We have some very exciting news to share!
The winners of the NNI Press Ad of the Year Awards will be announced over dinner at the Mansion House on Thursday, March 14th. This year, for the first time, we’ll present awards in three new media and advertising categories.
In advance of the event, we are delighted to announce the shortlist in those categories… so, without further ado, can we get a drum roll please...
With more categories up for grabs, we’re expecting this year’s NNI awards to generate a lot more entries than before. And rather than heap all that work on a single judge, this year we’ve decided to put together a judging panel to do the honours.
Heading up our jury is one of the ad industry’s hottest creative tickets: Matt Fitch and Mark Lewis of BBH London.
Art director Matt and copywriter Mark are the creative team behind the most talked-about ad of 2012, ‘Three Little Pigs’ for The Guardian, which went on to win… well, where do we start? It might be quicker to list the awards it didn’t win. BBH’s fable-inspired commercial won Gold for Film and Film Craft at Cannes, as well as just about every other significant honour available.
Matt and Mark, who have been friends since they were 12 years old, have worked together since 2009, serving stints at VCCP and BMB before joining BBH London three years ago. They also work, or have worked, on campaigns for Vodafone, Barclays, Google and many others.
Joining our creative duo on the panel, and bringing a wealth of expertise in media and marketing to the judging process, are Peter McPartlin and Gavin O'Doherty.
Peter McPartlin, who is Chief Executive of Today FM, has more than 30 years experience in the Irish media business with some of the country’s biggest agencies including Carat Ireland, where he was Strategy Director, and Aegis Media, where he was Business Director.
Peter has also worked in a consultancy capacity with the likes of Independent News & Media, UTV, The Irish Times, JC Decaux and, yes, National Newspapers of Ireland.
Gavin O’Doherty is the Marketing Director for Irish Distillers Pernod Ricard and he has more than 20 years experience in marketing with brands including Findus, Nestle and Coca-Cola, where he was part of the European Sponsorship committee responsible for all of the Coca-Cola sponsorship across the continent.
Gavin also spent five years with Publicis QMP, and says the best and worst thing about agency life was working with creatives. What??!! Gavin, it’s our pleasure to introduce Matt Fitch and Mark Lewis...
Sincere thanks to all four gents for taking part. We cannot wait.
The final deadline for creative, industry specific and Press Agency of the Year (media) categories is Wednesday, January 16th and POP entries should be submitted by February 7th.
Entry forms are all here: www.nni.ie/pressadoftheyear
You know and love the NNI Press Ad of the Year Awards and so do we. This year we‘ve decided to share that love and add more categories that will involve more people in the awards programme.
So, let’s start with the elements of the awards programme that you’ll recognise from previous years... NNI Press Ad of the Month has been moving along nicely since January and has produced an interesting shortlist of press ads and some very exciting monthly winners. Meanwhile, the regional competition has been collecting entries throughout the year.
As in previous years, these ads will move forward and compete for the much-coveted NNI Best Copywriting and NNI Best Art Direction awards and, for ads published in NNI regional titles, the NNI Regional Ad of the Year award.
But, this year, the competition won’t end there. No sirr-ee..
We want to give even more awards to great creative ads. Here’s why – there are lots of clever ads that do a great job within their category but that might find it difficult to compete against ads from categories that more enthusiastically embrace the creative process (or, let creatives run wild, depending on your perspective).
So, to give these ads a chance to shine, we’ve created a series of brand spanking new industry categories. Yippee!
It doesn’t matter whether you’ve entered the ad into the NNI Press Ad of the Month competition already or if you are entering it for the first time. You can even enter ads into more than one category if you like – we’re feeling generous. As long as your ad ran in at least one NNI newspaper during 2012 it’s eligible to compete. Entries into these categories should be made in hard copy on or before January 16th 2013.
The winners of all of the creative categories, including Best Copywriting and Best Art Direction will be eligible to win the grand prix, NNI Press Ad of the Year 2012.
