AD STARS 2015 Announces 1,717 Finalists : Grand Prix of the Year to be Announced on 22 Aug

AD STARS has been held annually since its establishment in 2008 and it has grown rapidly over the past 7 years.

This year, 17,698 entries from 67 countries was submitted, and we are now finishing the preliminaries.

The finalists for the AD STARS 2015 have been disclosed. On 7 July, AD STARS officially announced a list of 1,717 works – 1,470 by professionals and 247 by non-professionals – made it to the final rounds.

Coming a step closer to the glory of winning the main prize, the finalists will be exhibited and screened to the public at the venue of AD STARS in Busan this coming August.

The makeup of the finalists for this year’s event shows that in terms of the percentage of the works reaching the finals by country, the UK is in the lead at 57.1%, followed by Pakistan at 46.7% and Sweden at 31.3%, underlining the dominance of the European contestants. Notable in these figures is the more than decent performance of Pakistan, a country not particularly known for its advertising industry. The Pakistani works, twenty-one of which out of forty-five have survived the preliminaries, may be characterized by cultural diversity, one of the ideologies of the event. Apparently, quite a few of campaigns aiming to reflect on the social and cultural conditions of Pakistan and address their social issues have been entered, receiving high marks from the judges.

On the other hand, in terms of the number of finalists by country, Japan stood first at 252 works, followed by Korea at 146 and Thailand at 101.

Included in this year’s finalists are: “Safety Truck” by Leo Burnett Argentina, a campaign executed in Argentine, the country with the highest rate of road traffic accidents; “Great Chinese Names for Great Britain” produced by Ogilvy Beijing for VisitBritain to help attract Chinese tourists; “Like a Girl” entered by Leo Burnett Toronto, Chicago, London/Holle; and other winners in the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity and the New York Festivals.

“A Message to Space” entered by Innocean Korea, has made it to the finals in twelve categories, the largest number for any work, enhancing the prospect of winning. In addition, the agency network producing the largest number of finalists turns out to be BBDO, churning out 170 works, with Leo Burnett coming in second with 141.

These works chosen as finalists for this year will undergo two final rounds until August 18 (Wed.) before the winners of Grand Prix and Gold, Silver and Bronze Awards will be selected. In particular, the most distinguished works in the Product and Service category and the Public Service Ads category will be given the honor of winning Grand Prix of the Year as well as the cash prize of US$ 10,000 each. The list of the finalists is available on the AD STARS website at www.adstars.org.

AD STARS 2015 will be held at Busan for three days from Thursday, 20 August through Saturday, 22 August. Further details on the event and contact information are available on its website(www.adstars.org) as well.