JURY CHAIRMAN

HOWARD PASTER | PUBLIC RELATION SAND PUBLIC AFFAIRS | WPP

The second year of the WPPED CREAM awards brought an increase in entries in public relations/public affairs, as the competition has clearly garnered more attention among the agencies. We had 16 submissions from seven agencies, with fewer than half (seven) from the United States, a strong reflection of the global nature of our business. There were three categories for PR/PA submissions: consumer marketing, business-to-business marketing, and corporate and public affairs.

We were fortunate again this year to have Marilyn Laurie and Bill Nielsen, retired heads of communications at AT&T and Johnson & Johnson, respectively, as our PR/PA judges.

The judges were extremely impressed by the quality of all the submissions and spent a long time deciding on the award winners. After much discussion, the decision was made to present the 2008 Crème de la Crème award to Cohn & Wolfe for the 'Make Every Day Exciting' campaign, done for Ford in China. Minutes from the judging refer to the campaign as 'really smart', 'clever', and making 'good innovative use of research'.

The clear evidence that the campaign helped to reposition Ford in China impressed the judges, who looked for evidence of results in all the entries. As one of the judges said, 'this was really hard to pull off and they did it well'.

That this campaign was chosen for the top award is especially significant in a year in which there were many highly regarded entries.

Indeed, it is a credit to all the agencies that the judges specifically requested I call some of those who did not win, to express the judges' respect for the excellent work submitted.