A total of 299 awards were handed out, including 35 Gold, 68 Silver, and 120 Bronze Loeries. While awards for the whole region were presented together at the awards ceremony, South African entries continued to be judged separately. The Loeries official rankings this year will include an overall table, as well as a separate table for South Africa, and a separate table for the rest of the region.
Last year, the top 10 agencies were as listed below, with one agency from outside South Africa, Geometry Global Dubai, at number 9:
- FCB Johannesburg
- Ogilvy & Mather Johannesburg
- Shift Joe Public
- King James Group
- Ogilvy & Mather Cape Town
- Grid Worldwide
- Native VML
- Joe Public
- Geometry Global Dubai
- TBWA\Hunt\Lascaris
The 2015 Official Rankings will be published in four to six weeks’ time.
Only two entries were awarded the coveted Grand Prix this year - Ogilvy & Mather Johannesburg in the Digital & Interactive Communication category for KFC, and IMPACT BBDO Dubai for their Black Cats On Holiday campaign in the Branded Content Video category.
The Loeries, a not for profit company with a board made up of representatives from across the industry, has been celebrating work from across Africa and the Middle East for a number of years. While IMPACT BBDO Dubai did particularly well this year, this is not the first time the Middle East has been richly rewarded at the Loeries. In 2007 a Grand Prix was awarded, and last year two Gold Loeries were awarded to Dubai.
Companies are increasingly turning to Africa as well as the Middle East as new growth markets and marketing communications are increasingly being tailor-made for a local audience. Brands are looking for partners working across the region and the Loeries is ideally positioned as the best measure of the work being produced from South Africa and across Africa all the way to the Middle East.
“The winning work from Africa and the Middle East raised the creative bar by another two notches. It also illustrated that locally relevant work will out-punch more generic work on any given day. It is a reminder for us as business owners to take a serious step up in terms of taking Africa seriously - not just as a business opportunity but also as a new creative frontier. I left Loeries totally inspired,” says Pepe Marais, CEO and founding partner of Joe Public United, South Africa.
While the Loeries celebrates creative excellence across the whole region, a focus on developing communications in South Africa’s non-English languages continues. This year all non-English radio was judged by a specialist panel and plans are in place to create a platform to reward South African non-English work across all media platforms next year.
For the first time, the Loeries has awarded five bursaries and scholarships to talented learners from KwaZulu-Natal, with a total value of over R1-million. The focus of this programme that has been running since 2008 is to enable talented learners from previously disadvantaged backgrounds to enter the industry, and to address imbalances in the industry. Since inception, eleven females and three males have been awarded the bursaries and scholarships.
For more information, visit the Loeries website. Alternatively connect with the awards on Facebook or on Twitter.