Middle East advertising industry comes of age

The awards recognise excellence in thirteen distinct advertising and marketing categories and the winners have been selected from an overwhelming 600 entries received by Campaign Middle East.

"We've finished judging the entries for the Awards and I am glad to say that we have arrived at clear winners in each category, although we did not feel able to make an award in one category," said Jan Zijderveld, CEO of Unilever Middle East and chairman of the independent panel of judges set up to make the awards. "I believe that this event defines our region's advertising industry and reflects on the excellence we are now starting to see from that industry as it comes of age."

The 600 entries for Awards were whittled down to shortlists in each category by a hurriedly assembled panel of industry experts, with the magazine's staff having confidently predicted, "Something in the region of 200 entries at the most," according to Campaign Middle East editor Tim Burrowes. "We realised pretty quickly that we had a huge response and so we drafted in some 30 experts from the advertising, marketing and public relations industries to help us shortlist the entries, which came from all over the region. The panel of 14 judges has now sat and reached its final decisions, so we're ready for the awards themselves!"

The Awards Dinner will be attended by over a thousand leaders from the Middle East's regional advertising, marketing and public relations industries and will be, according to Burrowes, "An excellent reflection of the great work that these industries have done in 2005 and a chance to set benchmarks for the excellence that we look forward to celebrating in 2006."

The Campaign Middle East Awards Categories are: Advertising agency of the year; Media agency of the year; Media plan of the year; PR agency of the year; PR event of the year; Print campaign of the year; TV campaign of the year; Integrated campaign of the year; Direct marketing campaign of the year; Young creative of the year; Outdoor campaign of the year; Radio campaign of the year and Online campaign of the year.