Competing against advertising agencies that have more branch offices than Tsunami Marketing has employees, the tiny, Koloa-based advertising agency created a tidal wave of its own recently by winning a national advertising award. The ADDY Awards are considered the advertising
Competing against advertising agencies that have more branch offices than Tsunami Marketing has employees, the tiny, Koloa-based advertising agency created a tidal wave of its own recently by winning a national advertising award.
The ADDY Awards are considered the advertising equivalent of the Oscars, Tonys or Grammys, and Tsunami won one in the most competitive of categories, agency self-promotion, said Val Rekward, Tsunami vice president and managing partner.
At first, she was skeptical about the validity of the letter the firm received from the American Advertising Federation (AAF), sponsor of the ADDY Awards, announcing Tsunami had won the prestigious award, even after the firm received instant entry into the national competition by winning a Pele Award through the Hawaii section of the AAF.
Then, when the head of the AAF Hawai’i called to confirm Tsunami had won, Rekward and company rejoiced, and began making plans to attend the awards ceremony in Florida next month.
The ADDY Tsunami won in the agency self-promotion category is among the most coveted, allowing agencies much larger than Tsunami to use “all their creative juices” to come up with a print advertisement promoting the agency. “So it’s all about your agency,” Rekward said.
The award solidifies Tsunami as one of the most creative agencies around, she said. “We have a real wonderful team of people,” and all had a part in putting together the advertising piece, titled “Truth Hurts.”
The agency with its office on Poipu Road near Koloa Elementary School has six employees, while some of the competitors it beat in the category have more than that many branch offices.
Gelston Dwight provided the photography for the winning piece, and Edwards Enterprises did the printing.
Tsunami last year celebrated 10 years of business on Kaua’i, and has clients on Kaua’i, the Big Island and Mainland.
Sponsored by the AAF, the ADDY Awards honor excellence in advertising, and cultivate the highest creative standards in the industry, according to the Web site www.aaf.org. With 60,000 entries, the ADDY Awards are the nation’s largest advertising competition.
Each fall, the competition begins at the local level, with the 210 AAF-member clubs around the country, including the Hawai’i branch. Entries must first be submitted in a local competition to be eligible for the ADDY process.
The local winners proceed to 14 regional competitions, and those winners proceed to the national finals.
Proceeds from the ADDY Awards program, on all levels of competition, go back into the industry through the work of the AAF and its members, especially in the areas of advertising education and public service advertising, the Web site indicates.
The 2002 ADDY Awards ceremony and gala will be held at the Sheraton Bal Harbour Beach Resort in Miami, Fla., on Saturday, June 8, part of the AAF National Conference.
This year’s ceremony will be hosted by celebrity emcee Dave Barry, a Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist with the Miami Herald whose humor column appears in more than 500 newspapers in the United States and abroad.
Staff Writer Paul C. Curtis can be reached at mailto:pcurtis@pulitzer.net or 245-3681 (ext. 224).
