2008 CIPD Recruitment Marketing Awards: a good night all round
Friday, 20 June 2008At the 2008 CIPD Recruitment Marketing Awards, held in the attractive environs of Old Billingsgate on the evening of Thursday 19th June, the fifteen awards were shared between no less than nine different agencies, with a further four contributing entries that made it to finalist status.
Congratulations go to ThirtyThree, who took the Grand Prix for their client claire's with a press ad for buyers and merchandisers that also won the general category. They also picked up best website for the Audit Commission, plus a couple of other finalist nominations.
TMP Worldwide also performed strongly with three category wins - best written (for themselves), best art direction (for RBS) and innovation (for GCHQ) - plus five other finalist nominations.
aia and andsome both came away with two awards apiece - aia succeeding in the best campaign (for the Royal Opera House) and graduate (for QinetiQ) categories, with andsome triumphing in internal comms (for ITV) and literature (for Paul). aia also gained two other finalist nominations.
Five more agencies picked up a single trophy: JWT Inside took the outdoor award for Shell, Bernard Hodes won digital for Herts Constabulary, LawtonWare received the diversity award for Brighton & Hove City Council, design consultancy Applied Works took the recruitment effectiveness award for AstraZeneca, and Wilding McArdle Wilson won employer brand for Orange. Three of these agencies also contributed finalist entries in other categories - JWT (three), Hodes (two) and LawtonWare (one).
Of those who made it to the ‘close but no cigar' stage, Barkers and TCS are entitled to feel unluckiest with four finalist nominations each, while Work Communications gained three and Euro RSCG Riley two.
No mention was made of the newly-introduced ‘talent planning' category, which presumably failed to attract entries of sufficient quality to excite the judges.
This was the event's twenty-eighth year, and the fourteenth with Guardian involvement. New CIPD chief executive Jackie Orme said the recruitment marketing industry deserved a big thank-you for "constantly raising the bar," with recruitment getting harder every year as the war for talent gets tougher. She also endorsed the view that "this slowdown will be different," with talent at a premium and creativity and innovation needed to attract it. She added that the CIPD believed identifying, recruiting, managing and developing top talent would remain at the top of the agenda, as would employer branding.
A brief interlude of stand-up comedy from Iranian comedienne Shappi Khorsandi followed before the inimitable David Mitchell (of Peep Show et al) took the stage to present the various awards. (He began with a special message of comfort for the two-thirds of the audience who would be humiliated by failure on the night.)
As we said, a good night all round, with even the weather compliant for the early-evening champagne reception on the Thames terrace. Perhaps the only surprise was that, in a market that's increasingly obsessed by fast-evolving technologies and fast-developing media channels, the top prize went to... a traditional press ad.
