UPDATED: The Practice won a Silver at PR Lions competition

(adds information about Lions won by Romania in Cannes and statements from Leo Burnett Group officials and from Phoenix representative)

The Practice – Romanian partner of Publicis Consultants | Worldwide (Publicis Groupe) – was awarded a Silver Lions at Cannes Lions 2010, the 1st PR Lions that comes to Romania.

The Silver Lion will come in Romania after The Practice won it with “Little Voice, Big Sound”, for Phoenix.

The team that worked for this campaign included Gabriela Lungu – Managing Partner, Oana Bulexa – Client Service Director, Andrei Balan – Strategic Planning Director and Floriana Cristea – Junior Public Relations Manager.

The Practice won, with the same client, on May 26th, a Gold Sabre for best campaign in Eastern Europe. The Silver Lion won by The Practice at PR Lions is the 4th Romania gets at Cannes Lions, after another Silver Lion (Starcom Romania, 2007) and two Bronze Lion (GMP – 2007 and Leo Burnett – 2009).

We are very happy and proud that 3 out of the four awards Romania won until now in Cannes were awarded to companies from Leo Burnett Group, for different specialties: media, creative and now PR. After Starcom MediaVest, that won in 2007 the 1st Lion for Romania, and Leo Burnett that brought back home the only prize at Cannes Lions 2009, last night it was The Practice’s turn to make history, with the 1st victory for the Romanian PR industry. The recognition received by our 3 agencies at the most important professional festival in the world shows the exceptional capacity that Leo Burnett Group has in offering to its clients the best communication solutions, no matter what their needs and demands are

Stefan Iordache

COO Leo Burnett Group.

“Working with The Practice brought us, in a year, more satisfactions than we were expecting when we started to work together: exceptional results for our business, an imense notoriety and simpaty for Gusto product from Baicoi, but also a lot of prizes at PR competitions. We congratulate The Practice, together with we showed we make an imbatable team”

Eliodor Apostolescu

President Phoenix, producer of Gusto.

“We are extremely happy! The first PR Lion, won by a PR agency, is a moment of celebration for the entire PR industry in Romania, not only for us, The Practice team. In Cannes, you don’t compete only with another PR agencies, but with all the ones in the world that had good ideas and projects. That is why it is so hard to win a prize here. Congratulations to the entire team and big thanks to the client”

Gabriela Lungu

Managing Partner The Practice.

About this year’s Cannes Lions

The 57th Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival will take place from June 20^th to June 26^th, in Cannes (France).

Romanian agencies submitted this year 104 entries to Cannes Lions, most of them in categories such as Press (26), Outdoor (20) and Media (20). Next in the Romanian agencies’ preferences were PR (12), Promo (6), Film and Radio (5 each), Cyber (4), Direct (3), Design (2) and Titanium (1).

At this year’s edition of the festival, organizers announced they received more than 24,000 entries from 90 countries, this being the 4th highest level of entries ever. The increase in number of enteries is of 7% versus last year.