United Arab Emirates (UAE) leads the finalist tally for Mad Stars 2022 awards with 176 finalists. Impact BBDO, TBWA/RAAD and Havas Middle East were the top three agencies with the most finalists in the region.
Global South Korean-based advertising festival, Mad Stars 2022, formerly known as Ad Stars, has shortlisted this year’s 1,745 finalists from about 18,700 entries from 58 countries. The judging panel featured global creatives experts and consisted of 301 preliminary juries from 85 countries.
The number of finalists from each agency is as follows:
Impact BBDO (46), TBWA/RAAD (41) and Havas Middle East (22) lead the list regionally. Other regional agencies who also made it to the list include VMLYR (17), Horizon FCB (13), the UAE Gov Media Office (11), Wunderman Thomson (8) Leo Burnett KSA (8) MEMAC Ogilvy (7), Lowe (6), Publicis (4), Commonwealth McCann (2) and M&C Saatchi (1).
Following UAE with 176 finalists in Australia (144), Japan (135), India (107), and Singapore (103).
The UAE is raising its status in the advertising industry with the work of the agencies being consistently shortlisted by international awards in the top 10 in the last year. On this occasion, ‘The Elections Edition’ by Impact BBDO was the campaign with the most finalists globally with a total of 16. The campaign also won the Grand Prix at Cannes Lions earlier this year. Havas’s Liquid Billboard for Adidas won another Grand Prix, and other agencies did well too, picking up silvers and bronzes in various categories.
“It’s remarkable to see some familiar names in our finalists, Impact BBDO leads the nominations this year with The Elections Edition campaign. Impact BBDO also won the Grand Prix of the Year in 2019 and 2020, so it’s great to see them start so well this year as well” says Paul Conversy, awards manager at Mad Stars.
All shortlisted entries are now continuing to the Final Judging stage. The winners will be announced online on the final day of the Mad Stars 2022, running from the 25th to the 27th of August. View all the shortlists here.
