Winners emerge at Zim advertising awards

“It's a great boost for us. We didn't know what to expect,” said Laura Taylor, who represented the agency at the awards.

“I guess we've been recognised as the best. We try to put some hard work, but the credit goes to our clients who allow us to do the good work,” an elated Taylor said.

DDH&M won in six out of the 15 categories, and was runner-up in six others.

It also won the overall Campaign of the Year Award sponsored by Multichoice Zimbabwe for its campaign on behalf of Olivine for the rebranding of Heinz products, and the runner-up prize for the campaign for the Population Services International around the stigmatisation of HIV/AIDS.

Stan Higgins, chairman of the organising committee for the awards, said, “Despite the extremely challenging economic environment in Zimbabwe, the Ngoma Awards have enjoyed a superb level of entries as the competition marks its fourth year. People within the advertising communications industry continue to support the competition and continue to strive for excellence in the work that they do.”

Judy Macdonald, chairperson of the judging panel, paid tribute to “all those who took time and trouble to enter the competition” which had over 170 entries.

“The volume of entries was surprising, given the current climate in Zimbabwe,” said Mcdonald who, however, noted that judges were disappointed with the overall standard of the entries.

“In many cases, branding was weak and few of the entries had a specific ‘call to action'. The ads went so far but seldom far enough. Creativity was poor and, on more than one occasion, the cry of ‘boring' was heard during the judging. In some cases, the adverts were actually confusing,” Macdonald said.

Hence, the judges decided to make awards only in categories where the winning entry achieved a score of over 80%, with categories where top entries achieved a lesser score only receiving a highly commended certificate.

Notwithstanding the stringent scoring, however, all categories had winners except the Advertising & Publicity Club Award for Craft, which had only one entry, therefore no competition, and the Aquarius Public Relations Award for Jingle that had a highly commended certificate.

Higgins noted, “There is still, however, an argument used each year by a number of agencies along the lines of ‘our ads are not worth of an industry competition'.

“This is nonsense – surely no one produces advertising of which they are not proud – neither client nor agency.”

For the judges report and other information on the awards, contact Judy Macdonald on or tel +263 4 870 306/ 883 734