365 Budapest

In the successful TV series based around the lives of ad people titled “Mad Men”, a character said “This place has more failed artists and intellectuals than the Third Reich” about his fictional agency. We, who work in a place like this, often feel what they were talking about. We all have our little pet projects dear to our hearts, but a lot of them are stillborn – we often lack the energy or the dedication to carry them to term.
But not Molnár Zsolt, one of our brightest young art directors. After working on pannon all day, he still has juice left to finish his monumental undertaking, his website: www.365budapest.com
I’m not gonna spoil what the year long experiment in photography is about, but it’s pretty awesome. Check it out.

A short list of accomplishments

Two of our 2008 works ended up on shortlist at the Ringier Népszabadság Awards 2008, in two categories: Print ad of the year (Pannon mobil internet campaign) and Creative ad of the year (Fanta stickers). This is pretty cool news – especially since it meant a party invitation. Since you can’t gain weight from free food, we were happy to visit the gala, where t-shirt wearing creatives could mingle with suits from clients while watching crazy dance numbers on the stage.
Thank you for the nomination, we had a lot of fun!

 

Our nominated pannon ad. Get it?

 

Planning our terrible revenge at the party – eating our weight in chicken for every award we didn’t get.

Start up your brain

Brief history of the greatest lastest Sport ad

Sport is the chocolate bar that boosts your brain-power. OK. But. How does your brain work  ? Just think  . It runs from one idea to another, hits something then goes the other way. Just like a pinball. So we got the smallest camera in commercial use. But it couldn’t fit into anybody’s brain. So we just had to build the pinball. Actually, five of them. In Prague. In a big-big studio with all the Chech pinball specialists. After it, it was just plain play-play-play, serious work. And some sightseeing while the pinballs were getting their beauty sleep for the big shooting day. Add to the mix a day of freezing shooting (pretending to be spring) in Budapest, some Miraculous places in Prague, traditional Chech kitchen...and bar...and look what came out:

The Scrabble ads conquered French Alps

Our Scrabble campaign received the Central and Eastern Europe Grand Cristal at the Méribel Ad Festival. The poster series which has been previously honored with a Grand Prix at the Golden Drum and was shortlisted in Cannes, won the Grand Cristal in the outdoor category. The Central Europe Cristal Awards jury judged over 443 campaigns. Agencies, clients and producers from 11 countries entered the competition to receive the Cristal. The jury members have rewarded Cristals for the best creations in different media: film, press, outdoor, cyber, radio etc. The ambition of the Festival is to promote European advertising creativity and is graced each year by Donald Gunn.

   

Getting Kreativ

Since you’re our regular reader, you must’ve learned a lot about our agency. You can read posts about our more exciting times, when we win awards and pitches, or simply party (for more information see our X-mas post).
But you couldn’t read much about who pulls all the strings. Every great man in histroy has a strong woman behind him, and we like to think every great agency has one too.
If you want to know more about her, go over to kreativ.hu to read the online version of Kreativ Magazin's December issue cover story -  an interview with our CEO,  Andrea Peto-Dickinson, about her thoughts on leading Ogilvy.

Our ECD’s „Elevator” film wona Silver at the Epica

Ogilvy Group Ukraine won a Silver at the 22nd annual Epica Awards festival with the „Elevator” film created by Bartek, our Executive Creative Director, who used to be the creative director of the Kyev Ogilvy office before. The widely celebrated Elevator commercial has been previously honored with Bronze at the Kyev International Advertising Festival, Gold at the Moscow Advertising Festival, and Silver at Golden Hammer. Adding to that, the spot made it to the Finalists at Golden Drum and became the CUP Awards Nominee. The TV spot’s industry recognition is also justified with the solid commercial results it yielded. Developed for ISystem International telecommunications company, the spot proved to be its  most effective TV commercial ever generating 40% increase in sales. The spot has been viewed by over 100,000 people on YouTube, which is the biggest number for a TV commercial produced in Central and Eastern Europe so far.
Congratulations to Bartek and to the whole Kyev team!

New creative director joined our team!

Kismarty-Lechner Balázs joined us as creative director this month. His primary role will be to lead the IBG (International Brand Group) creative team. Balázs has been working in advertising for more than a decade – he used to work at Grey, Publicis and spent some time in New York at a local ad agency. During his career he worked on leading brands like Coca-Cola, T-Online, Renault and Hewlett Packard.  He also used to teach at the University of Applied Arts for years. Balázs has a clear vision how he wants to work with his people:
"I like working with a team, and I like working in a team. When I was teaching I always tried to give tasks where the students were able to work together in a team from the beginning till the end. I know talented people who could only show their talents after they started to work in a group where their ideas could become reality. A good group can hit the highest level they have ever dreamt – that’s what I believe in."

Pannon „1000 free minutes” campaign Silver Effie Winner

Our agency’s 1000 free minutes campaign for Pannon received the Silver Effie at the Effie Awards held October 31, in Budapest. The Effie Awards honor the most significant achievement in the business of marketing communications: ideas that work. Effie winners represent client and agency teams who tackled a marketplace challenge with a big idea and knew exactly how to communicate their message to their customer.



The objective of the award winning campaign was to increase and strengthen the number of Pannon’s postpaid customers on a saturated market, and stand out from the tough competition communication. Thanks to the campaign, sales results were 85,77% higher than originally planned.



Congratulations, Pannon team!

We can do it. TWICE

Great news! Our agency has won the recent Pannon brand communications pitch. „Winning this pitch proved again that our devotion to brand building and our commited team makes our agency the best solution for Pannon.” – said our CEO, Andrea Pető-Dickinson.
Ogilvy was first awarded the Pannon account in November 2005, launching the complete re-branding campaign and developing the new communication platform. „We are thrilled to win this pitch, because this means that we can further build the brand that we have been stewarding for three years now.” – added Andras Barta, the leading creative of the pitch team.
The new assignment will begin from January 1., 2009 and includes the development and execution of the Pannon brand communications activities.

Congratulations to the whole pitch team!

Ogilvy Budapest wins one Grand Prix and 2 Silvers at the Golden Drum

Interview with Bartek Rams, Executive Creative Director: