Lowe absent, Linen Lintas wins Grand Prix in direct marketing

The agency bagged the only Grand Prix of the evening for Dabur Vatika's campaign

There's an old saying in advertising that creative work (read genuinely creative work) will always find an audience. The second day of Goafest, which saw the first set of the Creative Abbies given out in eight categories, proved this point. Dabur Vatika's Brave & Beautiful ad campaign, which features a bald-headed model, bagged the only Grand Prix of the evening in the category of direct marketing.

The win is significant for two reasons. One, the winning agency is a Lintas group agency, called Linen Lintas. Lintas group's flagship agency Lowe Lintas & Partners, for the uninitiated, does not participate in the Creative Abbies. They have boycotted the awards show for over a decade. Second, Linen Lintas' win is not only the only Grand Prix win of the evening, it is also the only Grand Prix over the two days of the festival. There were no Grand Prixs declared, for the record, during the Media Abbies on the first awards night.

Predictably, the Linen Lintas camp was among the happiest groups during the creative awards show on the second night. Also because besides taking home a Grand Prix, the same Brave and Beautiful campaign, which was actually a digital campaign, bagged three golds and one bronze. Two golds and a bronze came in direct marketing alone, while the third gold came in brand activation and promotion.

The other big winners of the evening was JWT (21 metals), Contract (13 metals) and Scarecrow Communications (12 metals). Of course, the final tally of awards will only be declared after the second and final set of the Creative Abbies are announced on the third day of the Goafest. But initial trends suggest that JWT has a headstart over its rivals, notably, Taproot, which bagged two metals, a silver and a bronze in print craft. The latter, that is, print craft and print (which will be declared on the final day) are considered to be Taproot's strengths and helped the agency bag the runner-up trophy last year. JWT, on the other hand, was the leader at the Creative Abbies last year.

Manish Bhatt, founder-director, Scarecrow Communications, said, "We are happy to have made a good start at Goafest. The picture will become clear after the final set of awards are declared on the third day."

Scarecrow bagged nine metals in radio craft and three metals in radio respectively. Scarecrow was expected to dominate these segments, which are counted as its strengths. Contract too had seven metals in radio alone and one more in radio craft, while JWT's wins were spread out across categories.

In all, a total of 153 metals were given out across the eight categories on day two, Pratap Bose, chairman, Awards Governing Council, Goafest 2015, said. "The total number of golds given were 36, silver was 45 and bronze was 71," he said. The highest number of golds were given out in the broadcaster category, which was 14, he said. Abbies for broadcasters, like Publisher Abbies, was introduced last year. Some other categories that had a fairly high number of golds included public relations and brand activation and promotion. The number of golds given out in each of these was six.