Kancil Award wins withdrawn!

(Marketingmagazine.com.my) – Following an investigation, the Association of Accredited Advertising Agents Malaysia (4As) has disqualified a number of Kancil Awards won by member agency Dentsu Utama because their winning works were deemed sufficiently close to works created in the United Kingdom and Sweden.

The creative work submitted for “Cross River Gorilla”, an anti-poaching campaign for World Wildlife Fund in Indonesia, and “Professional Man”, an internet privacy awareness campaign for Web Privacy Watch, contained almost identical images to the foreign works. The foreign work were posted in public ahead of the date of publication, as notified in the entry submission by Dentsu Utama.

Tan Kien Eng, Creative Council Chairman and CEO of Leo Burnett says, “This action is being taken to remedy a contentious situation while upholding the principles of eligibility for the Kancil Awards.”

According to him, all awards won in relation to the aforementioned work will be disqualified given the sufficiently close similarities. The original creators have also shown proof that their works were posted much earlier.

“We take a serious view of work that are deemed sufficiently close to works created originally elsewhere,” adds Kien. “The decision to disqualify the awards for both creative works was taken after we had explored all possible scenarios. In the end, the facts were overwhelmingly in favour of the original creators.”

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