IPA Announces BOB Awards

The Institute of Practitioners in Advertising (IPA) has awarded its BOB awards (Best of the Best) to five agencies for producing consistently outstanding work throughout 2004.

Bartle Bogle Hegarty was awarded Best Creative Agency for a large company, while Wieden + Kennedy was awarded the Best Creative Agency for a small firm, after its work on Honda UK and Nike.

OMD was awarded Best Media Agency and Proximity London snapped up Best Direct Marketing/Integrated Agency. Glue was awarded Best Digital Agency for their work on T-Mobile, COI, Unilever Bestfoods, Royal Marines and Virgin Money.

The Awards panel was chaired by Lord Bell, chairman of Chime Communications. Commenting on the awards he said: “It was a great pleasure chairing the BOB Awards judging panel. There were clear winners in each category. The judges did all the work and my job was fairly easy. I think the BOBs are a great idea- the pursuit of excellence is what our business is all about and the BOBs ensure proper recognition for some excellent winners.”

Rory Sutherland, chairman of the IPA creative forum and vice chairman and creative director at OgilvyOne Worldwide added: “The quality of the individual pieces of work shortlisted for the BOB awards this year is on its own a credit to the winning agencies. But what’s more important is the winners’ capacity to produce work of this caliber across a range of client’s time after time.”

He continued: “The BOBs are important to the industry as they give us a rare chance to reward consistency of work rather than just singularities – and without confining our praise to just one department or a few individuals. So I’d like to congratulate everyone in the winning agencies for success truly deserved.”

The BOBs is the only scheme to review an award winning body of work that an agency produces, across all sectors. They were set up by the Creative Directors Forum in 2002 to provide an opportunity to reflect on the year’s winning work from the vantage point of hindsight and to recognise the talent behind a whole body of work, not just an ad.

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