The Creative Guild Kidlat Awards were held last weekend and JWT Manila sent a sizable delegation to Boracay.
This year's theme was Change is Good, sounding out the call for a change in thinking. The week was a resounding success, a testament to the efforts of our own ECD Dave Ferrer, who was on the Guild board and was in charge of promoting the event.
The event had esteemed guest judges Jureeporn Thaidumrong, John Merrifield and larger than life design icon Stefan Sagmeister (seen here with Dave Ferrer) come over and evaluate the best that Philippine advertising had to offer. The judging itself was quite brutal, as witnesses RJ Alfonso and Kara Bautista (who were taking photos of the judging) could only describe the process as "Grabe!"
Only 48 Metals survived from the over half a thousand entries submitted, and the merits of each were thoroughly scrutinized and debated.
Sagmeister and Merrifield both gave entertaining and eye opening talks which we can only hope help inspire those in attendance to come up with more world beating ideas.
The Awards night itself featured celebrity transexual Bebe
Gandanghari, formerly known as Rustom Padilla, as master of ceremonies. Or should that be mistress? Gandanghari was quite the hit among the audience, and was a proud representative of Change.
During the course of the night, last year's Hall of Fame Inductee Dave Ferrer presented the trophy to this year's honorees, Joel Limchoc of BBDO and Merlee Jayme of DM9.
Receiving the Lifetime Achievement Award was the man who built J. Walter Thompson Manila, J.J. Calero. A record of sorts for a suit to receive the honor from the Creative Guild.
Calero himself was there to receive the award and gave a heartfelt speech about the industry he loved so much.
The night saw several agencies win their fair share of metals, as award after award was handed.
JWT Manila came away with two bronzes, Shell Are We There Yet? for Radio and Nokia Aruba Live Radio for Radio Campaign. Congratulations to the teams who brought home the Kidlat! Creative Director Joe Dy accepted the award for Shell, and joined Copywriter Maan Bautista and Art Director Javey Villones onstage for Nokia. Copywriter Kara Bautista was unable to make it to the stage for Shell.
Other JWT finalists include Atrieve Mailer for Design, Sunsilk Hairclimb for Outdoor, Ricco Renzo Paint Tubes for Direct and UP Mountaineers Spoilers for Radio.
While the bronzes and finalists were hard-earned and well deserved, the total haul was definitely a far cry from last year's showing. Perhaps last week was a much needed wake up call for us all.
Thankfully, no untoward incident happened to RJ this time around.
In the meantime, here are some of the creative materials developed by JWT Manila and Zzing for the Kidlat Awards.
Kabhoom! The Kidlat online game - Click here to play it!
The Kidlat Card was also designed by JWT Manila.
Aside from print ads, JWT Manila also developed a radio spot calling for registrants.
We leave you with this beautiful Boracay sunset taken by Art Director Bob Cruz. (From whose Facebook account most of these photos were taken. Along with some shots stolen off Danni Lim's account.)
Most people in JWT know him as the towering dude who plays his air drums and snaps his fingers while shuffling around the office and down Paseo de Roxas. (No, he's not delirious, he's just singing to himself.) Among the Creatives, he's better known as Sneaking Uy, for his sly and subtle ways of slipping them that much revered document often referred to as The J.O.
