Luxor Highlighter campaign: Leo Burnett’s good luck charm

Despite the controversies around the Luxor campaign created by Leo Burnett (Luxor is a Lowe client), it has won several international awards and accolades. The latest is that it has won two silvers at the Andys

Controversy seems to be garnering good luck for Leo Burnett. The Luxor Highlighters print ad, which was created by the agency for Luxor, has won several awards for it.

New on its list of awards are two silvers at the International Andy Awards – in the Graphics Design Campaign and Personal Products Campaign categories. Interestingly, Leo Burnett was the sole winner from India.

For the record, the International Andy Awards were established in 1964 by the Advertising Club of New York. The goal of the Andys is to honour creativity in advertising throughout the world, recognise the contributions of individuals and companies that create the work, and encourage raising the standards of craftsmanship in the industry. Judged by a jury comprising internationally renowned creative directors, the awards are given to both single and campaign executions, distinguished by product, service or technique category.

The Andys began as a New York print-only show, but has now evolved into an international show covering print, radio, television, out of home, direct mail, video/cinema, interactive and other media. Winners also compete for the Andy Awards’ highest honour, the Grandy.

Besides the Andys, this year, the Luxor Highlighter print campaign has won a Design Pencil at the One Show and four nominations in various categories; two golds, a bronze and two Grand Prixes at the Abbys; a silver and a bronze at the Asia Pacific Adfest; and a bronze at the Media Spikes Asia awards in Bali. The campaign also received two gold cubes in the Print category at the Art Director’s Club awards. The Luxor Highlighter campaign was also a finalist at the D&AD and has been included in the book. It was also nominated for a Clio this year.

Though Leo Burnett isn’t the agency of record for Luxor, this particular campaign was bought in December 2007 by Arvind Krishnan, the then vice-president for marketing. Lowe is the AoR for Luxor.

The campaign for Luxor Highlighters shows a full page of copy with historical information about historical characters. This copy is then highlighted with a Luxor highlighter in such a manner that the face of the historical character is outlined. The beauty of the ad lies in the fact that the copy, which is continuous, makes complete sense only when the highlighted portion is read too. The copy for the ad was readied after much research on the characters.

Three characters have been highlighted in this manner, Che Guevara, Adolf Hitler and Charlie Chaplin.

Santhosh Padhi, executive creative director at Leo Burnett, came up with the idea of demonstrating the product in this style. Russel Barret, creative director, worked on the copy, while Kunal Mhabadi did the illustrations. Ravpreet from Leo Burnett’s Delhi team was responsible from the client servicing end.

“We approached Luxor with the idea and a rough draft, which they liked very much,” says Barret. “It was on the basis of the idea alone that the campaign was bought and thus created.”

Upon the choice of characters, Barret says, “We came up with a whole list of names which were iconic, easily recognisable and who had led an extensively colourful life. Mahatma Gandhi, Mother Teresa, Winston Churchill and many more were part of that list. But finally, we settled on these three.”