Records broken at Cresta 2021

More Grand Prix honours have been given than ever before at this year’s Cresta Awards - a total of 12.

USA and German agencies lead the way in taking the Grand Prix, while Havas Middle East broke through as the first Cresta Grand Prix from its region. Indiana Productions and Riff Raff Films headed up a high quality field of production wins with both taking double Grand Prix.

BBDO Germany is the only agency in the world to have been awarded two Grand Prix, and also won three Gold awards and three Silver. Its most awarded work was a campaign for WWF Germany that developed a wide-ranging global environmental campaign around a newly discovered species of prawn, which was officially named ‘eurythenes plasticus’ as the deep ocean creature was found to contain plastic particle waste.

The New York offices of 72andSunny and BBDO both picked up Grand Prix, while FCB Chicago took the top award to put the USA out front at the top level.

Havas Middle East broke through with its first Grand Prix thanks to the much talked-about ‘Liquid Billboard’ installation for Adidas.

Serviceplan Group of Munich took the biggest overall haul of awards of any agency, with no less than five Gold, eight Silver and nine Bronze awards. Four of those Golds also went to an environmental campaign, the ’Meltdown Flags’ work for the Meter Group, which presents a powerful visualisation of data to demonstrate the global retreat of glaciers.

Cresta President Alan Page commented: ‘We saw many terrific entries battling it out at the top of the judging this year. Despite this being after more than a year of the pandemic — or perhaps because of it — there’s a real range of fresh innovation and a great depth of feeling in so much of the work that has impressed the jury.’

While the 120-strong jury handed out more Grand Prix, overall there were fewer honours given. Cresta CE0 Lewis Blackwell explained: ‘We encourage our jury to go with their expert opinion. This year there seems to have been a general tendency to be confident in identifying and backing the very best work, while across the board they were consistent and firm in not giving out any soft marks. There was a real focus on finding the stand out entries.’

The Cresta Awards, now in its 38th year, draws its name from a commitment to promoting creative standards. It distinguishes its judging process by having the 120+ jury members worldwide work independently, with the scores then averaged. Awarded work must meet an absolute arithmetic standard, rather than be subject to further discussion. The organisers claim this is a fairer way to recognise the best and most innovative work, as it stops ‘groupthink’ undermining expert individual judgement.