Hamish McLennan and Tony Granger announce Y&R best ever Cannes performance with 49 Lions
As part of an ongoing strategy to enhance the creative reputation and overall business performance of Young & Rubicam, global chief creative officer Tony Granger and global chief executive Hamish McLennan have announced the agency’s best performance in the history of Y&R’s participation in the Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival 2010.
Just two years into the partnership between Granger and McLennan – who share and drive the agency’s “turnaround” vision – Young & Rubicam culminates its week with 49 Lions in total, up from 19 in 2009. Young & Rubicam was named a Network of the Year (third place) as a result of its aggregated performance at the 2010 Cannes Lions. Y&R USA (13 Lions), United Kingdom (seven Lions), Tel Aviv (four Lions) and Dubai (four Lions) led the global network as the agency’s most awarded offices. George Patterson Y&R Australia also contributed four Lions.
George Patterson Y&R Melbourne won three Lions – Gold in Mediaand Silver in Direct for Cadbury Picnic ‘It’s no Picnic’ and Bronze inOutdoor for its Defence Force Recruitment campaign for the RoyalAustralian Navy, ‘Frigate’, ‘Submarine’, ‘Transport’. George PattersonY&R Brisbane won a Silver Lion in Design for Asia Pacific Breweries’Beer Coasters’
“It’s been just over two years in Young & Rubicam’s reinvention, and we’re starting to see exciting results,” said Granger. “I’m grateful for the talented team we’ve put in place across the network – their spirit and tenacity is inspirational. Their hard work is reflected in our day to day relationship with our clients, as well as our performance at Cannes and the other leading award shows.”
Young & Rubicam’s flagship New York office was named runner up for Agency of the Year with its 13 Lions including its first ever Cyber Lion. It was also the only US-based agency to take home a Press Lion this year. The agency was shortlisted for over 150 pieces of work from around its global network (compared to 32 in 2009).
McLennan said, “Our strategy of creatively re-invigorating Y&R is on course and has been a huge success thus far. We’re incredibly excited for the path ahead. Young & Rubicam NY won more awards than any other agency in the United States, and was the second-most awarded agency in the world, just after AlmapBBDO in Brazil. This means that this year we beat the agencies whose claim to fame is their creative work — Goodby, Silverstein + Partners, Crispin & Porter, Weiden & Kennedy, TBWA, as well as BBDO New York. Closer to home, we had the highest-scoring agency and network within all of WPP.”
Y&R’s Cannes performance comes on the heels of being awarded Agency Network of the Year for both the Art Director’s Club and the New York Festivals.
The agency has also seen strong new business success driven in part by the addition of such clients as Virgin Atlantic, Office Depot, Pirelli, LG and Bacardi. In BRIC markets, including China the office has turned the corner with the recent win of the massive GAP account. Y&R’s Singapore office in June 2010 landed the prestigious Tiger Beer business. Key talent upgrades have been appointed in all major business hubs around the world.
16 Comments
Fair enough. It’s a spin-based industry.
But a cake with amazing cream on the top and a hideously dry base is still not great to eat.
A little cryptic but should still make sense.
I think we’re all – well I am – clever enough to unravel your metaphor, 3:11.
And getting a Cannes Lion doesn’t make that Award School standard Navy campaign any better. It simply proves that awards are meaningless rubbish.
Print campaigns for some huge clients too – like superglue, period relief pills, a second hand clothing store, a light dog food and the biggest of them all, the singapore museum of toys.
Way to go guys.
4:00…yes, those kind of awards are meaningless rubbish but if you look at the work that won most of the Grand Prix and Gold awards, I would say they are not only inspiring but in many cases teaching our industry how to move forward and survive the aftermath of the recession.
The Y&R thing is rubbish though. A global hunt for awards that ended in a ton of bronze and shortlist awards and the occasional gold print campaign. The math added up to them being towards the top but it means NOTHING.
No prizes for guessing which agencies the people who write these negative posts come from.
Good point 9.17.
I guess their success is all fake if they are only winning Gold Lions for integrated brand campaigns on little scam clients like Cadbury, LG, Colgate, Land Rover, Sears, BBC, Harvey Nicholas, etc, etc, etc.
Are you guys on crack!
That is a big turn around from an agency we all said would never be a contender.
They now only have BBDO & DDB in front of them.
I’m not to jealous or proud to say well done.
Is it me or is the print category at Cannes getting worse by the year. They should just scrub it, seriously.
The only ones who seem to take print seriously is S.E Asia and Brazil – no guesses as to why.
6 months ago, you guys wouldn’t have even bothered to comment on Y&R. Too low-key and under the radar for you positive chaps. Now that they’ve started to do well, the nonsense begins. All very predictable.
Well done Y&R. Now that you’ve had some success, get ready for everyone to try and bring you down.
Well done to tony for winning lions. But it’s not inspirational and industry shouldn’t work that way. Droga and davis tried to do this for publicis and jwt but now they found a more meaningful way to lead creative. I give them credit though for lifting the standard of LG ad.
11.40
Don’t have a problem with the awards the won on big clients, some nice work in there albeit mainly above the line TV, very little integrated work.
It’s inflating their tally with obviously scam print work for bullshit clients like museum of toys and then crowing about it.
Take away the print and the tally for a network that size with the talent they have bought over the last two years? Meh.
So many poisoned people on this blog.
Well done to Y&R, they have done well this year.
But the “Toy Museum”, seriously, what’s the idea: if anything the illustrators should’ve got an award in craft.
Once again SE Asia prove they’re a one trick pony. Cannes must be getting rich off SE Asia’s award entries into print and outdoor. It seems to be the only categories that SE Asia can win anything in.
Good stuff … great to see a great agency back on track resiting the usual.
From nowhere to #3 in two years ain’t bad.
Watch this space!
Resiting, Old Y&R guy? WTF?