• by David Kaplan , June 8, 2005

The shadows grooving to iTunes in the "iPod Silhouettes" campaign topped the 37th annual EFFIE Awards show on Tuesday night, with the Grand EFFIE awarded to Apple Computer, Inc. and its longtime agency, Omnicom's TBWAChiatDay.

And in something unusual for an awards show, one of the keynote speakers, Cheryl Berman--chief creative officer of Publicis Groupe's Leo Burnett USA and chairman of Leo Burnett North America--took the opportunity to chastise advertising executives for not making the EFFIE more of a priority. The EFFIE Awards, which seek to recognize "effective advertising and marketing campaigns" that have achieved marketplace results, are presented by the New York American Marketing Association each year.

"Where's Lee Clow? Where's Cliff Freeman? How come you hear of judges pulling out of the EFFIEs at the last minute, or not bothering to ever serve at all, while how many people cancel as judges of the Cannes Lions?" Berman asked the startled audience at the Times Square Marriott Marquis. "None!" She then implored the audience to make more of an effort to support the awards, as she was greeted with equal amounts of applause and boos.

Of all of the advertising holding companies, Omnicom scored the most Gold EFFIEs (11), followed by Publicis (nine), WPP (five), IPG (four), Havas (three), and Dentsu (one).

BBDO won four Gold EFFIEs for clients, including Campbell's Soup, the Peace Corps, Pepsi, and GE. In addition, BBDO won two Silver EFFIEs (Snickers, Cesar) and two Bronze EFFIEs (Guinness, Orbit), bringing their total wins to eight.

Accounting for the bulk of Publicis' wins, for the fourth year in a row, Leo Burnett landed the most EFFIEs of any agency (12 total) with three Golds, six Silvers, and three Bronze for clients including Kellogg's, Procter & Gamble, McDonald's, and Morgan Stanley.

All in all, TBWAChiatDay walked away with the Grand EFFIE, three Gold EFFIEs (two for iPod and one for Nissan), two Silvers (Adidas and Infiniti), and one Bronze (Nextel), bringing their total wins to seven. Fallon and Ogilvy & Mather also garnered seven wins each, with Ogilvy landing three Golds, one Silver, and three Bronze, and Fallon bringing home two Golds, four Silvers, and one Bronze.