Schilling, Noble capture Addy honors

The Springfield Ad Club singled out the best from the rest during its 23rd annual Addy Awards Jan. 26. More than 150 awards were handed out at the University Plaza, but the two most coveted Best of Show Broadcast and Best of Show Print went to Schilling & Sellmeyer and Noble & Asso-ciates, respectively.

Schilling/Sellmeyer

Schilling/Sellmeyer & Asso-ciates walked away with 46 Addy awards, including Best of Show Broadcast and eight Gold Addys.

"Best of Show is a neat deal," said Don Schilling. "It was just a huge year. The Best of Show was just kind of a capper."

The agency nabbed the Best of Show Broadcast Award for its television campaign for Auto Magic/Jiffy Lube, owned by Bill Barclay.

"It's clever. It was about the reasons to go to Auto Magic," Schilling said. "It was a good utilization of television. TV has to entertain. If you're putting out a television spot that doesn't engage or entertain the viewer, you're not going to get any response."

Schilling said he hopes to get a response from the judges of the district Addy Awards, where his Gold Addy and Best of Show winners will be entered by the Springfield Ad Club. Schilling/Sellmeyer also will submit some of its Silver Addy winners. The company must pay for those entries out of its own pocket.

"As far as the Addys go, we think bringing any attention to Springfield is a good thing," Schilling said. "We feel like there is a lot of good growth here, and there is a need for quality ad agencies."

District awards are nothing new to the agency; it has won a few district Addys in the past.

"We'd like to pick up a couple (this year)," Schilling said. "That's good for us and good for Springfield."

The company employs 16, according to Schilling, 10 of whom are in the creative department.

"Unlike a lot of agencies ... we don't have a bunch of ac-count executives," Schilling said. "Our creative people work directly with the clients and that's a good thing for us. It allows us to offer the services of a larger agency with a smaller staff."

Schilling, as a past president of the Springfield Ad Club and former Addy chairman, enjoys attending the event with his staff.

"It's nice for the employees to go," he said. "In the agency bus-iness ... sometimes the people in the background don't get the exposure, and it's good that they can go. It's good for morale building."

It's also good for business.

"Usually after we make a good showing, we get a few phone calls," he said.

Schilling said the agency won awards for its work for 18 different clients, winning on about 60 percent of its entries.

Noble promotion

Instead of creating a piece that promotes a particular client, Noble & As-sociates' Best of Show Print piece promoted the work of the agency.

The role reversal was part of a concerted effort to brand the agency, according to members of the piece's creative team.

"We started a pretty aggressive new business effort to update all of our materials and position ourselves for the fu-ture," said Senior Vice President and Creative Director Tim Bade. "That's what it was created for. It's an overview of the company, and it drills down into what our unique services are, highlighting certain people and personalities."

Bob Noble, who founded the company in 1969, said it was created to connect the agency with prospective clients and employees.

The idea emphasized on the piece is that "imagination is nothing more than a mind game until you make a connection," Noble said. "You could have all the imagination in the world, but if you can't connect with it, then forget it."

The direct-mail presentation brochure was designed to connect the agency with prospective clients and employees.

Creative team members on this piece were Bade, writer Denis Naylor, Steve Bishop in production, designer Maria Nachtigal and Nancy Banasik in account services.

The annual Addys are important to Noble & Associates for a couple of reasons.

"We use the Addys every year to not only give something back to the community, but also to benchmark our work at local shows," Bade said. "It's important, I think, to stay involved with the local community."

In preparation for the local award banquet, Noble said the agency holds its own, in-house contest they call the Push Awards. Different pieces are submitted by different teams and creative directors select the final ones to submit to the Addys.

"We're pretty hard on ourselves before we even send stuff out the door here," said Dave Nehmer, another senior vice president and creative director at Noble. "The work should be a good representation of our company and put our best foot forward that way."

This year Noble came away with a total of 36 Addy awards, including three Gold Addys.

Noble said his agency's interns took six out of seven student awards, as well as the Judges Special Recognition Award. Noble intern Matt Estel won that award.

According to the winning self-promotion piece, Noble has estimated capitalized billings in excess of $130 million and has more than 220 associates. Also, it was ranked No. 11 by Promo magazine in the 2001 Top Promotional Agencies Ranking and was ranked No. 83 by Adweek Magazine in the 2000 National Agency Report Card Top 100 National Agency Ranking.

"I think instead of just a self-promotion piece ... it really for us was more of a branding piece, who Noble is as a brand," Nehmer said. "I think the beauty of this piece, not only design-wise, but strategically is that it was an exercise we go through with our clients all the time to establish a positioning for them. What we needed to do was to really focus and establish a positioning for us as a company."

Noble agreed.

"We've had corporate literature in the past, but it didn't have the confidence and composure this has," Noble said.

(This is part one of a two-part series on the Addy awards. Next week four special Addy honorees will be featured.)