DUBAI LYNX 2012
The Dubai Lynx Festival, now in its fourth year, took place last week. Editor-in-Chief, Michael Weinzettl, takes a look at this year's Grand Prix winners.
The annual Dubai International Advertising Festival, according to their website, “is a meeting place for the Middle East and North Africa region (MENA) advertising and communications industry, where they can learn, be inspired, network and celebrate.”
The festival has a relatively short history and took place early last week. Lürzer’s Archive was present by way of a workshop organised by the Archive Creative Club, an initiative of Nnamdi Ndu, Managing Director of CHINI Productions and the distributor of Lürzer’s Archive in Africa.
It was originally Nnamdi’s idea to create a periodical event in which top creatives talk about their favourite print, film and digital campaigns in the latest issue of Lürzer’s Archive. Previously, creatives such as Gideon Amichay, Chief Creative Officer at Shalmor Avnon Amichay/Y&R, Tel Aviv, and Tolga Büyükdoganay, Creative Director at Ogilvy & Mather in Frankfurt am Main, as well as Karpat Polat, President & Creative Director, DDB&Co Istanbul, Turkey have all presented their favorites to a group of ad creatives and students via webcam to events in Nigeria and Ghana.
At Dubai Lynx 2012, the creatives making their picks appeared in person: Peter Bidenko, Regional Executive Creative Director, Leo Burnett Dubai/Lower Gulf, reviewed the digital segment of the magazine.Shahir Zag, Chief Creative Officer Y&R MENA discussed the print ads featured, and Mounir Harfouche, Regional Creative Director at Lowe MENA presented his pick of the most exciting films in Vol. 1-12.
From what I hear they met with a rapt audience and the Archive Creative Club workshop had more participants than the BMW-related ‘Branded Entertainment Versus Product Placement’ presentation which took place the same day.
Image: Nnamdi Ndu and Lürzer’s Archive Sales Rep, Sheila King, at Dubai Lynx 2012
Video: Panda Cheese 'Never say "No" to Panda'
But I should like to make use of the rest of my blog entry to write a bit about the top awards handed out at Dubai Lynx in print and film. The Grand Prix for the best print campaign went to a series of extremely well-crafted posters for the Batelco telecommunications company that advertised their directory from Dubai-based agency, FP7/DXB (featured in Lürzer’s Archive Vol. 3/2011).
Apart from the quibble of the English and also German figure of speech of “sweeping something under the rug” that came to my mind when I first saw the campaign a year ago (which is of course the very opposite of what the ads are trying to convey), this is excellent work . You should however, see it as large as possible to be able to appreciate the astonishing degree of care and digital craft that went into these ads - surely a deserved winner of the Print Grand Prix.
Which is more than I can say of the Film Grand Prix that went to a couple of spots for Kalbaz Crisps from Elephant, Cairo. They’re alright, even funny in a deadpan kind of way, but compared to something like the work for Skittles, which these commercials seem to owe something to, they seem rather ordinary and not really up to Western standards - and this also applies to the execution.
Interestingly, no Grand Prix was awarded this year in Film Craft. Last year this prize, along with a Gold, was taken by the much better campaign for Panda Cheese (also from Elephant), whose protagonist, I wouldn’t be surprised, may have come to haunt Egyptian consumers - as well as members of international ad juries - in their dreams...
For the full list of winners, visit Dubai Lynx 2012.
