From the water to the sky. From the dark blue of the sea, to the colorless emptiness of space. This is a journey that takes us from the year 1990, aboard a ferry across the Mediterranean, to 2023, when time is measured from a collection of watches that looks up at the stars.
This is a journey to the present of advertising from the eyes of La Vanguardia. 33 years separate the Transmediterránea ad and the Swatch ad –depicted in this article–, or what is the same, the first and most recent winner of the Advertising and Creativity Awards, an initiative that awards the best advertising campaigns published annually in La Vanguardia.
More than 12,000 daily editions and thousands of pages that have served as a platform for brands to communicate their products or services. This is how the media-advertisers link is recognized, born the same day that the first issue of the newspaper was published, on February 1, 1881, and which has been strengthened since 1990 with this contest to consolidate itself as an indissoluble unit.
A long journey of advertisements between ferries and clocks; automotive, banking, food, energy, real estate, insurance, construction, fashion, tourism, public administrations, beauty, technology, education... A daily journey to the heart of brands from our pages. And for a few years now, also from our web edition. The time has come: we set sail.
The Transmediterránea campaign “Different ways of traveling by boat” became the best of 1989, when, a year later, the Advertising Awards were born “to give a boost to people who work for press advertising”. In the second edition, the newspaper reinforces the concept of creativity and decides to award the Hennessy cognac graphic with a bottle accompanied by the message 'You will improve your opinion of the French'.
Because advertising and creativity travel together, then and now, to capture the attention of the audience, although with obvious changes in how or why. "Success now lies in not saying what people want to hear, but in saying what the brand believes is honest for its customers," explains Marc Ros, president of the contest jury. It is what he calls relevance, in the complicated exercise of creating a campaign in which the why (the content) gains importance. "Why should a company be respected and chosen by the people?" Ros wonders. Honesty and creativity.
It is the evolutionary journey of advertising, which does not live outside the maelstrom of today's world. "Before, there was no better advertising than now, in fact, now there is much more due to the hyper-fragmentation of channels, so now it is more difficult to capture the attention of the audience," warns Pere Guardiola, the Group's commercial and expansion general director. Godó, who recognizes the merit of advertisers and agencies. "That's why we want to recognize their work," he says.
Throughout the 34 editions, and also during the first 100 years of La Vanguardia, the diversity of graphic advertisements is impressive and diverse. Change the use of colors, the relevance of images and texts; new language codes appear, feelings are promoted to the detriment of reason, the value purpose of brands is reinforced and, ultimately, the canons of advertising that advances on this journey without limits are transformed.
"Creativity wins over anxiety about the future", headlines the president of the jury, aware of the importance of advertising in general, and advertising in the media in particular. "Our relationship with advertisers goes beyond economics: we recognize their work because they make our media better for readers," explains Guardiola, who highlights the efforts of the media to "face many of the current challenges, such as technological , and be able to remain relevant to the audience.”
This journey through the best ads published in La Vanguardia set sail from the paper edition, but time moves on, and the web edition was an important milestone for the industry, which is why digital display advertising has gained prominence in recent years. More recently, with the rise of branded content projects, those content actions integrated into the medium and capable of generating that difficult attention from readers soaked by a continuous concatenation of advertising impacts have also been rewarded.
And the journey continues, because the clock of time advances unstoppably. “We turned towards advertising on the social networks of our media, and interest in organizing experiences for brands is also growing; new categories will emerge in our awards”, says the director of the Godó Group.
