The Wilton office of TracyLocke won best of show at the 2011 Advertising Club of Connecticut awards, even as a new report suggested ad spending by the nation”™s biggest consumer product companies slowed in the first half of 2011.
The Ad Club held its annual awards last month in Plantsville, spread across some three-dozen categories, some of which had multiple winners demarcated as gold, silver or bronze. The awards featured both work for giants like Norwalk-based Diageo North America as well as relatively small entities like Mystic Seaport whose Avon-based agency Adams & Knight took a small flotilla of Connecticut Ad Club awards. In all, the Ad Club received some 325 submissions.
TracyLocke won best in show for a TV spot it created for Purchase, N.Y.-based PepsiCo Inc.”™s Mountain Dew soft drink titled “It”™s Different on My Mountain.” The spot features a voiceover of professional skateboarder Paul Rodriguez Jr. commenting on what inspires him to create new tricks, as the camera tracks him performing various stunts. TracyLocke”™s David Hohman was creative director for the ad.
An Essex agency called Outthink won the Ad Club”™s “gold brush” award for its rebranding campaign on behalf of Ivoryton Playhouse, which is staging “The Producers” July 6-31.
The “gold pen” award for best copywriting went to Farmington-based Keiler & Co. for its “serious work” print ad campaign for the Stanley Proto line of industrial tools from Stanley Black & Decker.
Just three other Fairfield County agencies received awards at the show, led by Darien-based Colangelo which copped five awards in all including two golds ”“ one recognizing its consumer signage campaign for the Green & Black”™s Chocolate Ltd. division of Cadbury and one for its packaging design for Trojan Vibrations condoms sold by Church & Dwight Co. Inc.
Norwalk-based Silver Creative Group perhaps aptly won a silver Ad Club award in the digital and interactive category for a website it created for a Los Angeles apartment community. And Norwalk-based Milk received a bronze award for a logo it created for Go Cycle.
TracyLocke, meanwhile, also won gold for a second TV spot featuring Rodriguez it produced for PepsiCo”™s Mountain Dew, promoting its campaign to have skateboard shops across the nation design a collector can.
That is not the only change percolating for PepsiCo ”“ according to AdAge, after reports that Diet Coke had topped Pepsi as the second largest U.S. soft drink brand, the company plans to overhaul its marketing staff in preparation for a renewed advertising blitz to reinvigorate sales.
The question becomes how many others will do so as the economy wallows in an anemic recovery. After two straight years of spending declines by the 100 largest advertisers in the nation, spending bounced back 8.8 percent in 2010 according to estimates by AdAge, only to throttle back markedly in the first quarter of this year.
Small and mid-sized businesses increased their ad budgets 4.5 percent for this year, according to a Borrell Associates survey of nearly 2,900 companies, though budgets for online advertising ”“ including social media ”“ were up 29 percent on average.
