RETAILING : How Did a 6-Week-Old Shop Win So Many Ad Club Awards? Experience
The Orange County Ad Club’s 1988 honors were virtually swept by a 6-week-old shop. And nobody complained.
That’s because Irvine-based deYong Ginsberg Weisman Bailey --which hauled away 16 awards last week--has won carloads of Ad Club awards before in its other incarnations. The agency, which was founded in 1975, was bought out last year by the national firm of N W Ayer. But seven months later, Ayer axed the Irvine office, so the principals regrouped into a brand new shop early this year.
The awards snared last week by dGWB (as the 18-person shop likes to be called) include four gold and six silver honors--more than were won by anybody else in the Orange County contest. And technically, that was after six weeks in business. “Think of what we could do if we’d been in business for a year,” quipped Jim deYong, executive vice president, creative director and self-described “grand poo-bah” of dGWB.
The honors included one gold for a bus ad that tells how riding the bus means never having to say you’re sorry. Another high tech ad tells about a “cure for recurring back problems.” The ad tells about replacing 20 cables in the back of a computer with a single line.
Another big winner was Salvati Montgomery Sakoda. The Santa Ana-based shop took Best of Show honors for its magazine ad that asks, “Ever wonder why most people make love in the dark?” The ad, for Marcy Fitness Products, continues: “Come on, you know why. It’s because that one-piece suit nature gave us is far more revealing than baggy sweaters and old jeans.”
Salvati Montgomery picked up a total of 18 awards at the ceremony last Friday.
Another major honor was the Special Judges Award, won by the shop of keye/donna/pearlstein for its national Suzuki campaign. The campaign included three ads, with one featuring an actor sitting in a chair and making the sounds of a Suzuki tearing down the road.
Other top winners among the 151 awards included Forsythe Marcelli Johnson Advertising, which won seven awards, and LeAnce & Herbert, which walked off with a dozen.
The contest attracted a record 1,200 entries this year.
