By Cliff Peale
The Cincinnati Enquirer

Northlich, the region's biggest advertising agency, and Willow Creative Group won the top Addy awards at Saturday night's celebration of the best in 2003 from the local advertising community.

Willow won the Best of Show for print ads for a promotion for an Advertising Club of Cincinnati event on "Market to the Feminine Side."

The Best of Show for broadcast commercials went to Northlich for "You Smoke, They Smoke," one of its series of anti-tobacco ads for the Ohio Tobacco Use Prevention Control Foundation.

"Very moving," said Fran Dicari, a partner at Barefoot Advertising and chair of the event. "As soon as I saw it on TV, I knew is could be the Best of Show."

Four ads, including the Willow Creative Group promotion for the Ad Club, were noted as Judges Choices. They included:

• Barefoot Advertising for an in-store poster campaign for Phil's Records in Northern Kentucky.

• The Creative Department for a local television commercial for the Cincinnati Mighty Ducks, built around "Duck TV."

• Northlich for a special event card for the Cincinnati Fire Museum. The museum distributed matchbooks with the match heads cut off.

Overall, Northlich won 12 of the top "Gold" awards, Barefoot 10, the Creative Department eight and HSR Business to Business eight.

Winners in the competition, held last night at the 20th Century Theater in Oakley, will move up in a three-tier national competition that ends in June.

Overall, there were 680 entries in the contest, which is sponsored by the Advertising Club of Cincinnati.

Last year, there were 616 entries. The contest is judged by advertising professionals outside of Greater Cincinnati.

E-mail cpeale@enquirer.com