Pendoring 2006 finalists

A record number of agencies entered this year’s Pendoring competition for excellence in Afrikaans advertising. 42 agencies, advertising schools, freelance copywriters and smaller creative companies reacted with more than 300 entries in the 17 categories.

The list of finalists in this year’s competition is overshadowed by FCB Cape Town and Johannesburg with 19 finalists while Net#workBBDO has 3 finalists and The Jupiter Drawing Room has two. The Johannesburg Agencies Hunt Lascaris got 4, and Ogilvy, Joe Public and Lobedu Leo Burnett 3, 2 and 2 finalists respectively.
This year’s international judge, Henk Nieuwenhuis, copy director of Ogilvy in Amsterdam, was satisfied with what he saw.

“I find the language sympathetic and inspiring, very creative a€” even more creative than Dutch, especially in the way the language is used. Afrikaans has a tradition of creating new words for new concepts, while Dutch has become a bit a€˜lazy’. Afrikaans offers a quite charming way to integrate new elements in a truly authentic culture,” he said. I find it sad that more trade marks don’t advertise in Afrikaans,” he continued. “It is general knowledge that communication in the mother tongue speaks to the buyer’s emotions, dreams, heart. And then advertising is more effective.”

Nieuwenhuis was exceptionally impressed by the standard of the Tuisgebak/Homegrown and Truly South Africa categories, as well as with that of the categories posters, radio and news papers. He was however perplexed by the fact that new media like websites still have not reached their full potential. There is yet again no finalist in this category.

Pepe Marais, creative director of Joe Public in Johannesburg and also one of this year judges, said frankly: “The good work was very good. And the bad, very bad. But as always the best work won, and with good reason.