FP7 Doha win Lynx agency of the year

It’s late, we’ve just got back from celebrating with FP7 Doha, Lowe and the rest of MCN at the C Bar, but in case you didn’t already know, FP7 Doha won agency of the year, Starcom media agency of the year, and Leo Burnett Cairo walked away with the print grand prix.

More tomorrow…

Update: Some highlights. Only the grand prixs and golds here, for everything else check the Dubai Lynx website.
Agency of the year: 1st FP7 Doha; 2nd FP7 Dubai; 3rd Team Y&R Dubai

TV/cinema:
Grand prix – FP7 Cairo for Coca-Cola
Golds – Leo Burnett Beirut’s ‘Stop the suffering’ for P&G; FP7 Doha for Samsung; Lowe’s ‘Staying alive’ for MTV;
Print
Grand prix – Leo Burnett Cairo’s ‘Egyptian hotdog’ for Heinz
Golds – FP7 Doha’s ‘Ink, oil and mud’ for Samsung; FP7 Doha’s work for Aramex; FP7 Dubai’s ‘Gummi bears’ for the Brainobrain Education Program.
Outdoor
Grand prix – FP7 Dubai’s ‘Gummi bears’
Golds – The Tribe’s ‘U2 3D’; FP7 Doha’s work for Aramex
Integrated
Gold – Leo Burnett Beirut’s ‘Khede Kasra’ campaign for the Hariri Foundation.
Media agency of the year
1st Starcom; 2nd OMD Dubai; 3rd Leo Burnett Beirut
Media
Grand prix – Starcom’s ‘Galaxy fallen in love again’
Golds – Leo Burnett Beirut’s ‘Khede Kasra’; Starcom’s ‘Galaxy fallen in love again’; Starcom’s ‘New day, new dawn’; Impact BBDO Kuwait’s ‘Crashed mobile’ for Wataniya; Starcom’s ‘Your path, our car, let’s pl@y’; Memac Ogilvy’s ‘One breasted mannequin’;

‘We’re ashamed of Arabia’ says Middle East ad man

The Middle East’s advertising industry is plagued by a deep-seated shame over its Arabian roots, said the creative director of Leo Burnett Cairo during a seminar ahead of tonight’s Dubai Lynx awards.

In a passionate plea for the region’s creatives to raise their game by embracing local culture, Mohamed Hamdalla said an obsession with echoing Western ideas was stifling progress.

“The problem in the Middle East is that we are trying to be more Western than the Westerners,” said Hamdalla. “The only thing we can do is to so something that’s never been seen before.  We need to find an Arabian voice. Right now we are just copying.”

He continued: “Why can’t we make people look at us as human beings instead of terrorists? We are just as good as everyone else but we have to understand that first before anyone else will understand it. We are ashamed of being Arabs and we shouldn’t be. We are beautiful people.

“I think we are in such a good position now because we have never tapped into Arabia. The world is saturated with Swedish and Brazilian culture in advertising but they (consumers) have never seen Arabia. We are in a position to change the world.”

Hamdalla was speaking at The Lynx Debate alongside Ramsey Naja, chief creative officer of JWT MENA, Peter Bidenko, integrated creative director of Impact BBDO Dubai and Andrew Durkan, creative director at The Tribe’s Dubai office.

Naja said: “What we look for in advertising are wonderful stories and often what this culture – that is slightly embarassed to be what it is – looks for is a sanitised version. We call it ‘New York in a dish-dash’.”

One answer, it was suggested, is to nurture homegrown talent rather than relying on the quick fix of recruiting from abroad.

So what do you think? Is the Middle East’s creative output just a pale imitation of what works in the US and Europe? Is the Middle Eastern advertising community afraid, or even ashamed, to show true Arabian culture to the rest of the world?

Lynx predictions – ‘Khede Kasra’ to win the day

The TV and integrated shortlists are out and it’s easy to see where international judge Steffan Postaer was coming from when he let rip at the quality of the TV work earlier this week. However, while this may not be a vintage year for TV, there is the odd little nugget of gold if you dig deep enough.

Eliot over at AdNation tells us he’s got the winners list in his hands, but we’re going with our gut. So, here are our favourites for gold in the TV: FP7 Dubai’s ‘Bird’, ‘Cake’ and ‘Dog’ for Sony; Leo Burnett Beirut’s ‘Stop the suffering’ for P&G; TBWA\Raad’s ‘Long-time-no-see Saudi kiss’ for MTV Arabia; and Lowe’s ‘Staying alive’ for MTV.

In the integrated, Leo Burnett Beirut’s ‘Khede Kasra’ for The Hariri Foundation, and Memac Ogilvy’s ‘Fight breast cancer’ are our top tips. But ‘Khede Kasra’ to steal the glory.

Steffan Postaer explains his Dubai Lynx outburst

The judging of the Dubai Lynx’s TV and cinema category got off to a controversial start on Sunday thanks to comments from international judge Steffan Postaer (see post below).

In a blog first leaked by mUmBRELLA, the  chairman and chief creative officer of Euro RSCG Chicago described the region’s TV entries as “primitive”.

Here he explains himself exclusively to Campaign:

“The festival was cross with me for being so harsh and I didn’t want to make enemies in this part of the world so I told them to go ahead and cut it [his blog posting] down if it makes them happy. And they did and that’s fine and in the end we will be awarding television campaigns so all is not lost, it’s not that big a drama.

“In the end when you look at it from different perspectives the second and third time, there was quite a bit of work that had merit. I, and the rest of the judges, on first pass were pretty despondent about the whole lot of it actually. I rushed to my computer to file this blog and I shouldn’t have done that. If I’d just waited a day to discuss it, some things would have risen further up than they did.

“I think you’re moving towards international standards but international standards might have made for a much harsher awards show. We were reminded with all due respect that this was a regional show and not an international show from around the world, it’s from the region. While we’re judges from Europe, Asia and the States we shouldn’t be looking at the work purely from our own feet, so it’s a little bit of a grey area.

“The good news is I saw a lot of very excellent work in print and outdoor, as good as anywhere. There’s really some beautiful pieces from a bunch of places, from a number of clients in posters and in press. It was the radio and television that I found lacking.”

The TV/cinema shortlist is announced today.