Paddy Thunder, an art director with Rothco and Donal O’Higgins, a copywriter with ICAN, walked off with the gold award in the annual BestYET advertising competition which was held in Vienna.
This is the second year in a row that a team from Ireland scooped the gold award. A second team from Ireland made up of Mikey Fleming and Sam Moorehead, both of Cawley Nea\TBWA picked up the bronze award.
The BestYET is an annual competition sponsored by the European newspaper industry and aims to promote the craft of press advertising among young agency creative teams.
Both teams were chosen to represent Ireland having won the local leg of the competition which is sponsored by The Irish Times in association with the Institute of Creative Advertising and Design, (ICAD).
“We were defending our title against the best of the best in Europe”, said Aidan Bolger of the Irish Times, referring to the 2-day competition that brought together 20 of the best teams from 10 countries around Europe. “By any standards this was an outstanding result”.
Gavin O’Sullivan, President of ICAD added: “This is testimony to the quality of creativity in Irish advertising. We should be proud of this result as it raises our profile on the international stage”.
Pearse McCaughey, a senior creative, was Ireland’s representative on the international judging panel. He said: “It was generally agreed that the standard of creativity this year was the best so far in the history of the competition”.
The competition brief was for Mozartkugein, a well known Austrian brand of chocolate. For the winners there is all expenses paid 4-day trip to the 2013 Cannes Lions Advertising Festival. Next year the competition will be staged in Ireland.
