Goafest,Day Two: India lands 15th position in Gunn Report 2007

It must have taken some insightful strategic thinking by the Goafest committee to put Donald Gunn as the first

speaker of the second day at the festival. Only a prominent and an enthralling speaker as Gunn could have gotten

people out of their bedclothes at 11.00 am in the morning after the previous night’s debauchery.
 

Starting out with the presentation with a commercial break, Gunn rolled out creatives of four commercials ‘No

backseat. The Smart for 2’ (Smart cars), ‘Mix them’ for Axe 3, ‘Silence the stain’ for Tide and the Dove film,

giving those present a taste of things to come.
 

In the most awarded countries category, India stood 15th in the Top 50 list. “It is a matter of just 3-4 years

before India will be knocking on the door of Top 10,” he said. While the U.S topped the list, Great Britain and

Argentina took the next two positions.
 

The Top 25 list of most awarded advertisers saw what Gunn called the “Return of the big boys” with Nike, Volkswagen,

Sony, Coca-Cola and Unilever taking the top five positions. Appearance of do-good organisations such as Greenpeace,

WWF and Amnesty International highlighted the high award winning propensity of ecovangelist ads due to their

dramatically different themes.
 

The Interactive category that appeared for the first time this year had the web campaign of Nike Plus take the top

place with Ikea and Volkswagen joined at the second and Nike Chain at the fourth. The category of Top 25 Directors

had Thanonchai Sornsrivichai get the top honours, a position that he has held for the last three years.
 

The Top Club, a name given to independent agencies in single countries who won in the traditional (TV and print)

media, had TBWAChiatDay & TBWAMedia Arts take the top spot while Saatchi & Saatchi and DDB London held the next two.

As a result of two highly acclaimed and awarded ads, both McCann Erickson and O&M made it to the list, with McCann

at joint 22nd and O&M at joint 45th. In the interactive media, Farfar (Stockholm), Crispin Porter & Bogusky (Miami)

bagged the top two positions. “The category had 23 different countries in the Top 50 list with nations such as

Romania, Peru and Philippines getting closer to the Top 10 list,” he said.
 

Finally, in the category of most awarded agency networks, BBDO Worldwide took the 1st position with 57 awards in TV,

71 in print and 28 in Interactive. Saatchi & Saatchi made a really big come-back from 7th in 2006 to 2nd in 2007 and

TBWA Worldwide made it to the third position.  It also had independent agencies BBH and W+K in 15th and 10th

positions respectively. “The rankings show that work, work and work is better than meetings and politics as a way to

run an agency,” Gunn summarised.

The Gunn Report is an annual rating of creative work based on the awards won by advertising agencies in nearly 60

different award shows.