• by Karl Greenberg , June 8, 2007

TBWA's Media Arts Lab got the top nod in the 39th annual Effie Awards. And WPP won top holding company honors in last night's celebration, with WPP getting the most trophies for "ideas that work."

Media Arts' "Get a Mac" campaign for Apple, which features a friendly rivalry between a Mac, embodied by a distinctly urban hipster, mod-declasse type, and a PC, in the form of a stodgy middle-aged factotum who looks like an extra from the Bartleby-esque "Office Space" movie. The event was held at the Metropolitan Pavilion in New York.

"After much spirited discussion, the jury unanimously awarded Apple the Grand Effie for its portrayal of the Mac/PC rivalry," says John Butler, co-creative director of Butler Shine Stern & Partners and Grand Effie jury chair this year. "They managed to do it with humor, class and honesty without falling into the trap of overtly negative competitive advertising."

Microsoft CEO Bill Gates was enraged by the campaign when it broke. The extent to which the commercials have become suffused in the culture of digitalia was evident at last week's "D-all things digital" conference in Carlsbad, Calif., where Gates and Jobs, sharing the stage for the first time in 20 years, made reference to the ads. Jobs reportedly said, in a conciliatory fashion, "The art of those commercials isn't to be mean, it's for those guys to like each other. PC guy is great. PC guy is what makes it work!"

The other five Grand Effie finalist campaigns were Ogilvy & Mather and Mindshare's work for American Express, "My Life. My Card.," the Goodby Silverstein and Partners campaign for the California Milk Processor Board, "Got Milk?"; Venables Bell & Partners and OMD's "Not Even Once" campaign for the Montana Meth Project; Pedigree "Pedigree Adoption Drive" by TBWA/Chiat/Day and Grey Interactive, and the risqué Philips Norelco "Bodygroom" campaign promising guys an extra inch in a certain part of the body if they shave around it. That was done by Tribal DDB, DDB New York, MS&L and Carat USA.

Agencies with the most statues to carry back to the office include Leo Burnett, with 11 wins, JWT with nine wins and DDB with six. TBWA landed three Gold Effies, the most. OMD and Starcom MediaVest tied as the most effective media agencies with 10 wins each, with MindShare garnering eight wins.