O&M beats Mudra, wins Creative Abbies

With five golds and one Grand Prix, Ogilvy & Mather (O&M) beat the Mudra group for the second time in a row to emerge as the winner at the Creative Abbies — the final and key set of awards declared at Goafest 2011.

O&M had a tally of 31 trophies lower than Mudra’s 37. But Mudra had two golds, lower than O&M as well as another rival Leo Burnett, which bagged three golds. Leo Burnett’s total tally of awards was 20. This included three golds, eight silvers and nine bronze trophies, while Mudra had two golds, 13 silvers and 22 bronze metals. O&M, in addition to its five golds and the Grand Prix, had eight silvers and 17 bronze metals.

Despite having the maximum haul, Mudra was third in the pecking order based on the number of golds it won.

There were other key award winners during the evening, such as McCann Worldgroup, which walked away with two golds, three silvers and 11 bronze metals, and Creativeland Asia, which had two golds, four silvers and three bronze metals. JWT, which has been a key winner in the past, had to be content with three silvers and three bronze metals, its worse performance in the past three years.

“In all, a total of 225 awards were given across 46 organisations at this year’s Abbies,” said Shashi Sinha, chairman of the Advertising Governing Council (AGC), a committee of nine members set up to ensure the sixth edition of the Goafest was conducted smoothly. Last year, 235 awards were given, though Sinha did not specify the number of agencies.

But advertising industry sources said the number of agencies last year was lower. This year, McCann-Erickson, Contract Advertising and Saatchi & Saatchi decided to participate after opting out last year. McCann-Erickson had been boycotting the Goafest for the past three years, while Contract had boycotted the fest for two years. The notable absentees this year were creative hotshops Taproot, Publicis, and Ambience. The campaigns feted in the evening were Vodafone’s Blackberry Boys (O&M), Cadbury Dairy Milk (O&M), Happydent (McCann), Hippo (Creativeland Asia), Electrolux (Mudra) and Bajaj Exhaust Fans (Leo Burnett).

But, the evening belonged to O&M. The team danced wildly every time the agency’s name was called out. The win comes at a time when the judging process has been tightened to avoid pitfalls like the one witnessed last year when jurors were found voting for their agency’s work. Two rounds of judging and back checks ensured the scam ads were weeded out.