LATIN AMERICAN BUSINESSES AND BRANDS SET GLOBAL STANDARDS AT FESTIVAL OF MEDIA LATAM AWARDS

- LatAm's agency, network, campaign and advertiser of the year revealed-

-Colombia leads the awards table but 8 countries achieve glory-

Miami: 26th September 2012. Latin American brands and businesses have performed on a level with global companies such as Coca-Cola, Nike and HP having scooped half of the total awards haul at this year's Festival of Media LatAm 2012.

The success for companies as diverse as Copa Airlines, Dominican Republic's La Sirena store and Venezuela's Movistar ensured a real sense of celebration at the event in front of some of the most senior media industry luminaries at Miami Beach last night.

The success was truly pan-regional with 8 different countries winning awards in the 12 categories.  Competition had been fiercer than ever, with double the amount of entries than in 2011.

Pages BBDO / OMD Dominican Republic won the coveted Agency of the Year title having secured accolades for two different campaigns.  'Fashion for Less' won Best Communications Strategy and 'Try It On' - which let the women of the Dominican Republic try life-size paper cut outs of outfits - was highly commended in the Best Engagement Strategy category. Both campaigns were for Dominican retailer La Sirena.

Z+ Brazil won Campaign of the Year for The 'Einstein Blood Bank' initiative for Hospital Albert Einstein in Sao Paolo, which saw pouches of real blood placed in chiller shelves in key convenience stores in the city. The campaign generated enough donations to save 4,000 patients, securing the Best Event / Experiential award as well as a highly commended in the Public Service award.

Renault took the title of most successful brand on the night, with two wins for Best Entertainment Platform and Best Effectiveness Award, securing the title of overall Advertiser of the Year.

MPG, responsible for the two Renault campaigns, also won with Nike, making them the agency Network of the Year.

Colombia achieved most notable success, having already swept the board at shortlist stage, getting more campaigns than twice its nearest country-competitor through to the finals.  It won 3 of the 12 awards: for the Best Use of Emerging Technology award, Effectiveness award and Public Service award.

Brazil had the most campaigns recognised, securing 2 main awards and three highly commended.

One of the categories most admired by the judges was the Best Engagement Strategy award which included a campaign for coat hangers displaying Facebook 'like' numbers for the item hanging from it for C&A Brazil.

An equally successful category was the Creative Use of Media award, won by El Bocon of Peru for their removal of text to create 'empty pages', following the tragic death of a football supporter.

Overall, improvement was seen in the standard of digital entries, however the judges also identified an opportunity to take digital campaigns to the next level, citing a willingness to embrace and experiment with new technologies as key.

Talking about the awards, Chair of the judges and Vice President Global Integrated Media Communications, Colgate-Palmolive, Nadine McHugh said "The most exciting thing about media is that right now, in our industry, if you can think it, you can create it.  The results of the Festival of Media LatAm awards show us that this is happening in countries right across the region as well as globally which is truly inspirational for my colleagues in the sector".

The winner of the Media Accelerator Programme (MAP) was also announced.  Uruguayan start-up ComparTeVe won the title 'Hot Company of the Year', voted for by the 700 attending delegates.  ComparTeVe is a second-screen service provider which works out what you are watching and allows you to interact with your favourite TV shows. The offer for TV stations and brands is a Business Intelligence platform.

Festival Founder Charlie Crowe concluded: "Global brands no longer dominate the region and incredible creativity as well exemplary execution are singing out from multiple countries. At C Squared, we are working to establish a benchmark of campaign quality which will ensure the Festival awards continue to be the pre-eminent hallmark of excellence."