No surprises at Creative Club Awards

The best of Chicago’s advertising is apparently created by a handful of major ad agencies, if the number of prizes they won at the recent Creative Club Awards is any indication.

The big agencies won almost all of the awards in 34 categories at the recent CCC Awards show held at the United Club at Soldier Field and attended by 400 adpeople.

And if Leo Burnett’s 10 awards and DDB’s four weren’t enough glory for one night, they were also named Agencies of the Year and their respective clients, Altoids and Anheuser-Busch, were declared the Clients of the Year.

A judging committee of 23 local ad experts judged the 492 entries from 38 agencies that were received from this market of an estimated 1,000 traditional, marketing/branding and internet agencies.

Here’s how the trophy bricks were awarded:

LEO BURNETT, 10 awards: Altoids print, posters, newspapers; Hallmark TV spot, McDonald’s outdoors and the Greenpeace PSA campaign, which was one of the two campaigns deemed “Best of Show;”

ENERGY BBDO, five awards: Jim Beam print and outdoor also voted “Best of Show,” and United Way innovative marketing;

DDB, four awards: Bud Light TV spots, and the recently Emmy-anointed internet “Swear Job” spot and a winner of many previous competitions;

Y&R, three awards: Sears Craftsman collateral; SOS political PSA, National Parks Conservation Association, radio;

TOM DICK & HARRY, three awards: print campaign for the Village of Rosemont;

TWO BY FOUR, two awards: White Sox TV spot, Chicago Bears direct mail;

ELEMENT 79, one award: Frito Lay microsites;

EURO RSCG, one award: Valspar integrated branding.

DOWNTOWN PARTNERS, one award, 2016 Olympics political PSA.

Two by Four’s top creative, David Stevenson, and consultant Ann Brown chaired the 2008 Awards committee of local adpersons. The recent event reportedly was so well done that it wiped out the memory of the embarrassingly bad 2006 Awards.