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NAA Honors Best Auto Manufacturers' Newspaper Ads

10 January 2001

NAA Honors Best Auto Manufacturers' Newspaper Ads

          Best-of-Show Awarded $20,000 Prize Today at North American
                           International Auto Show

    DETROIT, Jan. 10 The Lincoln Division of The Ford Motor
Company and Young & Rubicam of Dearborn, Mich. were honored as winners today
by the Newspaper Association of America for outstanding creative newspaper
advertising in the 25th annual Best in Automotive Newspaper Advertising
competition.  The announcement came during press week, Jan. 8-10, at the
North American International Auto Show (NAIAS), taking place at the
Cobo Center in Detroit. Lincoln and Y&R took Best-of-Show honors for their
"Lincoln LS Race for the Cure" ad, which appeared in The New York Times.  The
ad also garnered a cash prize of $20,000 to be split between advertiser and
agency.  NAA Director of Automotive Advertising Jake Kelderman was on hand to
present the award to Jim Stano, senior vice president, regional creative
director, Young & Rubicam and a representative from Lincoln.
    The full-color ad is a clever twist on the much-favored theme of a car on
the open road, this time using the well-known pink ribbon symbol to define the
highway mid-line and promote Lincoln's sponsorship of the Susan G. Komen
Breast Cancer Foundation's Race for the Cure.  "Young & Rubicam set out to
create a billboard you could hold in your hands," said Stano.  "Something with
that kind of immediacy and impact to communicate Lincoln's support for the
Race for the Cure."
    Lincoln and Y&R garnered the top honors -- in what are known as the DANDY
Awards -- in the Manufacturer Image Ad or Campaign category for "Lincoln LS
Race for the Cure," and in the Best Use of Color category for the ad, "Lincoln
LS Dust," also in The New York Times.
    "We're very pleased to recognize outstanding creativity like this," said
NAA Senior Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer John E. Kimball.  "Year
after year, the winners of this competition demonstrate how vital and
effective a medium, newspapers are for automotive advertising."
    This year marks the first time the competition categories have been
expanded to include automotive manufacturers', as well as dealers', ads.  NAA
is also a first-time sponsor of NAIAS this year.  The dealer advertising award
winners will be announced in conjunction with the National Automobile Dealers
Association's 84th annual Convention and Exposition in Las Vegas,
Feb. 3-6, 2001.
    NAA is a nonprofit organization representing the $57 billion newspaper
industry and more than 2,000 newspapers in the U.S. and Canada.  Most NAA
members are daily newspapers, accounting for 87 percent of the U.S. daily
circulation.  Headquartered in Tysons Corner (Vienna, Va.), the Association
focuses on six key strategic priorities that affect the newspaper industry
collectively: marketing, public policy, diversity, industry development,
newspaper operations and readership.  Information about NAA and the industry
may also be found at the Association's World Wide Web site on the Internet
(http://www.naa.org).