AdClub Cites ‘91’s Best Sellers : Awards: Salvati Montgomery Sakoda makes the strongest showing, with 20 awards. dGWB, one of O.C.’s top agencies, did not enter.

The absence of one of Orange County’s top advertising agencies took some of the intrigue out of this year’s Orange County AdAwards. But it arguably made room for others to shine.

Nickel Advertising, a one-man agency run by Randy Nickel in Costa Mesa, won best-of-show in its category for a promotional T-shirt showing surfers beside huge red chili peppers in place of surfboards. The shirt was designed for the Balboa Peninsula Point Assn.’s seventh annual chili cook-off.

Steven Ricker, a Cypress College student, won gold and silver awards. That achievement is impressive in that Ricker is still a student and submissions are judged not against one another but by an international standard set by One Show, an annual international ad competition in New York. Ricker created a print ad for Spalding multicolored golf balls that plays on the meaning of the line, “Break the Color Barrier at Your Country Club.”

“Excellent student work,” commented Doug deGrood, a contest judge who is a copywriter at the Minneapolis ad agency Fallon McElligott.

The winners were announced Saturday night at the Orange County AdClub’s 34th annual awards ceremony. There were 669 entries from 104 participants, according to AdClub officials. That contrasts with the nearly 900 entries submitted last year. The decline in entries may be because several agencies have merged or gone out of business over the past year, industry sources said.

Salvati Montgomery Sakoda of Costa Mesa made the strongest showing, winning 20 awards: a best-of-show, two gold, four silver and 13 merit awards.

The best-of-show was in the print category for a photo of actor-director Kenneth Branagh as Henry V that carries the caption, “Sex, Violence, Power and Really Good Grammar.” The ad was created for Dimension Cable, a unit of Times Mirror Co., which also owns the Los Angeles Times.