• by Nina Lentini  @Nina_Lentini, March 3, 2008

Unilever's "Keeping Skin Amazing" campaign for its Vaseline won the gold Global Effie Award at the inaugural World Effie Festival in Singapore on Friday. The company's "Pro-Age" Dove campaign landed the silver, and Kellogg's Special K's "Drop a Jean Size Challenge" took the bronze.

"Unilever and Kellogg's, top winners in past Effie competitions, know what it takes to create effective global campaigns with strong underlying insight and universal appeal," said Mary Lee Keane, executive director of the Effie Awards, in the announcement. "This year, the Global Effie is receiving special recognition by being awarded at the World Effie Festival, in front of a truly global audience."

The Effies recognize ideas that work--the great ideas that achieve real results and the strategy that goes into creating them. Global Effie-winning campaigns require a single brand idea running across at least four countries in two or more regions worldwide within the last three years.

The World Effie Festival, a global celebration of creative effectiveness, was held on Feb. 28 and 29 in Singapore. This was the first time the award has been presented outside of the United States since its inception five years ago.

Bartle Bogle Hegarty's "Keeping Skin Amazing" campaign repositioned Vaseline as the skin authority and ran in 15 countries around the world. Partnering with Mindshare for Media, Colangelo for Point of Sale and MBooth for PR, the brand (which was in a 30-year share decline) experienced double-digit growth as a result of the campaign.

Ogilvy & Mather's Dove campaign sparked worldwide debate by challenging the idea that you have to be young to be beautiful. In less than a year after its launch, the Pro-Age product line has become a force to be reckoned with in the fiercely competitive anti-aging category. O&M partnered with Edelman GmbH (Germany) for PR strategy and Mindshare for media strategy.

JWT's Kellogg's Special K challenge rallied hundreds of thousands of women across 15 nations of the world to eat two bowls of Special K a day for two weeks to squeeze back into their favorite denims. Results include the brand's relevance growing beyond the breakfast and summer mindset, with global net sales doubling over the past four years. Contributing agencies to the Bronze Global Effie-winning campaign included Cheetham Bell JWT (UK), Mindshare and K Agency (France).