Gold & Silver Addys For López Negrete.

The Houston Advertising Federation’s (HAF) 41st ADDY Awards recognized López Negrete’s work with five Gold Addys, seven Silver Addys and 14 Citations of Excellence during the annual awards event on Saturday, Feb. 22. All 26 nominations for clients including Bank of America, Goya Foods, and Reliant Energy received awards making López Negrete the third most winning agency overall at the awards.

This year’s competition marks a significant change since it is the first time non-English entries compete with English entries after the non-English categories were eliminated by the American Advertising Federation (AAF) last year.
“It was not apparent what effect this change might have on the awards. However, I find it quite encouraging that the non-English work did very well and held up strongly among all the entries as evidenced by López Negrete’s wins,” said Jay Hagins, Executive Director for the Houston Advertising Federation. “It doesn’t matter how you classify the advertising: low-budget versus high-budget; English versus non-English — evaluating and judging the concept and originality of the advertising results in just one thing: good work is good work.”

HAF Addy judge, Juan Jose Quintana, creative director for a leading advertising agency in Los Angeles, commented on the bicultural aspects of the entries. “It was incredible to see such a wide variety of ads both in English and in Spanish competing for an award,” Quintana said.

“It’s extremely gratifying to have our creative process and product honored. But most importantly is the recognition when the work meets the client’s goals and objective and continually exceeds their expectation from a performance perspective,” said Alex López Negrete, President and CEO of López Negrete Communications. “We are very honored to be recognized among such a talented group of advertising professionals and we are very proud that our work continues to be consistently competitive as the competition widens.”

The agency’s Gold ADDY awards recognized Bank of America (3) and Goya Foods (2). Silver ADDY winners included Bank of America (1), Goya Foods (4), Cosas (1) and one for Lopez Negrete’s Web site musical score. Finally, honors of Citation of Excellence went to Bank of America (7), Goya (2) Foods, Fiesta Mart (1), Reliant Energy (2), Tejas Office Products, Inc. (1) and Lopez Negrete (1).

Gold and Silver Addy winners will go on to the regional competition in Little Rock, Ark., in April, followed by the national finals in Los Angeles in June.