Written by Davide Abbatescianni on Sep 23, 2019. Posted in Awards and Festivals

British agency AMV BBDO wins big at the Kinsale Shark Awards

It’s a wrap for the 57th edition of the Kinsale Shark Awards, Ireland’s leading festival of commercial creativity. The four-day event took place from 18-21 September at the Actons Hotel and showcased some of the best international works in the fields of design, short filmmaking, music videos and advertising.

The Sharks were brought to a close by the awards ceremony of the advertising strand, which kicked off on Saturday morning. The prizegiving was enriched by the presence of four illustrious industry speakers, namely Vicki Maguire from Grey London, creative director Dave Dye, Mark Denton from COY! Communications and Noel Drew from The Mill.

Maguire’s talk focused on the power of creativity in “saving the day” during “these ridiculous times, while the world is on fire”. In her speech, the CCO highlighted the role and responsibility of commercial creativity in fighting against issues such as the climate change and promoting positive values such as gender equality, diversity and integration.

In the early afternoon, Dave Dye spoke about recent his five-week experience working for Highgate based Italian-style deli Limone. In particular, the creative director analysed the family-run deli’s strategies to advertise a selection of own-brand traditional products such as cheese, coffee, panettone, olive oil and ciabatta bread. Dye worked hard to improve Limone’s sales, but at the end of his study he realised that – unsurprisingly – humour, simplicity, respect, specificity and truth were the only possible keys to success. In this respect, Dye admitted: “The annoying thing is that I already knew these things thirty years ago”.

Forty-five minutes later, veteran Mark Denton, who also acted as a jury president, introduced the new President’s Award and delivered a humorous presentation of his turbulent career. Last year, Denton was invited to host a talk and was sitting in the print jury.

Next, experiential director Noel Drew’s speech, entitled ‘Buttons & Beyond’, centred on the history of human interaction with technology and the future of immersive UX. During the first three days of the event, The Mill was also presenting a number of its experiential projects in the Immersive Lounge of the Actons Hotel. The fully immersive VR experience ‘Paraiso Secreto’, created for Corona in collaboration with Amsterdam’s W+K, was on display as well as the company’s pioneering real-time animation puppetry system ‘Mill Mascot’.

IAPI’s CEO Charley Stoney highlighted the crucial importance of the event: “The Shark Awards have always been an important feature in the Irish advertising calendar. The stunning location, the sense of being surrounded by fellow creatives, not just from the advertising sector but from film, animation and design, gives attendees the sense of belonging to a much wider and more international community. For an Irish agency winning a Shark will always be something to be proud of as a testament to their creativity.”

Speaking about the current state of the Irish advertising industry and its challenges, she added: “2018 saw growth in the industry with 40% of members increasing their headcount and overall increases in creative turnover and media billings. The perceived challenges ahead are similar for both creative and media agencies, chiefly being staff retention, reduced marketing budgets, clients in-housing services and staff wage demands. For media agencies, competition from FAANGs, clients moving digital buying in house and increasing client expectations appear to be the biggest challenges. For creative agencies, Brexit and achieving volume growth are seen as considerable challenges. Diversification of services and investing in new areas of expertise are high on the list of opportunities that agencies can embrace as well as the trend towards integrated media and creative, further global business and in-housing production.”

Finally, the prestigious Grand Prix was awarded to British creative agency AMVBBDO for its Libresse commercial ‘Viva la Vulva’, directed by Australia’s Kim Gehrig.

Main Award Winners:

Advertiser of the Year – Final Cut

Production Company of the Year – Stink Films

Irish Production Company of the Year – Motherland

International Design Agency of the Year – Rose

Irish Design Agency of the Year – Lightscape

Irish Agency of the Year – Chemistry

International Agency of the Year – 
AMV
BBDO

Network of the Year – BBDO

The full list of shortlisted works and award recipients is available here.

This year’s Kinsale Shark Awards were sponsored by Final Cut, Screenscene, Windmill Lane, Panalux, Adstream, Leap, Maximum Media, Panavision, Peach, Universal Music Group, the Institute of Advertising Practitioners in Ireland (IAPI) and Screen Ireland, the country’s main audiovisual agency.

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