Dubai Lynx Ad Awards Scandal Leads to Withdrawal of Top Award From Agency

In an unprecedented move in the advertising industry, the organizers of Dubai’s glamorous annual ad awards show ‘Lynx Awards’ announced on April 1 the withdrawal of the show’s top award – The Agency of The Year Award – from multinational agency Fortune Promoseven (FP7).  A total of 18 submissions and their associated 7 awards were withdrawn from FP7 less than two weeks after the televised awards ceremony.

Similar to the Atlantic ICE awards, the Dubai Lynx awards ceremony features a competition among the best ads and campaigns created by agencies in the MENA region. FP7-Doha is based in Qatar, a small GCC country where Newfoundland’s College of The North Atlantic has an operating campus.

You may remember FP7 Doha by their famed Medal of Honour ads that earned them 2 golden awards at the 2008 Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival.

With offices spanning the Middle East and North Africa, FP7 Doha committed the advertising industry’s 3 cardinal sins of…

1. Submitting fake ads to an awards show for products that don’t exist or for clients who didn’t hire them!
2. Submitting ads with plagiarized creative
3. Submitting ads that were not approved by clients and not used in client campaigns

Arabian Business magazine reported a statement yesterday from Fortune Promoseven announcing that the company is conducting an internal investigation:

“We are continuing our internal investigations and we are taking strong punitive action against anyone who was in contempt of our reputation and our standards,”

Below is one example of the withdrawn winners. This ad won a Golden Lynx in the Print category. The problem is that this model of washing machine isn’t even sold in the Middle East.

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