The TMP Worldwide advertising agency has won the gold prize for its campaign for the family-run organic dairy company, Glenisk, in the National Newspapers of Ireland's inaugural "Press Builds Brands" initiative.
TMP received a €30,000 cash prize while Glenisk has been awarded a press advertising budget estimated to be worth more than €1 million, to be spent across all of the NNI's 18 titles.
The GospelTM/Vizeum agency and Initiative/Bloom both won silver awards for their campaigns for the Lifefibre company and Brady Family Ham respectively. They each won a cash prize of €15,000 while both companies will receive advertising budgets of about €750,000 to be spent across the 18 titles.
The awards were presented yesterday by the Minister for Agriculture and Food, Mary Coughlan.
Speaking at the event, NNI chairman, Gavin O'Reilly, said the Press Builds Brands initiative had been launched with the vision that could potentially create the next Ballygowan. "This is still our hope, and we've really enjoyed embarking on this journey with 22 indigenous food companies" he said.
"Within each company there is a story of imagination, entrepreneurship, hard work and great products to be told.
"We're delighted to have initiated some of that story-telling and the winners will get to exploit the power of NNI's 18 national newspaper titles with all the different sizes, supplements and product options available," Mr O'Reilly said.
The press campaigns for the 22 food and drinks companies that participated were exhibited at Croke Park's Hogan Suite yesterday. The companies are all relatively unknown in advertising terms and included bread and cake manufacturers, chocolate makers, meat producers, bottled water companies, confectioners and others.
Each company was assigned to an ad agency that was invited to create a press campaign designed to "revolutionise the fortunes" of the brand in question.
All 22 campaigns were judged by a panel including C&C group chairman, Maurice Pratt, Tom McGowan, the former president of the Advertisers Association of Ireland, and advertising and fiction writer, Catherine Donnelly.
The three winners were selected on the basis of creative execution, advertising effectiveness and brand and media strategy.
