included ambient and interactive executions. The agency was also presented with ‘Best of Direct Marketing” Lotus Award for 2006.

When asked about general developments in the category direct marketing this year, Tan Kien Eng said, “There were two trends that the judging panel noticed overall for the category. Firstly, the ideas were a lot simpler than you expect normally with traditional direct marketing and secondly, the core creative ideas were stronger.”

There was no Best of Show awarded for the interactive category, but the judging panel selected seventeen bronze, fifteen silver and three gold Lotus Awards from 235 entries. Dentsu Inc. Tokyo won two golds and the third was won by Bascule Inc. Tokyo. Agencies winning metal awards came from Bangkok, Beijing, Hong Kong, Kuala Lumpur, Mumbai, Tokyo, Singapore and Sydney.

Dirk Eschenbacher, regional creative director for OgilvyInteractive Asia Pacific, based in Beijing was chairman of the interactive judging panel. He concluded,”the number of entries for AP AdFest’s youngest advertising category is growing fast and has doubled this year compared to 2005, which is encouraging. The standard of work was excellent overall for interactive entries, but the judging panel did not think that any one entry merited ‘Best of Show’”.

The trends in Interactive were the emergence of brand community websites which encouraged consumers to share ideas as well as receive information. There were also many websites taking advantage of the growth in broadband, which allowed video footage and entertainment to be incorporated into digital creative work. Many of these executions used humour to communicate their messages.

AP AdFest’s first guest speaker session for 2006 was given by Donald Gunn and Emma Wilkie of The Gunn Report, first published in 1999. The Gunn Report determines where the bar was set for creative standards in the preceding year. AP AdFest is the first major show in the world circuit of advertising contests and so sets the scene for the year to come. It is an accurate indicator of great advertising as many of its previous winners have been successful at other major international awards.

The most awarded print advertising in the world in 2005 was the campaign for Tamiya, developed by Creative Juice/G1 Bangkok, which also won Best of Print at AP AdFest in 2005.

Bangkok also topped the ranking for ‘Most Awarded Production Company in the World’ as Phenomena Bangkok was ranked first in 2005, as was Thanonchai Sornsrivichai as 2005’s ‘Most Awarded Director’ in The Gunn Report. Both the production company and director featured strongly in last year’s AP AdFest’s Lotus Awards for Film and Film Craft.

In 2005, The Gunn Report ranked 2 Asian countries in the top 10 Awarded Countries. Thailand was ranked fifth (up from seventh) and Japan was ninth (up from eleventh).

Twenty-eight participants from fourteen cities completed their assignment at AP AdFest’s Young Creative Workshop this year. The winners were Hana Kim from TBWA Seoul and Park Ji Hoon from Welcomm Publicis Seoul, announced by the workshop’s moderator, Tay Guan Hin, executive creative director of JWT Singapore at AP AdFest’s opening ceremony on 9 March 2006.

The workshop brief was to find an idea to promote AP AdFest in 2007.

Tay Guan Hin explained, “The winning work was selected because it had a fantastic strategy and used great insights to focus on the fact that AP AdFest understands Asian creativity better than any other show. It was a headline-driven idea – the first time a copy ad has won in the three years that Young Lotus Workshop has been organised”.

Tay thought the thinking that went into the work from the Young Lotus finalists was excellent and excelled in developing an ownable strategy that strengthened brand benefits. Other finalists included teams from Jakarta and Malaysia.

AP AdFest 2006 is the largest ever. 4,738 creative works have been submitted from over four hundred agencies in thirty-four cities around the region - a seventeen per cent increase on the number of entries entered in 2005.