See the full list of categories here.
Entry forms are available to download here
Once we'd decided to expand the competition we got really excited and tried to think of the best way to bring even more people within the NNI Press Ad of the Year Awards family. We already present awards to the media agencies that spend the most on press advertising and that increase their spend on press year-on-year, but until now we've never awarded media agencies or planners on the basis of HOW they invest their clients' money.
This year, we’ve created two new awards to honour the strategists who make press work for their clients: NNI Press Agency of the Year 2012 and NNI POP Planner of the Year (for planners who have less than three years experience in the business).
The competition for these awards will seek out the most creative strategies, the best use of budgets and the campaigns that garnered the best outcomes.
NNI Press Agency of the Year
The agency must demonstrate its ability to use press effectively. We recommend the submission of three examples of national press campaigns that ran during 2012.
To be eligible, a campaign must have run in at least one NNI national title.
Campaigns may have been supported by other media.
Entries should answer each of the questions and statements below for each campaign described:
Entries should include a maximum of 600 words per campaign and three creatives per campaign. All entries must be signed by the managing director.
The judges will be looking for evidence of:
Entry forms are available to download here
POP Planner of the Year
The Power of Press (POP) Planner of the Year award will be presented to an individual planner who has been working in press for three years or less (prior to October 2012) and who is judged to have demonstrated the best use of press in the creation of media strategies for clients.
There is no limit on the number of planners who can enter from any one agency.
The entrant should describe two campaigns that they have contributed to during the course of the past year, answering the following questions for each campaign:
Entries should run to a maximum of 600 words plus three creatives per campaign. All entries must be signed by the managing director.
The judges will be looking for evidence of:
Entry forms are available to download here
With all of the celebrations that we have planned it would be unforgiveable to leave out the businesses that fuel the ad industry – the clients. So, this year we'll be presenting a very special award for NNI Press Advertiser of the Year.
The shortlist for this award will be created through nomination by NNI national newspapers. A shortlist of brands will be invited to submit a short entry to explain the benefits that they have achieved through press advertising in 2012. If you're in the running you'll hear from us in January 2013.
The 2012 competition promises to be more exciting than ever and we can't wait to begin the judging process. This year, because we will be presenting more awards, judging will be completed by a judging team. The team will include experience on the creative and the media strategy side.
We'll leave it up to you to make the judges' jobs easier by showing them some really great press advertising – best of luck and see you at the NNI Press Ad of the Year Awards in March 2013!
| Category | How to enter |
| From NNI Press Ad of the Month Shortlist | |
| NNI Best Copywriting | Enter through the NNI Press Ad of the Month website www.nni.ie/pressadofthemonth Shortlisted ads should be submitted in hard copy by January 16th 2013 |
| NNI Best Art Direction | Enter through the NNI Press Ad of the Month website www.nni.ie/pressadofthemonth Shortlisted ads should be submitted in hard copy by January 16th 2013 |
| Industry-Specific Categories | |
| FMCG | Enter in hard copy by January 16th 2013 |
| Consumer Durables | Enter in hard copy by January 16th 2013 |
| Financial | Enter in hard copy by January 16th 2013 |
| B2B including Agriculture | Enter in hard copy by January 16th 2013 |
| Retail | Enter in hard copy by January 16th 2013 |
| Public Interest & Information | Enter in hard copy by January 16th 2013 |
| Grand Prix | |
| NNI Press Ad of the Year | Chosen from winners of all above awards |
| Special Awards | |
| NNI Regional Ad of the Year | Enter through the NNI Press Ad of the Month website www.nni.ie/pressadofthemonth |
| Charity/Voluntary Sector | Enter in hard copy by January 16th 2013 |
| NNI Press Agency of the Year | Enter in hard copy by January 16th 2013 |
| NNI POP Planner of the Year | Enter in hard copy by February 7th 2013 |
| NNI Press Advertiser of the Year | Selected from nominations by NNI |
