The annual Loeries Festival is recognised as one of the most prestigious local awards and pays homage to the best of brand communications across all areas including television, radio and print, communication design, direct marketing, PR Communication, non-broadcast video, live events, sponsorship, digital communication and integrated campaigns.

The big moment of the weekend was when John Hunt, worldwide creative director, TBWA\Worldwide, received the Lifetime Achievement Award to a standing ovation. He accepted the award by reciting the TBWA\Hunt\Lascaris mantra ‘life's too short to be mediocre’.

And indeed it has not been a mediocre journey for the agency or John Hunt. Since its inception in 1983, it has won countless awards including Agency of the Century, Agency of the Decade and Ad Age’s International Agency twice. In 2009, TBWA produced the ‘Trillion Dollar Campaign’ for The Zimbabwean Newspaper, which went on to become the most awarded campaign of all time – including a Cannes Grand Prix, Loerie Grand Prix, Grand Clio, D&AD Black Pencil, and the Art Directors Club Black Cube.

Proof that brand communication can make the world a better place, Hunt was intimately involved in Nelson Mandela's first ANC election campaign in 1993. He has also found time to write a number of television and theatre plays, as well as other literature. He was named South African Playwright of the Year for Vid Alex, a play that condemned censorship during the apartheid years. Hunt’s first book, The Art of the Idea, published in 2009, has already been translated into a number of languages.