Awards for when the pitch is the point - Westfair Communications

It may not have been the Olympics of Advertising, but Happy Dog Advertising and Plaid hope to parlay their new gold into corporate endorsements for their marketing services.
The Fairfield County marketing agencies took two of the top three honors at The Advertising Club of Connecticut”™s awards for the top ad campaigns of 2006.
The Ad Club gave its Gold Brush Award for art direction to Happy Dog Advertising for packaging T-shirts it sells in cylindrical cans emblazoned with the Westport agency”™s motif mascot ”“ “a mutt” according to founder David Grigg that resembles a Scottish terrier.
Plaid, a Danbury agency until April known as Via Design & Branding, received the Ad Club”™s Gold Pen prize for copywriting, recognizing its multimedia holiday greeting that portrays a Santa hunters investigative team tracking down the fat man. Plaid sent 200 customers a mailing directing them to a Web site featuring videos of the Santa hunters in action, a discussion board and T-shirts and other merchandise for purchase.
Plaid founder Darryl Ohrt estimates that those 200 mailers generated between 75,000 and 100,000 visits to the Santa hunters Web site.
“Because we are an ad agency we like to step out and show what we can do,” Ohrt said, adding the agency applies the same irreverent approach to its clientele work. “We are not saving people”™s lives here.”
The Ad Club”™s Best in Show went to Adams & Knight, recognizing television commercials the Avon agency created for the Universal Health Care Foundation of Connecticut that humorously encouraged state residents to learn more about the issue.
Great media campaigns can inject life into even products worn down by everyday use. Unilever PLC, which employs more than 1,500 people in Fairfield County, won one of two “Best in Show” awards last week at the 54th Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival, dubbed by some the industry”™s Olympics.
In a Web video to promote the image of its Dove brand beauty products, a time-lapse video depicts the amount of makeup and photo retouching it takes to transform a normal woman into a billboard beauty. The campaign, created by Ogilvy & Mather Canada, was inspired by Unilever”™s efforts to educate consumers about the manipulation of the female image in the media. The company also runs a foundation called the Dove Self-Esteem Fund.
Ironically, Unilever won another Cannes Lion by allowing customers to “create” their ideal woman by mixing different images. Unilever began selling in Argentina a new “mixable” fragrance called Axe, which allows men to create a unique fragrance by mixing two separate fragrances in whatever proportions suit their whim. To market Axe, the company”™s Argentinean agency kicked off a multimedia campaign in which customers could “combine” pairs of nonalike women via the Web, billboards and other media, with customers voting on their favorite.

If the scale of Plaid”™s and Unilever”™s promotion differed, it nevertheless showed advertisers”™ ongoing appetite to experiment with multimedia campaigns ”“ even small agencies laboring in the long shadow cast by Madison Avenue.
It is a long way from Plantsville, where the Ad Club awards were held at the Aqua Turf Convention Center, to Cannes, France. But Aqua Turf is as good a starting gate as any.
“I am not intimidated by them, because I used to work there,” said Grigg, who before launching Happy Dog worked for several New York City agencies, including Ogilvy & Mather. “I love to put myself up against those guys ”¦ We are small and nimble and smart marketers.”